Conference Policies

Conference Policies

The Fan Studies Network North America (FSNNA) is committed to creating a safe, accessible, and inclusive space for all participants. The following policies outline what you can expect from us and provide some guidelines for all attendees and presenters. By registering for the conference, you agree to abide by these policies, so please review them carefully.

Statement on Systemic Racism

FSNNA reaffirms our dedication to advancing and promoting conversations about race and fandom within the field of fan studies. We recommit to uplifting marginalized voices and continuing to decenter the ongoing whiteness of fan studies, at both at our annual conference and through our online presence. We pledge to help make fan studies a welcoming and progressive space for all, and that includes a consistent effort to address critiques and make changes where necessary.

Statement on Academic Freedom

As an organization, we affirm our commitment to the foundational principle of academic freedom and to a vision of the university as a space for rigorous intellectual debate and speech that is both free and respectful.

Recent years have seen a dramatic escalation of punitive and at times violent academic censorship—from legislation aimed at limiting what books, topics, and authors may be taught in the classroom, to administrative and police crackdowns on expressions of political dissent on college campuses. The past year in particular has witnessed an incursion of militarized police forces on campuses, the doxing of student activists, and the suppression of faculty and staff voices advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza. These tactics disproportionately harm and endanger students, staff, faculty, and community members of color; they run counter to our commitment as educators to free and open inquiry; and they undermine our pedagogical mission to help students become more thoughtfully engaged global citizens attuned to questions of power, privilege, and oppression.

As an international body of scholars who work on issues of race, gender, sexuality, and more, FSNNA aims to make clear its commitment to the value of critical discourse, free speech, and academic freedom at a moment when they have been thrown into crisis. With this in mind, we ask all participants to familiarize themselves with our conference policies and to be mindful of how they interact with one another, particularly when discussing topics that people may find sensitive.

Inclusivity Guidelines

We all have our part to play in ensuring that FSNNA is a conference where everyone can participate. Please keep the following guidelines in mind as you prepare your poster or talk and also when interacting with other attendees:

  • Be careful about how you use potentially upsetting material, including but not limited to hate speech, hate symbols, and depictions of extreme or sexualized violence. Although we recognize there are legitimate academic contexts where addressing this material may be unavoidable in order to make a demonstrable point of analysis, participants have a responsibility to treat it with gravity and sensitivity for others. Please seriously consider whether showing examples is necessary to your presentation, ensure that you provide adequate context for these examples when included, and include content warnings in advance (for posters) and notify your session’s moderator so they can do so (for roundtables).
  • Avoid discriminatory or biased language that, though potentially common in everyday life, will not be welcome during discussions and conversation. This includes language that is ableist, sexist, transmisogynist or transphobic, classist, or racist (if you are unfamiliar with these words and someone brings them up to you, respectfully ask them or a conference organizer for help).
  • Let everyone speak. Be mindful of whether you are dominating a conversation and not leaving room for others to speak, particularly if you are a person who is used to holding privilege due to your race, gender, professional rank, institutional affiliation, etc. Leave room for others to add their thoughts if a discussion seems one-sided. Listen to others if they say you are making them uncomfortable. If someone needs to be left alone, respect their wishes and allow them to re-engage or not on their own terms.
  • Avoid making assumptions about other people’s identity and experiences, including, but not limited to, their race, sex, sexuality, and gender. People may disclose this information if and when they choose to. If you must ask about something (like gendered pronouns), avoid situations where a person may feel singled out, such as asking one person for pronouns in front of a large group of people.
  • Avoid gatekeeping. Conference participants come from all over the world, are at different stages in their research careers, and have different experiences in fandom or with fan studies. Explain specialized terminology, both academic and fannish, and provide context so people can follow along.
  • Avoid public shaming in event spaces or on social media. Instead, please report your concerns to a conference organizer, who will document the issue and help us respond in line with our Anti-Harassment Policy.
  • Accessibility is crucial. We encourage attendees to give feedback about what they need to make FSNNA spaces – both this conference and online – welcoming and accessible. If you need specific accommodations in order to participate in the conference or have particular concerns, please outline them when you register or contact the organizers directly at fsnna.conference@gmail.com.

Anti-Harassment Policy

FSNNA is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, gender, gender identity and expression, language, physical appearance, race, religion, or sexual orientation. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form.

What is harassment?

Harassment is any action or pattern of actions that makes people feel unsafe or unwelcome. It is often, though not always, targeted toward people on the basis of their identity, including age, body size, disability, gender, gender identity and expression, language, physical appearance, race, religion, and/or sexual orientation. It includes, but is not limited to:

  • Derogatory comments or comments that target people based on any aspect of their identity
  • Misgendering participants who have communicated their pronouns
  • Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or unwanted following 
  • Unwanted or unwarned photography or recording, including screencaptures
  • Sustained disruption of talks or other events
  • Unwelcome sexual attention
  • Advocating for or encouraging any of the above behaviour

What this police means

This policy means that everyone involved with FSNNA, from organizers to participants and attendees, is expected not to participate in, support, or condone harassment. This policy applies to interactions between any conference participants for the duration of the conference, regardless of platform (i.e., Zoom, Discord, Twitter, and Bluesky).

