Call for Participation: Undergraduate Showcase

Fan Studies Network North America Conference 2025 (virtual)

October 26, 2025

Fandom REPUTATION: Influence, Power, and Capital

For the first time in FSNNA conference history, we are offering an Undergraduate Showcase, highlighting the efforts of undergraduate students across disciplines who have undertaken fan studies work both in and out of the classroom.

Fandom, the community or individual practice of being a fan, is something many of us participate in every day–from our fervent support of a sports team (and hatred of its rivals) to our speculation with friends of what will happen next in our favorite show, to the video game soundtracks we listen to in our rooms. 

When fan studies kicked off, fandom was a more niche activity whose practices – and even existence – still had to be explained to general readership. But today, fandom is a widely recognized phenomenon across popular culture and scholarship.

As our virtual conference enters its seventh year, FSNNA invites undergraduates to submit proposals about the research they’ve done in fan studies.

Some potential topics we hope to see submissions about include (but are not limited to!):

• What is fandom to you? Is it in the ways you participate, the people you engage with, the representation you seek? Is it fun? Is it stressful? 
• What reputations do fandoms hold? Has there ever been a community you know not to engage with because of their reputation? What about communities you found welcoming to both new and old fans?
• What impact does representation have in fandom?
• How has fandom changed during/since COVID lockdowns?
• Where do you find fandom?
• What power/influence does fandom have?

How you approach and seek to respond to these questions can take many shapes. Your project might be more theoretical and broadly applicable to fandom as a phenomenon, or it might take up case studies of specific fandoms to explore in greater detail. 

[NOTE: While we hope undergrads can use their experiences to shape their projects, these must be primarily research/argument based projects and not solely personal reflections.]

 Format of the 2025 Conference

FSNNA allows undergraduate researchers to submit under two potential options:

• Participants will be grouped into roundtables for a live conversation based on overlapping fandoms, research methods, or issues. Each roundtable participant will have an opportunity to introduce themselves and their work for 5–7 minutes, followed by some moderated discussion and Q&A with the audience.
• Participants will also prepare a digital poster summarizing their research contribution. More specific guidelines about poster formats will be available soon! Posters will be available asynchronously throughout the conference in our Discord server, where attendees can ask questions and share feedback.

Further, we are committed to mentoring and fostering research with undergraduate participants and will host optional workshops closer to the date to offer feedback, support, and structure. 

Submissions for the Undergraduate Showcase are due by Friday, May 16. SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MONDAY, MAY 19.

Submission Details

Ready to submit your work for FSNNA 2025? Here’s what the application form will ask for: 

• An abstract of ~200 words (include a clear explanation of your research project)
• A bibliography of 1-2 references
• A bio of yourself (~50 words)

We’ve also prepared a document about writing an abstract: check it out HERE

Get Ready for the 2025 Conference! 

Thank you for reading this call for papers. We’re excited to consider your work for the 2025 FSNNA conference!

Still have a question? Please feel free to contact us at fsnna.conference@gmail.com.

Ready to submit your work? Visit our submission form HERE

(Or if the link above doesn’t work, copy and paste this into your browser: https://forms.gle/jsf5ySX1ncHKnZq46)

The post NEW – Undergraduate CFP for FSNNA 2025! appeared first on Fan Studies Network North America.

What is an abstract? What should go into it?

In academic terms, an abstract is a short overview/blurb which tells the reader what to expect from your work. When applying to conferences, an abstract should provide a broad overview of the specific project you hope to present, including: 

1. the main question or point of curiosity driving your research;
2.  the primary source(s) you have used/anticipate using, whether as case studies or as the primary focus of your paper; 
3. the theoretical frameworks and methodologies you use to answer it;
4. a preview of the arguments you make or anticipate making, including your sense of the significance of those claims; and 
5. a gesture toward the larger scholarly dialogue in which you’re intervening. (For FSNNA, we ask for a short bibliography/reference list that will help a lot with this step!)

