The Fan Studies Network

http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement/view/34

Over the past five years, more and more English language transformative fandoms have gravitated to the social networking site Tumblr, moving from online communities such as LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, and Yahoo! Groups. Thus many fan communities have shifted organization structures to adapt to Tumblr’s multiple points of entry and seemingly anti-hierarchical framework. Some fans describe Tumblr as a fandom free-for-all without clear rules for engagement. Others describe this uncertain multiplicity as one of the platform’s strengths. Still others have pointed to Tumblr’s comparatively more visual interface as enabling greater global participation in heretofore monolingual fandom spaces. All of which is to say, Tumblr means many things to many people, encompassing a diversity of fandom experiences.

This special issue of TWC seeks to explore Tumblr as a (not infrequently contested) fandom platform, in which cultures of age, gender, sexuality, race, dis/ability, class, nationality, religion, language, and so on connect and sometimes clash in the contact zones of fandoms. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

* Tumblr’s influence on the production and consumption of fan fiction
* Transcultural and/or transnational fan practices and interactions on Tumblr
* Convergence of fandom and social justice concerns on Tumblr
* Tumblr fandom as a site for media literacy
* Tumblr fandom and non-normative/socially marginalized identity and community
* Marketing, media producers, and Tumblr fans
* Media discourse surrounding Tumblr fandom
* Developing aesthetics of fan work on Tumblr
* Tumblr’s role within transmedia fandom flow across platforms
* Tumblr’s cultural/discursive positioning as a youth/millennial fandom platform
* History and politics of transitioning from fandom communities (e.g. LiveJournal) to Tumblr
* How Tumblr’s interface has impacted and/or driven inter-fandom interactions and transfandom (e.g. Superwholock)

Submission guidelines

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) is an international peer-reviewed online Gold Open Access publication of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. TWC aims to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community. 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.

Theory: Conceptual essays. Peer review, 6,000–8,000 words.

Praxis: Case study essays. Peer review, 5,000–7,000 words.

Symposium: Short commentary. Editorial review, 1,500–2,500 words.

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—Contact guest editors Lori Morimoto, Louisa Stein, and Allison McCracken with any questions or inquiries (tumblrfandomtwc AT gmail.com).

Due date—May 1, 2017, for estimated June 2018 publication.

Fan tourism, “location vacations,” or pop-culture tourism is a growing industry across the world, changing local economies, culture, and ambiance. Fans of various pop texts and icons have been making pilgrimages to real-world locations for decades, from Abbey Road to Forks, Washington, from 221B Baker Street to Graceland, Tennessee. In Media Res is looking for explorations into fan tourism as a general cultural practice. Investigations can be through a case study of a particular fandom, location, or behavior, taking into consideration the ways that fan tourism can be beneficial and detrimental to real world economies, infrastructures, and local cultures.

Among the topics that might be examined:
Case studies of fan pilgrimages
Economic or industrial investigations of fan tourist trade
Pedagogical approaches toward teaching/studying fan tourism
Impact of fans on “destination locations” (economically/culturally/ecologically)

Proposals may be brief, but do be sure to describe the topic and key question(s) to be explored. Please submit your proposal by February 20th. If interested, please contact In Media Res (inmediares@gsu.edu) with topic proposals or for more information about the theme. Be sure to include the name of the theme week you would like to be involved within the subject line of the email.

Academics, journalists, critics, media professionals and fans are all welcome to submit proposals.

