”…I posit that the unexamined yet assumed whiteness of media fan spaces has allowed for successive theorizations about their workings to have now solidified into accepted histories. This positioning now forces any consideration of racial dynamics within those spaces to
How fan studies researchers center whiteness as normative
Because of their status as minorities within Western media fandoms, nonwhite fans are seen [by fan studies researchers] to interrupt normative operations of such structures only in specific contexts when they make themselves visible. What I mean by this assertion
Podcast episode: Dr. Alfred L. Martin on ballet fandom, Tyler Perry, and cultures of race in fandoms and fan studies
“It’s a Thing!” is a podcast about fan studies hosted by Dr. Lori Morimoto. In this episode, Dr. Alfred L. Martin, assistant professor at the University of Iowa, discusses ballet fandom, Tyler Perry, and cultures of race in fandoms and
On Asian Americans and video game representation
I love first-person shooters such as BioShock, Halo 3, and the Half-Life series. But shooting aliens, cyborgs, or demons is one thing. Shooting at people who look like you, and who curse at you in your mother tongue, in a game that is supposed
On Bernie Sanders RPF and how fans participate in the branding of political candidates
Political real person fiction (RPF) builds on the public identities of politicians, using their media appearances, social media activity, and campaign platforms to provide the source texts, or “canon,” of the fiction. Similarly to writers of fan fiction who depict
On fansubbing and censorship in Chinese fandom
The practice of piracy has already become an integral part of China’s grassroots popular culture; not only is it taken for granted but it is also usually appreciated. Therefore criticism toward fansubbers and scanlators in China is minimal, if it
On fans reporting other fans to censors in China
However, the worst instance of censorship [of Chinese fanworks] is that of the ongoing third wave. This censorship campaign relies on a large-scale, omnipresent reporting system. Many reports come from informants inside the community, especially antifans of a certain genre
On fans and Twitter:
[…] [T]he entire spectrum of fandom uses Twitter as an online space to bridge the problematic speciations of resistant versus complicit, as well as the increasingly inapplicable, even meaningless ‘fan/creator’ separation. Such spaces foster ample material all along that spectrum
On the strengths of AO3’s tag wrangling compared to other tagging systems
Laissez-faire and rigid tagging systems both fail because they assume too much—that users can create order from a completely open system, or that a predefined taxonomy can encompass every kind of tag a person might ever want. When these assumptions
Tagging and Disability Identity Construction through Marvel Cinematic Universe Fanfiction
The exploration of identity is a common practice in fanfiction, and scholarship has consistently investigated this fan practice. Yet, despite the presence of disability and disabled characters in fanfiction, this aspect of identity exploration is only sparsely represented in scholarship.