For a conference with a theme like FSNNA, it can be helpful to think about linking your work clearly and explicitly to some aspect of the theme. Sometimes the connection may seem obvious, but at other times, thinking about the keywords and questions from the original call for papers (CFP) can help you to more clearly identify how your paper resonates with our theme.

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Q: Where will my abstract go post-submission? Who reads it, and how will it be assessed?

A: To understand the purpose of an abstract, it will be helpful to first explain our process. 

When you submit your application to FSNNA, the materials will all go to the Organizing Committee, a group of fan studies scholars whose interests and areas of expertise span a wide variety of home disciplines, methods, and areas of study. We read through all of the abstracts and look for promising work that seems to fit in well with the year’s conference theme. 

A good abstract will make clear not only the suitability of your work for this conference, but also the level of thought and care that has gone into your work. It’s important to address both fit and intellectual promise. A really smart, interesting project is great, but we need to understand why FSNNA is the right home for that work! At other times, it’s clear that someone is very interested in FSNNA, but the project is in such an early stage of development that it isn’t clear to us what kinds of arguments or scholarly interventions it will make. A successful abstract does both!

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Q: What kinds of things, if any, should I avoid in an abstract?

A: There aren’t necessarily hard and fast rules, but in general, it’s helpful to think about the abstract as a meta-level summary of your project. While certain kinds of details are helpful to provide to clarify the scope of your arguments (e.g., are you looking at one specific fandom or a particular element of a fandom to make an argument about that fandom, or are you putting forward case studies that you consider representative of some larger phenomenon to make a more generalizable argument, flagging its potential limitations?), you don’t need to walk us through the minutiae of your arguments.

Similarly, you’ll want to make sure your own voice and argument come through in your abstract, rather than having it read like a literature review of existing scholarship. The bibliography will give you a chance to name your scholarly interlocutors, so we’ll be able to see and intuit how your project connects to the larger field. What’s brand new to us is your work, so tell us all about it!

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Q: Are there limits on the kinds of projects we can do?

A: For the purposes of FSNNA, we’re looking for research-based work. As we note on the CFP, personal experiences can often be a great starting point, and it may well be that your own observations are what lead to that initial research question, but the project needs to expand beyond the personal to the scholarly for the conference. This requirement helps to create a basis for community dialogue among participants and attendees. Here, scholarship from the field of fan studies forms a kind of shared language that helps work about a wide array of sometimes unfamiliar fandoms, fan spaces, and fan practices to become accessible to a variety of audiences.

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Thanks for reading! Below are some sample abstracts to show what we mean by all this.

Sample Abstracts

Quarantine Fic and Ambivalent Intimacies

As countries across the world entered lockdown in 2020 in the face of a global pandemic, more and more people moved online as a balm for the sense of isolation, anxiety, and fear they were feeling. Fandoms, already deeply embedded in online spaces, offered not only an escape into fictional worlds, but also a model for forms of community and intimacy that were not reliant upon in-person networks. This paper considers those fic writers who brought their experiences of digitally mediated intimacy into their fan works. Specifically, I turn to a selection of fanfiction written, posted, and set during the pandemic to consider how authors used their favorite characters and ships to imagine new forms of intimate and erotic sociality under pandemic conditions. Even though these works frequently culminate in in-person meetings, the typical romance arc is disrupted under the “new normal” of the pandemic, shifting the temporal ordering of the usual story beats and forcing eroticism into new and unexpected places. Yet these fan works are also deeply ambivalent; despite being suffused with all the anxiety and existential dread that Covid-19 brought with it, they offer tendrils of hope to their characters and readers alike. In fics, Zoom remains clunky and awkward, but it’s also a platform for flirting and dates. Six feet becomes a border line to flirt with and possibly transgress. The removal of masks is a risk and a revelation in one. Two weeks of strict quarantine carries both fear and hope—a kind of protracted foreplay under conditions of exposure. Again and again, characters find ways to derive pleasure and satisfaction from their interactions, and readers, in turn, find solace (as well as pleasure and satisfaction) in witnessing it individually and as a readerly community.