The actual piece will include either a 30-second to 3-minute clip, an image, or a slideshow that will be accompanied by a 300 to 350 word response to/contextualization of your clip, image, or slideshow. In addition to your piece, you will be expected to engage the other pieces presented that week to encourage discussion and further flesh out the individual topic in relation to the week’s theme.
About In Media Res: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/

The Fan Studies Network 2017 Conference
24-25th June 2017
Centre for Participatory Culture,
University of Huddersfield, UK

Keynote Speaker: Dr Louisa Stein (Middlebury College, USA)
Plenary Address: Professor Matt Hills (University of Huddersfield, UK)

The fifth anniversary of the annual Fan Studies Network Conference is visiting the University of Huddersfield for a vibrant two-day programme during June 2017. The conference will celebrate and continue FSN’s proud tradition of offering an enthusiastic space for interdisciplinary researchers at all levels to connect, share resources, and further develop their research ideas. In addition to panel presentations, the two days will feature social events, speed geeking, and workshop discussions.
We are delighted to welcome Dr Louisa Stein as the keynote speaker for FSN2017. Louisa is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Culture at Middlebury College; where she teaches classes on remix culture, spectatorship, YouTube, and gender and sexuality in media. Louisa is author of Millennial Fandom: Television Audiences in the Transmedia Age, and co-editor of Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom and Teen Television: Programming and Fandom.

The event will also feature a plenary address from Professor Matt Hills, who, due to being the keynote of the first ever FSN conference, will reflect on the past five years of the network and the fan studies field. Matt is Professor of Media and Journalism at the University of Huddersfield, where he is co-director of the Centre for Participatory Culture. He has written six sole-authored research monographs, starting with the influential Fan Cultures in 2002 and most recently with Doctor Who: The Unfolding Event in 2015, as well as publishing more than a hundred book chapters and journal articles in the areas of media fandom, cult film/TV and audiences in the digital era.

FSN2017 is sponsored by the Centre for Participatory Culture at the University of Huddersfield, which will have its official launch the day before our conference. Attendees of FSN2017 will be able to attend the centre launch for free – the Centre will announce full details of this event in the coming weeks.

We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers that address any aspect of fandom or fan studies. We also welcome collated submissions for pre-constituted panels. We encourage new members, in all stages of study, to the network and welcome proposals for presentations on, but not limited to, the following possible topics:

– Fandom and grief/mourning
– Representations of fans in media & popular culture
– Fandom and sports
– Fandom and race
– Political fandom
– Non-technological practices in fandom
– Fan conventions and offline spaces
– Histories and archives of fandom
– Non-Western fan cultures
– Ethics and methodology in fan studies
– Interdisciplinary approaches to fan studies
– Anti-Fandom and Non-Fandom
– The future directions of fan studies
– The ‘dark’ or ‘toxic’ side of fandom

We also invite expressions of interest (100-200 words) from anyone wishing to present as part of our popular ‘speed geeking’ session. This would involve each speaker presenting a short discussion on a relevant topic of their choosing to a number of small groups, and then receiving instantaneous feedback, making it ideal for presenting in-progress or undeveloped ideas. If you have any questions about this format of presentation, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Please send any abstracts/enquires to: fsnconference@gmail.com by 13th MARCH 2017.
Please include up to three keywords for your submission and a short biographical note.
You can join the discussion about the event on Twitter using #FSN2017, or visit http://www.fanstudies.org.

Conference Organisers: Lucy Bennett and Tom Phillips (FSN chairs)
Bertha Chin, Bethan Jones, Richard McCulloch, Rebecca Williams (FSN board)

Call for Papers, Themed section of Participations: International Journal of Audience and Reception Studies

TOXIC FAN PRACTICES

Editors: Bridget Kies (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA) and William Proctor (Bournemouth University, UK).

