media fandom

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

On Female Fandom & Gift Culture…

In female fandom’s gift culture, gifts correlate to aspects of the self, such as time or talent. This sort of exchange turns one role of woman and gift on its head: the woman is still the gift, but now she

Transformative fandom and media fandom

I am rereading Henry Jenkin’s Textual Poacher (after all, going back to one’s roots is not an unusual habit around this time of the year) and I stumbled upon this statement: There are, of course, many different type of fans

On women’s voices in Jewish textual tradition and fanworks

Those of us who came of age fannishly in late twentieth-century Western media fandom grew up fannishly in a paradigm wherein fandom as practiced by boys and men tends to mean consuming, collecting, and indexing, whereas fandom as practiced by

Queerbaiting: Context, Context, Context!

“Queerbaiting is a historical situated term, assuming that we live in a time and place where queer representation is possible yet constantly denied. The same people that accuse producers of TV shows from the 21st century of queerbaiting, defend TV

“Dysfandom”: Fandom as Resistance

“I refer to this concept of a fandom who is said to be behaving badly, that is, excessively, as dysfandom, attaching an inseparable Greek prefix to a Latinate word, one which, per Liddell and Scott, is capable of ‘destroying the good

Tumblrpocalypse Special, Part 9

Today’s scholarly reaction to the Tumblrpocalypse comes from Katherine E. Morrissey, who is an Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University. It’s from a Twitter thread, reposted with permission. “Some fans are using Tumblr’s new content restrictions as a call