The Fan Studies Network

Appropriating, Interpreting, and Transforming Comic Books (March 2013)

Edited by Matthew Costello

Special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures (http://journal.transformativeworks.org)

Manuscripts due April 1, 2012

Action Comics #900 included a short story in which Superman, confronted by the US State Department for causing an international incident by supporting Iranian prodemocracy protestors, decides to renounce his US citizenship to become a citizen of the world. This brief story was reported by most major news services and garnered much attention. This was far from the first time that comic book characters addressed and engaged with major social or political topics. The late Republican Senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, used to wear an Incredible Hulk tie for votes he considered important. Various groups use comic books to help define themselves, whether it be fans of the Hernandez brothers creating and sharing their own Love and Rockets artwork, LGBT groups offering queer readings of Green Lantern, or Sacramento manga fans organizing events, including a cosplay contest, to raise money for Japan.

As these examples suggest, people appropriate, reinvent, and transform comic books to create visions of themselves, their groups, and their relation to broader society, both national and global. This is neither a recent nor a national phenomenon. Comic books have always been appropriated by their audience, from Captain America’s Sentinels of Liberty in World War II to Ted Stevens’s Hulk tie. Comic fandom in the United States and readers of manga in Japan have been actively organized since the 1960s. More recently, the Internet has allowed the wide dissemination of comic book cultures, connecting fans more closely to each other and to comics’ creators, both nationally and internationally.

This special issue seeks theoretically informed essays that explore how dedicated fans as well as the broader public have appropriated, interpreted, and transformed comic books and comic book characters to define themselves and their societies.

We welcome submissions dealing with, but not limited to, the following topics:

* Case studies of how particular characters or books have been used by their reading communities to engage in civic action.

* Discussion of transformative works, such as fan fiction, fan art, and fan vids.

* Transformations across national borders through the globalized comic market.

* Analyses of how fans affect characters and books through commentary and migration into the professional ranks.

* Analyses of how various groups use comic book characters to define their relation to society in fan fiction and other activities.

* Examinations of commentaries on political or social issues relating to characters in letter pages and Internet forums.

* The development of comic shop infrastructure and its interrelation with comic fan communities.

* Popular reactions to events in comic books, such as the death of Captain America or Superman’s decision to renounce his American citizenship.

* Interviews with comic creators and/or fans focusing on creator/fan interactions.

Submission guidelines

TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. Contributors are encouraged to include embedded links, images, and videos in their articles or to propose submissions in alternative formats that might comprise interviews, collaborations, or video/multimedia works. We are also seeking reviews of relevant books, events, courses, platforms, or projects.

Theory: Often interdisciplinary essays with a conceptual focus and a theoretical frame that offer expansive interventions in the field. Blinded peer review. Length: 5,000–8,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Praxis: Analyses of particular cases that may apply a specific theory or framework to an artifact; explicate fan practice or formations; or perform a detailed reading of a text. Blinded peer review. Length: 4,000–7,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Symposium: Short pieces that provide insight into current developments and debates. Nonblinded editorial review. Length: 1,500–2,500 words.

Submissions are accepted online only. Please visit TWC’s Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor (editor AT transformativeworks.org).

Contact

We encourage potential contributors to contact the guest editor with inquiries or proposals: Matthew Costello (costello AT sxu.edu)

Due dates
Contributions for blinded peer review (Theory and Praxis essays) are due by April 1, 2012. Contributions that undergo editorial review (Symposium, Interview, Review) are due by May 1, 2012.

Edited by Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

It has long been recognized both within academia and in the various communities organized around fandom that the practice of being a fan does not merely consist of passive consumption. Rather, fans are also productive: they generate interpretations of their favorite television shows, extratextual products like fan fiction and fan videos, and data about their own consumption habits and those of their peers that will be used to market new products. Whether labors of love or value extracted from unaware fans, this productivity is rarely conceptualized as labor.

Given recent events like the 2011 Wisconsin labor protests, however, broader questions of labor and fair compensation have been reinvigorated, such that taking these productive fan activities seriously as labor seems to be particularly vital in the current moment.

In this special issue on Fandom and/as Labor, we invite contributions that ask after how labor relates to fandom, how labor happens in fandom, and what happens when we reconceptualize fandom as labor.

We welcome submissions dealing with, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Case studies of how fans negotiate/conceptualize the labors that they perform.
• Analyses of the ways in which popular texts present/narrate the labor involved in participating in fandom.
• Examinations of how fan labor is gendered, raced, classed, and/or related to sexuality, ability, and nation.
• Analysis of the monetization of existing fan labor and/or the production of profitable new types of fan labor.
• Theoretical or experiential accounts of the tension between freely given fan labor or the fan gift economy and exploitation through the extraction of surplus value.

Submission guidelines

TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. Contributors are encouraged to include embedded links, images, and videos in their articles or to propose submissions in alternative formats that might comprise interviews, collaborations, or video/multimedia works. We are also seeking reviews of relevant books, events, courses, platforms, or projects.

Theory: Often interdisciplinary essays with a conceptual focus and a theoretical frame that offer expansive interventions in the field. Blinded peer review. Length: 5,000–8,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Praxis: Analyses of particular cases that may apply a specific theory or framework to an artifact; explicate fan practice or formations; or perform a detailed reading of a text. Blinded peer review. Length: 4,000–7,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Symposium: Short pieces that provide insight into current developments and debates. Nonblinded editorial review. Length: 1,500–2,500 words.

Submissions are accepted online only. Please visit TWC’s Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor (editor AT transformativeworks.org).

Contact

We encourage potential contributors to contact the guest editors with inquiries or proposals: Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis (fandom.labor AT gmail.com)

Due dates

Contributions for blinded peer review (Theory and Praxis essays) are due by March 1, 2013.