Since its inception, the discipline we now know as Fan Studies necessarily set out to challenge stereotypical perspectives on the behaviour and practices of fan cultures, many of which constructed the figure of the fan as a figure of fun; of pathological disorder, instability and ‘enfreakment’ (Proctor, 2016; Richardson, 2010). In so doing, and in many ways, Fan Studies followed the trajectory established by Media and Cultural Studies beginning with the Birmingham School in the 1970s. In particular, the ‘first wave’ of Fan Studies was invested in demonstrating that audiences are not solely passive recipients of so-called media messages, or ‘dominant ideologies,’ but active participants in the production of transgressive and transformative practices – fan fiction, fan ‘vidding’ and the like – and involved in the negotiation of making meaning. The advent and proliferation of new media technologies, especially the Internet, has forced previously marginal fan cultures into the mainstream (Bennett and Booth, 2014; Gray et al, 2007; Scott 2013). As a result, the heightened visibility of fans and their ability to comment, celebrate and criticise produces readily accessible discourses for public consumption. While such a shift in visibility has had a clear impact on “monolithic conglomerates” (Johnson, 2013: 43) in that “fan audiences are now woo’d and championed by media industries” (Gray et al: 2007: 2), we believe that this represents only a fraction of the story, and one that requires significant redress. The visibility of fan cultures may very well shine a light on creative and participatory practices, but mainstream, public exposure also demonstrates the heterogeneity of fan communities, warts and all.

Of course, Fan Studies has since moved through several phases and, in recent years, fans themselves have become the subject of mainstream news media, but often in highly negative ways. Such discourses circulate around the figure of the fan, not as a figure of fun necessarily, but as a figure of racist, homophobic, sexist and reactionary politics. Moreover, news reports are beginning to stereotype fans in ‘new’ ways, such as the belief that the affordances of new media have led to an era of “fan entitlement syndrome” (Mendelsohn, 2014), of “nerd rage” and antisocial, toxic behaviours. Stereotypes of fan entitlement circulated in online news media (professional, amateur, pro-am) seems to be an “updated and retooled” version of William Shatner’s oft-cited ‘get a life’ stereotyping (Hills, 2016: 271; see also Jenkins, 1992).
The anonymity provided by social media platforms, with their (cyber) pseudonymous (and obfuscated) identities, has provided a figurative wall behind which participants may hide. As Claire Hardaker (2015) emphasizes, ‘this anonymity can also foster a sense of impunity, loss of self-awareness, and a likelihood of acting upon normally inhibited impulses’ (224). By the same token, Michael Suler explains that ‘people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say and do in the face-to-face world’ (2004: 321). This disinhibition can be salutary (supportive, cathartic) but these fan discourses in particular exemplify toxic disinhibition signified by ‘rude language, harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats’ (ibid).

The fan studies discipline has already started grappling with these issues. Analyses of inter- and intrafandom Othering, ‘of fans, by fans’ (Hills, 2012), have been conducted on such quarrels and conflicts, including fan-objects such as Twilight (Hills, 2012; Williams, 2014), One Direction (Jones, 2016; Proctor, 2016), R.E.M (Bennett, 2011), and the female-led Ghostbusters remake/ reboot (Proctor., 2017). Moreover, online conflict and “toxic technocultures” (Massanari, 2015) has been analysed in other disciplines, including the #GamerGate controversy and hashtag activism such as #RaceFail, #Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter (Rambukkana, 2015) and #BlackStormtrooper (Proctor, forthcoming), to select a few examples (see also, Burgess and Matamoros-Fernandez, 2016; Chess and Shaw, 2015; Hardaker, 2010; Hardaker, 2013; Hardaker and McGlashan, 2015; Luce, 2016; Massanari, 2015; Poland, 2016).

How can researchers examine toxic fan practices beyond those offered by mainstream news artefacts, many of which cherry-pick examples from social media without adequate theorisation or methodology? That some fans are racist, homophobic, sexist or otherwise exclusionary is one thing; but how can researchers develop tests to measure this extant discourse? How do we know who is speaking? How do we know that these are fans at all, as opposed to ‘trolls’ or ‘flamers,’ that is, those online individuals who find delight and entertainment in conflicts of this kind (Hardaker, 2015)? This special section does not seek to deny that toxic fans and audiences exist.  We do, however, seek to provide an academic space whereby these issues are placed centre-stage via methodology that moves beyond reductive, handpicked selections.  We are also interested in theorisations of the place of toxic fan practices within larger fan communities and as objects of study for the maturing fields of Fan/Audience Studies, including research across disciplines.

