Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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"Theme park fandom: Spatial transmedia, materiality and participatory cultures," by Rebecca Williams
No full textReview of Rebecca Williams, Theme park fandom: Spatial transmedia, materiality and participatory cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020, hardcover, €99 (260p), ISBN 9789462982574
Fan fiction and premodern literature: Methods and definitions
No full textIt is a cliché of any introduction to fan fiction to claim its precursors in canonical authors, including Virgil, Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, and Milton. But what does it mean to call the Aeneid or the Divine Comedy fan fiction? What kinds of analyses might such an approach generate? A survey of the nascent field of premodern fan fiction studies reveals three main axes of approaches to reading premodern literature through the lens of fan fiction (poaching, transformation, and affect), which are organized in turn around different definitions of fan fiction, suggesting one possible interdisciplinary theoretical model. Rather than focusing on the selection of canonical texts, this burgeoning and vibrant field of study must instead focus on developing its methodology
Censorship and Chinese slash fans
No full textAfter the Archive of Our Own (AO3), which housed many Chinese fan works, was blocked in China in February 2020, Chinese slash fans had to decide what to do. Uses and gratification theory helps explain why Chinese slashers chose quite different paths after AO3 was blocked, with three main tendencies observed: creating culture islands on foreign platforms, creating in a foreign language, and staying on domestic platforms but self-censoring to stay within the rules. Each option provides a different balance of affordances, depending on what trade-offs readers and writers are willing to make
Acafan identity, communities of practice, and vocational poaching
No full textIn a conceptualization and critique of the implications motivating a set of teaching and learning sessions designed to introduce undergraduate students to the professional role of location scouts and managers, two main interventions are offered. First, discussion of acafan identities is advanced by considering how this subject position applies to teaching and learning contexts rather than individual research dispositions, with acafans transferring competencies developed through fan practices that appropriate industry-located forms of knowledge to inform pedagogical design. Second, the concept of vocational poaching is applied as an alternative of fannish appropriation that acafans can engage in when designing teaching and learning sessions. Vocational poaching involves individual acafans performing tactical raids on industrially located forms of knowledge via fan practices such as location visiting and using these to satisfy the requirements of neoliberal teaching policies
A brief review of fan studies in Brazil
No full textAnalysis of the current state of the field of fan studies in Brazil, recognizing the importance of acknowledging social, political, economic, and historical factors when studying fandoms
Madonna and her multicultural fan community
No full textAnalysis of Madonna as the center of a community demonstrating how women can exist at the center of life in a deep community structure
The cult structure of the American anti
No full textThe online-based group known as antis, which originated around 2016 in the United States, exhibit morality-based, cult-like behavior and perpetuate hate speech and censorship in online spaces. Anti ideology has encouraged harmful, obsessive, and dangerous behaviors among its members, specifically minors and young adults. An analysis of the antifandom movement through political, sociological, and behavioral lenses reveals its damaging effects on women, people of color, minors, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community
Fan fiction comments and their relationship to classroom learning
No full textReader comments appended to online fan fiction stories provide benefits as close reading and critical analysis tools. Fan fiction provides a space where fans can develop literary analysis skills and literacy through their interactions in comments. This multimethod study combined the interview of a fan author with various digital humanities methods to closely study the value of comments. A web scraping tool was used to collect comments, and documentary, textual, and terminological analyses were performed alongside topic modeling to assess the frequency of words associated with learning. The co-occurrence of certain words was studied to understand the assessments and analyses that readers were performing in their comments. The study found that fan fiction readers apply strategies of literary analysis to their pleasure reading
Exploring film history by using fandom as a pedagogical tool
No full textAn exploration of the terrain of how to engage learners effectively and why that matters. Using fan engagement in the field of film history reveals that encouraging learners to self-identify as fans shifts the power balance, placing the learner in the position of expert, thereby increasing the chances of learner engagement and enabling learners to gain a more nuanced understanding of their field while also making for a more invested, lively, and varied learning and teaching experience. Based on firsthand experience designing and delivering a research-focused undergraduate film history module combined with a multidisciplinary pedagogical approach, this work demonstrates that treating students as fans with affective stakes in history and exploring historical moments experientially offers learners significant benefits
Evaluating fandom: Using blogging and a grade contract to promote fan labor in the classroom
No full textGrade contracts offer a way to transform the relationship between labor and assessment in classrooms. By turning attention from evaluations of quality to labor completed, grade contracts make space for students to shift from a grade-driven extrinsic motivation to an interest-driven intrinsic motivation for completing coursework. Such an assessment model is well suited for fan studies classes where instructors ask students to engage in fan behavior. I share how I built an upper-division course about anime and anime fandom centered around a student-authored, publicly viewable blog. I discuss the synergy between the blogging project and a grade contract that enhanced student learning, engagement, and enjoyment. I also share my course design philosophy, approach to blogging, and student reactions to the grade contract