Contributions that undergo editorial review (Symposium, Interview, Review) are due by April 1, 2013.

Surprisingly, fan studies and performance studies remain relative strangers in scholarship. With a few exceptions, there seems to be little crossover between fields in terms of analysis, theory, and methodology. Such a situation, on both sides of the equation, should be addressed given the potential productive overlap between the two. With this special issue, we want to encourage scholars of both fan and performance to open up further avenues of study and methodological practice in order to expand both fields to their mutual benefit.

Fandom is a performed set of practices. It’s something that one does. For many, being a fan is a distinct part of their performed identity. This practice may take many forms, from the performativity inherent to fan writing to more blatant performances such as LARPs and cosplay. From the other side of the fence, performance studies has had little interaction with fan studies, and investigations into intersections between the disciplines around such issues as identity performance and participant/performer ethnographies would further energize both fields.

We invite scholars in fan studies and performance studies to examine how fandom is performed, what performance practices can reveal about fandom, and how fan studies can benefit performances.

We welcome submissions dealing with, but not limited to, aspects of:

• Specific performance analysis of particular fandoms.
• Fan fiction as performative or dramaturgical.
• Identity and community performance in specific franchise fandoms and in general.
• Cosplay.
• Live-action role-playing games.
• Design and performance in nonfranchise fandoms such as steampunk.
• Fan communities and participation as applied to traditional performances.
• Online performance within fan listservs and sites.

Submission guidelines

TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. Contributors are encouraged to include embedded links, images, and videos in their articles or to propose submissions in alternative formats that might comprise interviews, collaborations, or video/multimedia works. We are also seeking reviews of relevant books, events, courses, platforms, or projects.

Theory: Often interdisciplinary essays with a conceptual focus and a theoretical frame that offer expansive interventions in the field. Blinded peer review. Length: 5,000–8,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Praxis: Analyses of particular cases that may apply a specific theory or framework to an artifact; explicate fan practice or formations; or perform a detailed reading of a text. Blinded peer review. Length: 4,000–7,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Symposium: Short pieces that provide insight into current developments and debates. Nonblinded editorial review. Length: 1,500–2,500 words.

Submissions are accepted online only. Please visit TWC’s Web site for complete submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor (editor AT transformativeworks.org).

Contact

We encourage potential contributors to contact the guest editors with inquiries or proposals: Jen Gunnels and Carrie J. Cole (fandom.performance AT gmail.com).

The complete call for papers is available here: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement/view/22

Due dates

Contributions for blinded peer review (Theory and Praxis essays) are due by March 1, 2014.

Contributions that undergo editorial review (Symposium, Interview, Review) are due by April 1, 2014.

Alongside its consumption and transformation of texts, media fandom has always been marked by its consumption and transformation of objects. From superhero figures, model kits, and war-gaming miniatures for sale at hobby shops, to costumes and props worn at Comic-Con, material objects and body decoration have functioned as displays of textual affiliation, crafting skills, or collecting prowess, reflecting a long history of fan-created and fan-circulated artifacts around popular media fictions.

While “mimetic” and “affirmational” practices seek to replicate the objects of fantastic media as faithfully as possible, other fan creations result in material mash-ups, expressing transformative impulses in artifact form. Regardless of orientation, object-oriented fandom represents a distinct strand within old and new activities and cultures, one whose intimate and often friendly relationship with corporate branding and ancillary market exploitation make it of central interest to an emerging body of scholarship on transmedia, convergence, and the franchise.

This special issue seeks historically and theoretically informed essays that explore the role of objects and their associated practices in fandom as instances of creativity and consumerism, transformation and affirmation, private archive and public display. We are particularly interested in work that complicates or transcends the binaries of social versus solitary, artwork versus commodity, and gift versus monetary economies to engage with object-oriented fandom as self-aware and playful in its own right.

We welcome submissions dealing with, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Creating and collecting, buying and selling fan artifacts (production artifacts, memorabilia, reference materials, models, material fan art, fan crafts…).
• Cosplay (creating costumes and other artifacts, performing cosplay, competitions…).
• Fan enactments, events, and embodiment (Renaissance fairs, Quidditch competitions, reenactments, fannish tattoos…).
• Fan objects as paratext and transmedia extension.
• Dissemination of skills and abilities (workshops, online blogs, fan meetings…).
• Object marketplaces (con, comic book store, eBay, etsy…).
• Evaluation and valuation of artifacts across the various economies of fandom.
• Impact of digital technologies (including social networking and 3-D printing) on object creation, collecting, and cataloging.
• New debates over authorship, ownership, and control.

Submission guidelines

TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. Contributors are encouraged to include embedded links, images, and videos in their articles, or to propose submissions in alternative formats that might comprise interviews, collaborations, or video/multimedia works. We are also seeking reviews of relevant books, events, courses, platforms, or projects.

Theory: Often interdisciplinary essays with a conceptual focus and a theoretical frame that offer expansive interventions in the field. Blind peer review. Length: 5,000–8,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Praxis: Analyses of particular cases that may apply a specific theory or framework to an artifact; explicate fan practice or formations; or perform a detailed reading of a text. Blind peer review. Length: 4,000–7,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Symposium: Short pieces that provide insight into current developments and debates. Non-blind editorial review. Length: 1,500–2,500 words.

Submissions are accepted online only. Please visit TWC’s Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor (editor AT transformativeworks.org).

Contact

We encourage potential contributors to contact the guest editor with inquiries or proposals: Bob Rehak (rehak.twc AT gmail.com)

The complete call for papers is available here: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement/view/23

Due dates

Contributions for blind peer review (Theory and Praxis essays) are due by March 1, 2013.

Contributions that undergo editorial review (Symposium, Interview, Review) are due by April 1, 2013.