[From Emily Coccia, FSNNA 2022: Inside Voices]

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Nice For What? A Critical Analysis of Drake, Millennial Feminism and the Negotiation of ‘Wokeness’ in Female Hip-Hop Fandom

As fourth-wave feminism proliferates, audiences are negotiating and performing their socio-political identities, beliefs and personas in an online realm. For those who identify both as feminists and hip-hop fans — a genre rapidly becoming the world’s most popular style of music — these chosen identities hold the potential for internal conflict. Often, such fans develop a type of ‘moral dissonance’, ‘poaching’ the elements of hip-hop fandom that most appeal while disregarding more disturbing elements. By examining the work and public presentation of problematic rapper Drake, this case-study research paper reflects upon in-depth interview data to explore how millennial female hip-hop audiences adopt varying forms of moral dissonance when consuming contemporary hip-hop. In exploring Drake’s representations of ‘emotional’ masculinity and romantic vulnerability, I consider the way that fans perceive an artist who both challenges and upholds forms of normative gender politics, picking and choosing his modes of allyship. As such, this paper explores the concept of performative feminism and supposed ‘wokeness’ as both an artist marketing tool and a fan coping mechanism, questioning the extent to which fans can reconcile their socio-political beliefs with their listening habits in a cancel culture context. 

[From Jenessa Williams, FSNNA 2020]

The post Guidelines & FAQ for FSNNA Abstracts appeared first on Fan Studies Network North America.

Call for Participation

Fan Studies Network North America Conference 2025 (virtual)

October 23-26, 2025

REPUTATION: Influence, Power, and Capital

FSNNA Annual Conference 2025

When fan studies first emerged as an undisciplined discipline, fandom was more of a niche activity whose practices (and even existence) still had to be explained to a general readership. Today though, fandom is a widely recognized phenomenon, a frame of reference for popular culture, and a desirable market demographic for new cultural products like music, films, and games. These broader cultural shifts are often mirrored within fandom itself: experienced fans observe that multifandom peers move from interest to interest faster, while new fans might enter fandom(s) without any knowledge of community norms. 

As participation in fandom has broadened, changing fan experiences and fan cultures, many reckon with questions about what it means to be in fandom and to be a fan today. While most seem to embrace and accept the idea that fandom can be fun, there’s a shared sense that it is also so much more. But what does that entail? Is fandom a form of activism? Slacktivism? Representation? Social justice work? Moral stance? Popularity contest? Some combination thereof?

As we consider the shifting understandings and reputations of fandom(s), fan studies has much to offer. Who holds the most influence? Who wields what kinds of power? How do social, subcultural, and financial capital intersect with grassroots activity and forms of production? And how does all of this change fandom in turn? 

As this conference enters its eighth year, FSNNA invites proposals exploring these avenues into fandom and fan studies. We are especially interested in work that considers how fan communities, activities, and works interact or engage with the reputation of fandom itself – for better, for worse, or for both. 

Submissions for the 2025 FSNNA Conference

Fan Studies Network North America (FSNNA) warmly welcomes submissions from early career researchers, graduate students, and independent scholars, as well as established scholars. (This year, we’re also offering a track specifically for undergraduate students: check out the parallel cfp HERE!) Contributions are welcomed from across disciplines, not just fan studies: we are interested in work from media studies, the humanities, the social sciences, library science, and more.

Some topics that we hope to see submissions for include (but are not limited to!):

• Capital and fandom participation: financial/economic capital, social capital, cultural capital, etc. 
• Influence in fandom: parasocial relationships, BNFs, microcelebrities, 
• Power in fandom: politics, policing, gatekeeping; who speaks, creates, listens, learns  
• Having a platform: platform migration, features, community roles, moderation
• Intersectional identities: fans, fan-creators, performers, authors, actors
• Antagonisms and Fandom: the changing language and nature of “anti-fandom” 
• Fandom during crisis: in continuing “post-Covid” era, during rise of global fascism, during online platform precarity
• Internal and external perceptions of fandom: media representations, stigmatization, celebration, misinformation
  
  

This work may focus on specific media texts (e.g., film, television, print texts/series, games, video streaming, etc.) or other fan-objects (e.g., sports, music, celebrity culture, etc.). Alternatively, it may consider specific national or regional contexts, theoretical approaches to studying fandom, investigations of fanwork genres or fan practices, and more.