Contributions are welcome on a variety of topics that investigate the concept of toxic fan practices and methodological issues arising such as:

*   Online methodologies/ netnographies of particular fan communities and social media platforms
*   Specific case studies of toxic fan cultures (e.g. Star Trek fans’ responses to gay Sulu or Marvel fans’ reactions to female Thor)
*   Criticism of toxic fans from within fandoms, intra-fandom conflicts (e.g. Game of Thrones fans condemning and celebrating scenes of rape)
*   Widescale protests and boycotts on social media (such as #boycottstarwars or #buryyourgays)
*   Criticisms of representations of race, gender, sexuality, etc., in fan cultures

Proposals are also welcome on other topics as long as they meet the aims of the special section.

Please send 300 word abstracts to the following email addresses by March 1st 2017.
bproctor@bournemouth.ac.uk<mailto:bproctor@bournemouth.ac.uk>
bkies@uwm.edu<mailto:bkies@uwm.edu>

Symposium: Exploitation Cinema in the 21^st Century.

Event Date: June 9^th 2017

Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

Deadline for proposals: 3^rd March 2017

Keynote Speaker: Dr Johnny Walker, Northumbria University

In relation to cinema, the term “exploitation” has been adopted by various individuals and institutions over time, from opportunistic film producers and marketers of the 1920s to contemporary online distributors releasing new films in the 21^st century. There is a current wave of exciting and productive scholarship on the historical developments of exploitation cinema, and its famous, and not so famous, films and filmmakers. But much of this research focuses on exploitation before the year 2000, with a particular focus up to and including the VHS era of the 1980s. Less research exists on the inflections of exploitation in the 21^st century, and the trends and developments that have taken place since the turn of the century. This one-day symposium seeks to shed new light on the embodiments of exploitation cinema since 2000, with particular emphasis on current waves and cycles, the way in which they are now consumed (such as online rather than in theatres), and which particular exploitation filmmakers stand out as being important in contemporary times.

Topics might include (but are not limited to);

• Analysis of single films
• Studies of current waves or cycles of exploitation
• Exploitation cinema from global national contexts (in particular from non-English speaking countries)
• The re-emergence of old cycles since 2000 (Rape-Revenge, the Biker movie, etc.)
• Individual filmmakers
• New genres, sub-genres, and hybrids
• High budget exploitation (such as that produced by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez)
• Patterns of exhibition and distribution
• Studies of industrial models or modes
• Exploitation studios (The Asylum etc.)
• Exploitation online
• Exploitation fandom and audiences

We invite proposals of up to 300 words for 20 minute papers, plus a short bio (up to 150 words) by March 3^rd 2017.

We also welcome video essays to be submitted with a 300 word proposal/150 word bio, sent to us by March 3^rd 2017. Final video submissions should be sent by June 2^nd 2017 via Vimeo link. Video submissions should aim to be 10 minutes maximum running time.

All proposal (and any queries) should be sent to Dr James Newton at james.newton@canterbury.ac.uk

CALL FOR PAPERS

Conference: Teenage Kicks: Global teenage cultures, representations and practices

Event date: Saturday 9 September – Sunday 10 September 2017
Kingston University, London
Deadline for Proposals: 1st March 2017

Keynote Speaker: Dr Kate E. Taylor-Jones, School of East Asian Studies, Sheffield University

The popular contemporary representation of a teenager is someone who stays in their bedroom with their tablet and phone, only venturing out for sustenance.  Media panics around violence and videogames, online pornography and extreme television and film also construct the teenager as a passive victim of the mass media. The purpose of this two day conference is to interrogate popular representations, cultures and sub-cultures, and practices of teenagers on a global level.
This interdisciplinary conference seeks 20 minute papers and panel proposals which interrogate popular conceptions and misconceptions of the teenager. Papers and panels will approach the teenager from a global perspective are particularly welcome.