What happens if I experience or witness harassment at FSNNA?

Harassment and other violations of our code of conduct reduce the value of our event for everyone. If someone is making you or other participants feel unsafe or unwelcome, please let us know so that we can address the issue. For immediately threatening or disruptive concerns, contact the entire organizing committee by email (fsnna.conference@gmail.com), direct message our Twitter account (@FSNNorthAmerica), or tag @orgz on Discord. You can also reach individual organizers on Discord (on-call organizers will be listed in the channel).

When the organizers receive a report of behavior that may violate the anti-harassment policy, they will investigate. If the report involves an organizer, it will be handled in confidence. If a participant is found to have engaged in harassing behavior, organizers retain the right to take any actions to keep the event a welcoming environment for all participants. This may include warning the offender, expulsion from the conference with no refund, and/or banning from future FSNNA conferences.

Generative AI and Academic Integrity

Although we recognize that individual departments, organizations, and universities have assumed different stances toward the use of emergent generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, we ask that for the purposes of the FSNNA Conference, you submit and present only work that you yourself have created.

As an organization, we are dedicated to the idea of the FSNNA conference as a space for generative thinking, community building, and intellectual engagement. Beyond a foundational investment in academic integrity, we understand a commitment to presenting only original research and graphics as a way to honor the intellectual generosity of our colleagues who attend and provide feedback. Such a stance also affirms our broader commitments to fair labor practices, ecological justice, and robust research ethics. Without denying the promises and possibilities of future technologies, we recognize that current iterations of generative AI rely on underpaid and invisible labor, particularly in the global South; that they require copious resource extraction in an era of climate catastrophe; and that they profit from the uncompensated and non-consensual theft of creative work, including fan fiction and fan art.

Conference Platforms

Conference participants will have access to a number of digital spaces, such as Discord and Zoom. Participants might also share conference happenings on social media. Some guidelines for each follow.

Discord

As with past FSNNA online conferences, Discord will be our hub for asynchronous conversation, as well as the place to access archived recordings of panels and talks during the conference. If you need help with anything, it’s also the best way to get assistance from the conference organizers.

  • The contents of the server will be deleted following the conference.
  • You may not republish another person’s written comments from the conference Discord server without the writer’s express permission. You may paraphrase discussion, but connecting someone’s written or spoken comments with their name or social media handle without their express permission will be treated as a violation of this policy.

Synchronous sessions on Zoom

During live sessions, we ask that you adhere to these guidelines:

  • Keep your microphone muted when not speaking.
  • If you have a question or comment, use the chat to raise your hand and wait until you are called on to unmute.
  • In the event of high attendance at an event, moderators may ask attendees to use the chat exclusively and read selected comments aloud.
  • Closed captioning will be turned on for every panel, but may require you to click the “show captions” icon on your end of the Zoom call.

Roundtables hosted on Zoom will be recorded by our organizer team and uploaded to the conference Discord (using unlisted YouTube links) for asynchronous viewing. These recordings will be available for several weeks after the conference ends.

  • The recording or distribution of any online sessions by attendees is not permitted.
  • The copying, downloading, or distribution of recorded sessions is not permitted.
  • You may not republish another person’s written comments from the Zoom chat without the writer’s express permission. You may paraphrase discussion, but connecting someone’s written or spoken comments with their name or social media handle without their express permission will be treated as a violation of this policy.

Social media

Though the Twitter/X platform has changed significantly and new platforms have emerged, fan studies has a great tradition of discussing conference presentations in real time to expand and extend conversations. We welcome this at FSNNA, but ask that conference participants take the following guidelines into account:

  • If you are presenting and you don’t want your talk (or parts of it) to be live-tweeted, -tooted, or -skeeted, please let your moderator and the audience know!
  • If a presenter has requested that some or all of their talk not be shared, please respect their wishes.
  • Use the conference hashtag (#FSNNA24) in each post so that all posts about the conference are easy to find and follow.
  • When tweeting or reposting about panels, you can use the hashtag of that panel’s name with FSNNA at the start (#FSNNA24A1, , etc.). This way, anyone interested in following the conversations for that specific panel can easily locate the relevant posts; this also prevents unnecessary confusion with other hashtags. Please also include the presenters’ handles if they’re provided.
  • Don’t tag someone being discussed in a presentation unless the presenter expresses an interest in your doing so. For example, if someone was critiquing Jason Rothenberg’s handling of Lexa’s death in their talk, it would be ill-advised to tag Rothenberg into the conversation. “Snitch tweeting” like this can cause uninvited conflict, even when done with the best intentions.
  • If you’re presenting and you have materials you’re willing to share, it’s worthwhile to tweet or repost them too. This is especially important for anyone who cannot attend that panel or even the conference, but may still be following along online.

Acknowledgements

These policies and guidelines were inspired by and adapted from various sources, including the Queerness and Games Conference, the Geek Feminism wiki, and the Con.Txt 2020 online code of conduct. We are grateful to these predecessors for helping us make this online event welcoming and accessible!