Format of the 2025 Conference

FSNNA 2025 is once again a discussion-focused online conference with accessibility, interdisciplinarity, and global participation at its heart. However, based on participant feedback from previous years, we are moving towards a format that allows for longer conference presentations of roughly 10-15 minutes apiece. Essentially, you can choose one of two options. 

1. Presentation Track (Roundtable Talk + Poster)

Participants on the presentation track will be grouped into roundtables based on overlapping objects, approaches, methods, or themes. Each presenter will have an opportunity to introduce themselves and explore their work for 10-15 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A with the audience.

Participants will also prepare a digital poster summarizing their research contribution. (More specific guidelines about poster formats will be available after submissions are evaluated.)

2. Poster Track (Poster ONLY) 

Participants on the poster track will prepare a digital poster summarizing their research contribution. They will not be assigned to a roundtable or introduce their work during a talk. 

All posters from both tracks will be available asynchronously throughout the conference in our Discord server, where attendees can post questions and share feedback.

PLEASE NOTE: As part of your application, you will be asked to stipulate which track you are applying for – presentations or poster only. Likewise, once a submission is accepted, the participation format cannot be changed (i.e., you cannot move from poster only to presentation, or vice versa).  

As in past years, we also welcome the submission of pre-constituted roundtables, which are a group of 3-5 talks that are already organized around a shared topic, text, and/or method. Please note, however, that participants in a pre-constituted roundtable must still contribute posters.

Submissions are due by Friday, May 16.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MONDAY, MAY 19.

Submission Details

Ready to submit your work for FSNNA 2025? Here’s what the application form will ask for: 

• An abstract of ~300 words (include a clear explanation of your research, methods, and the project’s relevance to fan studies and fan studies scholars)
• 3-5 keywords about your poster (may include topics, texts, theories, methods, etc.)
• A bibliography of 3–5 references
• A biographical statement (~50 words)

Get Ready for the 2025 Conference!

We’re excited to consider your work for the 2025 FSNNA conference! We also encourage you to check out a new offering this year: a parallel cfp for undergraduates interested in presenting their fan studies work at FSNNA.

Still have a question? Please feel free to contact us at fsnna.conference@gmail.com.

Ready to submit your work? Visit our submission form HERE

(Or if the link above doesn’t work, copy and paste this into your browser: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdtiTvsJS6_dIOdAGyfjeVM-_i7QGwOhi3ICmLHfWfRYRrlGA/viewform?usp=sharing)

The post Get Ready – CFP for FSNNA 2025! appeared first on Fan Studies Network North America.

Fan Studies Network North America (FSNNA) is excited to announce that we are seeking new members of our organizing committee!

FSNNA held its first conference in October 2018 to gather fan studies scholars in one place to meet, share new research, and promote the study of fanworks and fan cultures. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we ran successful online conferences with a focus on accessibility and community. Since then, we have continued implementing new online conference formats that allow us to bring together fan studies scholars from North America and around the world every year. 

Continuing a process of organizational renewal, we are actively recruiting volunteers willing to work on a North American timezone who will bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the organization, expand the interdisciplinary breadth of our team, and make a commitment to its continued success. 

Experience and knowledge in one or more of the following areas is a plus: 

• Accessibility (especially in online settings)
• Graphic design
• Finance (especially in connection with not-for-profit status)
• Vidding, vid shows
• Newer social media platforms, creating newsletters and/or similar outreach communication 

We welcome and encourage students, independent scholars, and members of underrepresented communities to apply. 

Terms begin in February 2025.