Themes include:

•       Bedroom Cultures

•       Fan practices and cultures

•       Blogs/Vlogs and other internet practices

•       Selfie culture

•       Fashion and beauty

•       Music and sub-cultural identities

•       Constructions of the ‘girl’ or constructions of the ‘boy’ in popular culture

•       Teenage cinema

•       Online dating and sexting

•       K-Pop/J-Pop and hybridity

•       Teenagers and the ideology of anti-social behaviour

•       Religion and the teenager

•       Histories of the teenager

•       Young Adult literature

•       Young Adult television and film

•       The law and the teenager

Please email abstracts (250-300) words to Colette Balmain (c.balmain@kingston.ac.uk) or Lucy Williams (l.williams@kingston.ac.uk) by no later than March 1st 2017 and don’t forget to include your name, email address and institutional affiliation if applicable. We look forward to hearing from you.

For further information about this event contact: Dr Colette Balmain at: c.balmain@kingston.ac.uk.

Updated details will appear on the conference website:

http://www.kingston.ac.uk/events/item/2444/09-sep-2017-teenage-kicks-global-teenage-cultures-representations-and-practices/

Call For Papers: Transnational Monstrosity in Popular Culture

Saturday 3^rd June 2017, York St John University

This one-day conference will explore the figure of the monster in transnational popular culture, across cinema, television, games, comics and literature, as well as through fandoms attached to global monster cultures. It is our intention to bring together researchers to consider how transnational monstrosity is constructed, represented and disseminated in global popular culture.

Since the popularisation of monster narratives in the nineteenth century, the monstrous figure has been a consistent border crosser, from Count Dracula’s journey on the Demeter from Romania to Whitby, to the rampaging monsters of Godzilla movies across multiple global cities. In folklore, such narratives have long been subject to specific local and national cultures, such as the shape-shifting Aswang of Filipino folklore or the Norwegian forest Huldra, yet global mediacapes now circulate mediatised representations of such myths across borders, contributing to a transnational genre that spans multiple media. Aihwa Ong has referred to ‘the transversal, the transactional, the translational, and the transgressive’ in transnational ‘human practices and cultural logics’, and each of these categories can encompass the scope of transformations imagined within cross-border constructions of monstrosity.

There has been significant recent interest in the ways in which transnationality, particularly in film studies, has depicted flows of people and demonstrated lines of cultural flow. This conference will explore cultural flow as it relates to the construction of a transnational genre (by producers and audiences), but will also explore the ramifications of representations of monstrosity in socio-political terms. The event also intends to engage with the ways in which monsters metaphorically represent forms of social and political otherness as they relate to cross-cultural or transnational forms and social groups, either directly or indirectly. Monstrosity has long been explored in a number of ways that connect gender, sexuality, class, race, nationality and other forms of otherness with depictions of monsters or monstrosity. The representation of refugees across Europe has been just one example of the ways in which cross-border monstrosity and otherness are culturally fused, with media outlets and political figures contributing to the repeated representation of refugees as a monstrous ‘swarm’ moving into and across European borders.

While the study of monsters in fiction is nothing new, the examination of the figure of the monster from a transnational perspective offers the opportunity to better understand: issues of cultural production and influence; the relationship between national cultures and transnational formations; hierarchies of cultural production; diasporic flows; the ethics of transnationalism; as well as the possibility to explore how shifting cultural and political boundaries have been represented through tropes of monstrosity. Hence, this conference seeks to offer new insights into the nature of transnational cultures and help us to understand how one of the oldest fictional metaphors has been transformed during the age of globalisation.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers, on topics around transnational monsters and monstrosity. Possible themes might include (but are not limited to):

Monstrous-genders/sexualities/ethnicities: transnational approaches to femininity and/or sexuality as monstrous or othered; interpretations of otherness in cross-cultural or comparative approaches.

Monster fandoms: transnational fandoms around monsters, or representations of monstrosity, which might include Whitby Dracula pilgrimages, kaijū eiga, or Pokemon.

