The first edition of a seminal work on fans and communities
We are all fans. Whether we log on to Web sites to scrutinize the latest plot turns in Lost, "stalk" our favorite celebrities on Gawker, attend gaming conventions, or simply wait with bated breath for the newest Harry Potter novel—each of us is a fan. Fandom extends beyond television and film to literature, opera, sports, and pop music, and encompasses both high and low culture.
Fandom brings together leading scholars to examine fans, their practices, and their favorite texts. This unparalleled selection of original essays examines instances across the spectrum of modern cultural consumption from Karl Marx to Paris Hilton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer to backyard wrestling, Bach fugues to Bollywood cinema¸ and nineteenth-century concert halls to computer gaming. Contributors examine fans of high cultural texts and genres, the spaces of fandom, fandom around the globe, the impact of new technologies on fandom, and the legal and historical contexts of fan activity. Fandom is key to understanding modern life in our increasingly mediated and globalized world.
Table of Contents:
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Why Study Fans? Part I: Fan Texts: From Aesthetic to Legal JudgmentsPart II: Beyond Pop Culture from News to High Culture Part III: Spaces of Fandom: From Place to Performance Part IV: Fan Audiences Worldwide: From the Global to the Local Part V: Shifting Contexts, Changing Fan Cultures: From Concert Halls to Console Games Part VI: Fans and Anti-Fans: From Love to HateBibliographyAbout the ContributorsIndex
About the Author :
Jonathan Gray is Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and author and editor of numerous books, including Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (2010), Fandom, Second Edition (2017), Keywords for Media Studies (2017), and Satire TV (2009), as well as Television Studies (with Amanda D. Lotz), and A Companion to Media Authorship (with Derek Johnson).
C. Lee Harrington is Professor of Sociology at Miami University. She is the author (with Denise D. Bielby) of Soap Fans (1995) and Global TV (2008).
Cornel Sandvoss is Professor of Media and Journalism and co-founding Director of Centre of Participatory Culture at the University of Huddersfield.
Review :
"A rich compendium of theory, argument, and observation of a wide variety of types of fandom - from fans of cultural theory to fans of the Sopranos and of Chekhov, from presidents who are fans of country music to fans of the news. As the active - prosumers- of the digital media's niche markets come to be increasingly central to their operation, fan studies shows us the emerging dynamics of how the cultural industries are going to work in the future." David Morley, Goldsmiths College, University of London "Highly recommended." Choice "One of the best aspects of the text is the way that the contributors do not merely typecast fans as those interested in modern and popular culture, but also examine fans of mediums typically considered 'high culture.' This makes the book much friendlier to pop-culture fans, whose practices are typically considered lowbrow and fanatical when compared to someone who holds season tickets to the opera or visits an art gallery every weekend. As a fan, it's nice to see that the behavior is not reduced to unnecessary fanaticism and is examined on a more subjective level." M/C Reviews "Fandom pushes the boundaries of fan studies in bold directions, incorporating high culture fandoms, global fan cultures, fan technologies, and antagonistic anti-fandom, while rethinking the core tenets of fan studies concerning aesthetics, place, intellectual property, and interpretive communities - all presented with a lively, accessible, and engaging writing style." Jason Mittell, Middlebury College "If you're an avid news reader, a holder of season's tickets to the symphony, a frequenter of used bookstores, or even if you've been known to scream at referees during televised games, you're a fan. In this exciting collection, we learn about why it is that certain media narratives, images, sounds, and events engage us emotionally, and what that engagement means for us personally and in our relationships with others in the increasingly global marketplace in which we live." Lynn Schofield Clark, author of From Angels to Aliens