FSNNA Conference Committee Responsibilities and Expectations

1. Commitment to Mission – serve to promote the development and maintenance of FSNNA as a community by organizing and publicizing its events, hosting conferences or other special events, generating new initiatives, and/or serving as a mentor for its community members
2. Conference Participation – commit to attending FSNNA’s annual conference during your term 
3. Virtual Meeting Participation – commit to participating in monthly virtual meetings 
4. Communication and Online Participation – communicate professionally with other committee members and the FSNNA community; keep in contact with the committee asynchronously via email and/or Discord to coordinate tasks in between meetings; help organize, promote, and/or attend virtual events hosted by FSNNA
5. Decision-making – collaboratively shape the annual conference and the future of FSNNA as an organization
6. Peer Review – read and evaluate proposals for FSNNA conferences in a timely fashion
7. Length of Service – commit to serving a 2-year term, with the possibility of renewal

Application Process

Please answer the following questions in writing (answers can be up to 150 words each) 

1. How does fan studies, as a discipline, inform your professional life? (For example, do you teach, write, research, create, and/or do service in the field?)
2. What has been your experience thus far with FSNNA, either as a conference attendee, a participant in a virtual event, or in some other form?
3. What skills, ideas, and aptitudes would you bring to the board? What aspects of the conference are you most interested in helping with?

Please also attach a 100-word bio.

Submit applications by January 31, 2025 to: <fsnna.conference@gmail.com>. Please put “Committee Application” in the subject line.

Anyone wishing to ask questions or discuss the responsibilities of serving on the board is welcome to contact: fsnna.conference@gmail.com 

New committee members will be announced by mid February. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

These policies and guidelines were inspired by and adapted from various sources, including Console-ing Passions.

The post Call for FSNNA Committee Members! appeared first on Fan Studies Network North America.

2024/10/15: The conference program has been updated!

This year’s conference program is now available for download! Check out the full schedule, including plenary sessions, roundtables, and social events, as well as important information on our conference policies.

For ease of reading, there are two versions available:

The post FSNNA24 Program Now Available! appeared first on Fan Studies Network North America.

As we gear up for the FSNNA 2024 Conference, we’re excited to recognize the generous support of our sponsors. LSU Press, Intellect, and the University of Iowa Press are at the forefront of publishing scholarship in fan studies, providing invaluable resources for researchers, educators, and fans alike, and will be at the conference to present their work and to answer any questions you might have.

Here’s what they have to say:

LSU Press acquires fan studies titles that expand the boundaries of the discipline and engage deeply with related fields like sports, music, literature, media studies, and more. Like all of our books, our fan studies list undergoes a rigorous peer review process to ensure scholarly excellence. Acquisitions editor Jenny Keegan is always eager to connect with emerging scholars to share information about the scholarly publication process and encourages junior and established scholars to reach out any time for advice and support in navigating the publication process.

Intellect is an independent academic publisher for scholars and practitioners teaching and researching in the arts, media and creative industries. Best known for our work in popular culture and media studies, we provide publishing services in many subject areas, backed by over 40 years of steady growth and a reputation for excellence in design and production.

Established in 1969, the University of Iowa Press is a well-regarded academic publisher serving scholars, students, and readers throughout the world with works of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and humanities scholarship. Our Fandom & Culture series seeks dynamic books that challenge readers to reexamine preconceived notions of fandom, fan communities, and fan works. The series aims to speak to scholars, fans, and general audiences on a number of social and cultural issues related to fandom, including (but not limited to) gender, sexuality, race, class, technology, pedagogy, cultural studies, and other traditionally overlooked topics in the field.

We’re grateful for their continued support of our conference and the fan studies community!

The post Give It Up for Our 2024 Sponsors appeared first on Fan Studies Network North America.

All month we’ve been unveiling the special, plenary roundtables for our 2024 conference. Our fourth and final plenary session will be True Crime and Fan Studies, featuring Bethan Jones, Megan Hoffman, and Naomi Barnes and curated by none other than Monster of Fan Studies Judith Fathallah!