Transnational horror and the monster: approaches to investigating particular monster tropes in comparative national cultures or across media that might include the figure of monsters in the slasher film, or the transnational appropriation of folkloric monsters in horror games such as the Wendigo in Until Dawn.

The transnational monster genre: theoretical explorations of the genericity of monster narratives and their relationships with national and transnational cultures (including regional approaches to affinitive transnational areas, such as Scandinavia or Latin America).

Reimagining monsters:  cross-cultural appropriations of specific monster figures; issues of cultural power and difference within appropriations that might include Dracula, Godzilla, King Kong or zombies.

Monster as metaphor: cultural metaphors relevant to the figure of the monster as it relates to transnational, cross-border concerns, which might include the reflection of concerns about migration in The Walking Dead and the potential impact of those metaphors.

Proposals are welcomed on any other relevant topics

Please send proposals of 300 words, along with a brief biography (50 words), to transnationalmonsters@gmail.com by Wednesday the 1^st of March 2017.

We will be announcing details of our invited speakers early in 2017.

Follow @TNMonstrosity on Twitter.

​CFP: Videographic Approaches to World Cinema and Transnational Circulation

Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago, March 22-26, 2017

This panel seeks works of videographic criticism (or papers that address methodological and/or theoretical questions about this [new] form of scholarship) that look beyond the “text itself” to explore broader industrial questions about the processes through which films circulate. The videographic mode opens up rhetorical possibilities often unattainable via traditional modes of scholarship. Although it has been used overwhelmingly for—and is well suited to—close textual analysis, it simultaneously offers intriguing possibilities/challenges for explorations of other aspects of film culture such as exhibition, distribution, audience reception, and so on.

We are especially interested in proposals that address transnational circulation and/or issues related to World Cinema. Possible topics include:

Distribution
Exhibition
Promotion (trailers, posters, etc.) and Branding
Paratexts (including opening titles, DVD packaging, making-of docs, etc.)
Film reviewing/criticism
Film Festivals
Subtitles, Dubbing and Translation
DVDs and streaming platforms
Celebrity/red carpet/awards shows
Audiences/fandom/fan vids
Social media (Youtube, Instagram, Vine, etc.)
Piracy and copyright
 

Please submit a 300-word abstract and brief bio to David Richler <david.richler@carleton.ca> and Michael Talbott  <michael.talbott@castleton.edu> by Friday, August 12.

​Science Fiction Film and Television is seeking articles for a special
issue on Women & Science Fiction Media, intended to mark the 200^th year anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. 

Although sf was once stereotyped as a male genre, more recently women’s contributions as authors, fans, editors, and more have become more widely
acknowledged. Central to this new understanding of women’s contributions to sf has been the realization that women have always been a part of the genre, resisting another stereotype that links women’s emergence in the field to the feminist fiction of the 1960s
and 1970s. In recognition of the bicentenary of the publication of Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley, arguably the first sf novel, we seek essays that recognize, interrogate, respond to and celebrate women’s contributions to media sf. We are interested
in reviewing any work that explores this topic, but we are particularly interested in contributions on the following topics: 

·       Female directors of sf film
and television

·       Female sf showrunners

·       Female scriptwriters in sf

·       Gender and Mary Shelley’s
legacy in sf’s imagination of created beings

·       Frankenstein remakes,
adaptations, reboots and reinventions

·       Gender and casting, and character
arc in media sf 

·       Gender in sf fandom and criticism

Articles should be 7000 to 9000 words in length, including footnotes and bibliography. Submissions (in word or rtf, following MLA style) should be
made via our website at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/lup-sfftv 

Any queries should be directed to the editors, Mark Bould (mark.bould@gmail.com), 
Gerry Canavan (gerrycanavan@gmail.com) and Sherryl Vint  (sherryl.vint@gmail.com).

The deadline for submissions for this special issue is March 15, 2017.