Fandom and fannish engagement around true crime media is currently understudied. Part of this neglect may stem from discomfort with the topic and attempts to avoid the stigma associated with the pathologized fandom of criminals, notably serial killers, into which this engagement can shade. But fan studies as a field should not overlook forms of fandom that discomfort and challenge us as researchers and as consumers of popular media. The current resurgence of the true crime in forms spanning amateur podcasts to high-budget Netflix specials indicates that the time is right for us to consider such questions as:

• What forms of fannish engagement are taking place around true crime?
•  What makes this engagement fannish?
• What are the implications of such phenomena for fan studies?
• What are the implications for media industries?

The panel is convened by Dr. Judith Fathallah, author of Killer Fandom: Fan Studies and the Celebrity Serial Killer (mediastudies.press 2023). Judith has also published on serial killer fanfiction, gatekeeping in true crime communities, and the curation/collection of artefacts associated with true crime, known as murderabilia. The panel features Dr. Bethan Jones, co-editor of Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict and Complicity in Fandom (University of Iowa Press, 2025) and author of work on true crime, forensic fandom and “dark” fandom; Dr. Megan Hoffman, co-editor of the forthcoming collection #TrueCrime: Digital Culture, Ethics and True Crime Audiences and author of Gender and Representation in British “Golden Age” Crime Fiction (Palgrave, 2016), among other work on post-#MeToo true crime, true crime hybrid YouTube videos and true crime activism on TikTok; and Naomie Barnes, whose work has explored the tensions involved in identifying as a “fan” of true crime content, such as in “Killer Folklore: Identity Issues in the True Crime Community” (Ethnologies 41, no 1: 153–72).

Dr. Fathallah’s true crime roundtable will be held on Sunday, Oct. 20.

We’ll be releasing the full conference program soon!

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We’ve been unveiling our special plenary roundtables for the 2024 conference all August. This week, we’re pleased to announce we will be joined by one of the OG Monsters of Fan Studies: Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, Education, and East Asian Language and Cultures at the University of Southern California and author of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (among many, many contributions to fan studies, cultural studies, and new media studies). Henry will be in conversation with his USC colleague Robert V. Kozinets, Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair of Strategic PR and Business Communication. Their roundtable – Where Cultural Studies Meets Consumer Culture Research – will draw on themes emerging in their forthcoming series of co-authored books, Frames of Fandom.

Fandom Studies has its roots in cultural studies, tends to keep anyone in the business school at arm’s length, and wants to separate fans from consumers at all costs. Yet consumer culture research represents an alternative research tradition, started at more or less the same time, deploying some of the same foundational texts and methods, asking some of the same questions, but representing an alternative body of literature on fandom and participatory culture. In this public conversation, we will consider the potential and consequences of breaking down the walls by focusing on some core questions such as:

• Do we have a shared understanding of what a fan is and how we might define the term?
• Should we study fans as individuals or collectives?
• Do the distinctions between fan and consumer, fandom and fanship really work for the majority of cases?
• What models of consumer and consumption might productively guide our work?
• What might be the relationship between theoretical work in the academy and applied work beyond, including consulting with industry?
• Which scholars in each tradition lay the foundations for the work we do now?

Fandom scholars Henry Jenkins (Fandom Studies) and Robert Kozinets (Consumer Culture Research) delve into these and many other questions in their new book series, Frames of Fandom. This 14 book series represents a comprehensive exploration of fandom, seeking to unpack the multifaceted reasons why fandom matters in contemporary culture. Through their collaboration, Jenkins and Kozinets aim to advance fan theory by merging insights from cultural studies and consumer culture research, bringing together decades of insights and observations. The books both look backwards to sum up our trajectories as fields and looks forward to new directions for research and scholarship. By the time this conference happens, we anticipate some of the first books will already be available online and so we hope to use this time to join a conversation already in process.

Come back next week for the fourth and final plenary roundtable!

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All month long, we’re unveiling the FSNNA24 headliners and the special plenary roundtables they’ve curated. On Friday, Oct. 18, we are pleased to welcome the voices behind the Fansplaining podcast, Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel, for a discussion on Studying Fans Outside the Academy.

Fansplaining—the podcast by, for, and about fandom—put out biweekly episodes from 2015 to this past spring (currently on hiatus!). Co-hosts Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel met on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2015; Klink was working in Hollywood, explaining fans to networks and studios, while Elizabeth was covering fan culture as a journalist at a moment when fans had been thrust into a mainstream spotlight. The podcast was meant to talk across these intersections: to industry-side professionals, to members of the media, and from within and about fandom. It also was meant to talk between fan studies practitioners and fans: while both Klink and Minkel had studied fandom at the graduate level, neither were pursuing an academic career, and the podcast was an opportunity to follow the continuing trends of fan studies, and highlight emerging voices in the field. 

Over the course of the podcast’s near-decade-long run, Fansplaining hosted dozens of academic guests from fan studies and beyond—but also welcomed a large range of guests who study fandom outside the academy. These conversations revealed different framings and definitions of fans and fan behaviors, and different goals and outcomes for analyzing fandom. From Hollywood, those perspectives came from people like Everybody At Once’s Kenyatta Cheese or screenwriter Javier Grillo-Marxuach; from the media, journalists like Aja Romano, Keidra Chaney, Stitch, or Gavia Baker-Whitelaw; and from fandom itself, the stats work of DestinationToast, or Tiffo from the Renegade fanbinding collective, or the hundreds of listeners of different ages, backgrounds, and corners of fandom who wrote in with smart, nuanced perspectives on the ever-shifting dynamics of fan culture.

This panel will draw on the contributions of Fansplaining’s many guests to look at those different framings. What are the metrics and ethical boundaries for fandom analysis in the entertainment industry? How do fan-journalists balance fandom and non-fandom audiences? When fans turn inward, what questions are they asking about fannishness—and how are their studies of fandom inherently fanworks themselves? And how can people who study fandom outside the academy work better with those who study fandom within it? 

Check back next Thursday, Aug. 22 for our next MONSTER OF FANDOM!

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FSNNA24 will feature four plenary roundtable sessions, each curated by a specially invited conference “headliner.” The first MONSTER OF FAN STUDIES is Rukmini Pande, Associate Professor of Literary Studies and Writing at O.P. Jindal Global University. She is the author of Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race and the editor of Fandom, Now in Color: A Collection of Voices. Also featuring Poe Johnson, Stitchmediamix, Yvonne Gonzales and CedarBough Saeji, Dr. Pande’s Thursday roundtable session is entitled, Is a Critical Fan Studies Possible?

Fan studies as a discipline has gone through a significant amount of soul searching in the last five years, spurred by various events both within and outside the discipline as well as fandoms. Most notably, there has been a strong call to reckon with the field’s institutional whiteness, as well as its historical focus on the Global North. As a result, there have been many exhortations for scholars to rethink their methods, theoretical frameworks, and baseline assumptions about fandom spaces. Following in the tradition of the “critical turn” of many scholarly disciplines this panel asks, is a Critical Fan Studies possible?

Some questions that the panellists will consider are: What are the continuing challenges involved in producing scholarship that pushes against the established focus of the field with regard to language, location, participant identity, etc? Are there specific difficulties faced by scholars who engage with fandom in critical ways in increasingly polarised times? Even as fandoms themselves move ever more fluidly across geo-political borders, are fandom scholars adequately equipped to understand issues of intercultural/intracultural complexity, without falling back into relativism? Further, what institutional difficulties are faced by scholars in marginal positions in academia, be it as independent scholars, graduate students, early career researchers, those located outside the Global North, or indeed those that fall into multiple categories at once? How is the discipline of fan studies interfacing with the increasingly precarious position of many of its scholars within and outside academic institutions? These are, of course, starting points and the discussants will bring their own ideas to nuance them further.

Check back next Thursday for the next roundtable reveal!

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