Fan Studies

by

Henry Jenkins

• LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2022
• LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0027

Introduction

Fan studies is a field of scholarly research focused on media fans and fan cultures. Fans might be broadly defined as individuals who maintain a passionate connection to popular media, assert their identity through their engagement with and mastery over its contents, and experience social affiliation around shared tastes and preferences. Fan cultures are the social and cultural infrastructures that support fan activities and interests. In a narrower sense, fandom sometimes refers to a shared cultural space that emerged from science fiction fandom in the early 20th century, which was reshaped by Star Trek fans in the 1960s and which has since expanded to incorporate forms of cultural production mostly by women around genre entertainment. Within fan studies, there has often been a split between those who focus on individual fans and those who study a larger community. The roots of fan studies can be traced back to early work in the Birmingham cultural studies tradition on media audiences but increasingly fan studies focuses on groups and individuals who have self-defined as fans of particular programs, performers, genres, and media as opposed to audiences that have a more casual relationship to the content of popular media. Fan studies began as the study of fan reception but has increasingly been recentered around forms of fan cultural production, especially as new forms of digital culture have rendered participatory culture practices more visible. One key dividing line in fan studies is between predigital and digital era accounts, although many argue that fans have been early adopters of communication technologies and that their social and cultural practices, forged more around affinities than geographies, prefigure more contemporary forms of virtual or online communities. Apart from a section on key works that informed the early development of fan studies, most cited works here explicitly address fan studies issues and concerns, rather than deal with closely related studies of exhibition, reception, consumption, celebrity culture, transmedia entertainment, and audiences. The focus here is on works that contribute to the larger conceptual models that have emerged in fan studies as a specific theoretical and methodological tradition. Included works focus primarily on fans of film and television rather than of popular fiction, games, sports, or music although exceptions are made where such work has been widely embraced by others working in the fan studies tradition. This bibliography starts with a consideration of how the phenomenon of fandom developed out of earlier historic practices (see Historical Perspectives), followed by an exploration of how fan studies emerged as its own, specific field out of earlier works on media audiences and subcultures (see Roots of Fan Studies and Foundational Works). Next, this bibliography focuses on how scholars have analyzed fan communities as sites of interpretation and evaluation (see Fan Taste), production (see Fan Production), and social and economic exchange (see Online Communities and the Digital Economy). Subsequent sections consider fandom’s potential contributions to education (see Learning through Fandom) and politics (see Fan Activism), both topics that have surfaced in more recent research within fan studies. Finally, this bibliography adopts a more global perspective, dealing especially with work that examines the Otaku Culture of Japan, highlighting its similarities to and differences from Western fan practices.

General Overviews

Many early works in fan studies (see Bacon-Smith 1992 and Jenkins 1992, both cited under Foundational Works) sought to describe the full scope and range of fan cultural production, but there has been an increasing focus over time on more specialized accounts of specific fan communities and practices. Booth 2010, Hills 2002, Sandvoss 2005, Staiger 2005, and Tulloch and Jenkins 1995 provide overviews of the existing body of fan theory and research while advancing and illustrating their own conceptual models. Bacon-Smith 2000 describes the history and sociology of the science fiction fan community, expanding on the author’s earlier work—which focuses on female fans—to also consider male fan interests. Jenkins 2006 uses fan reception and production as starting points for a more far-reaching account of how media gets produced and consumed in an era of participatory culture, collective intelligence, and networked communication. Core debates here center on whether the focus of fan studies should be on individuals or communities, whether the focus should be on meaning-construction or affect and pleasure, and whether fans should be seen as different from mainstream audiences by degree or by kind. Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998 develops a taxonomy for examining the different kinds of fan investments.

• Abercrombie, Nicholas, and Brian Longhurst. Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination. London: SAGE, 1998.

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  Describes fandom as an intermediate space between consumption and production; develops a continuum of possible consumer identities, distinguishing among fans, cultists, and enthusiasts.

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• Bacon-Smith, Camille. Science Fiction Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

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  Sustained consideration of the fan community around science fiction literature and its relationship to the companies that help sustain the genre. Provides insight into the ways fandom has historically functioned here as a training ground for professional authors. Key backdrop for understanding media science fiction fan cultures.

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• Booth, Paul. Digital Fandom: New Media Studies. New York: Lang, 2010.

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  Using the alternate reality game as a central metaphor, explores the “playfulness” of contemporary digital culture with a strong focus on wikis, role play, and the “digi-gratis” economy that has emerged around online fandom.

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• Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge, 2002.

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  Explores and models a range of different theoretical and methodological approaches to fan studies. Includes a critique of what Hills sees as the rationalist bias of early work in the field. Attempts to reclaim the roles of fantasy and affect in the formation of fan preferences and identities.

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• Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

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  Adopts a fan-centric approach for understanding the increasingly complex relations between producers and consumers at the intersection between old and new media.

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• Sandvoss, Cornel. Fans: The Mirror of Consumption. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2005.

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  Attempts to recenter fan studies by moving away from the study of fan communities and focusing instead on the emotional investments of individual fans, which Sandvoss understands through the lens of narcissism.

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• Staiger, Janet. “Fans and Fan Behaviors.” In Media Reception Studies. By Janet Staiger, 95–114. New York: New York University Press, 2005.

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  Traces the move from pathological to celebratory accounts of fan engagement and participation.

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• Tulloch, John, and Henry Jenkins. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek. London: Routledge, 1995.

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  Illustrates a range of different models and methods for analyzing fan responses to science fiction through case studies of audiences for the British Doctor Who and the American Star Trek. Discusses fans as a “powerless elite” that seeks to shape how popular texts are consumed and evaluated. Looks at fan culture in relation to debates about class, gender, sexuality, and technology. Also see Overviews of Specific Fandoms.

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Methodology

While research methodology for fan studies is discussed in many of the general introductions, these works are especially strong in their focus on the frameworks and practices associated with research in the field. Tulloch 2000 offers perhaps the most sustained account of such key topics as the relationship between the researchers and their subjects. Hills 2005 uses fan studies to help explain the larger project of media and cultural theory. Gray, et al. 2007 offers an overview of the evolution of fan studies as a field. Busse and Gray 2011 reassesses the relevance of fan studies for understanding 21st-century media audiences.

• Busse, Kristina, and Jonathan Gray. “Fan Cultures and Fan Communities.” In The Handbook of Media Audiences. Edited by Virginia Nightingale, 425–443. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

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  Examines where fan studies has gone since the 1990s from the perspective of two key scholars. Proposes some new questions to ask in the future.

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• Gray, Jonathan A., Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. “Why Study Fans?” In Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. Edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 1–18. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

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  Offers valuable periodization of the emergence and evolution of fan studies over the past twenty years of research.

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• Hills, Matt. How to Do Things with Cultural Theory. London: Hodder Arnold, 2005.

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  Provides a general overview of the work of theory within academic culture. Draws heavily on Hills’s own research into fan theory and cult media.

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• Tulloch, John. “Cult, Talk, and Audiences.” In Watching Television Audiences: Cultural Theories and Methods. By John Tulloch, 202–248. London: Arnold, 2000.

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  Provides perhaps the strongest assessment yet published on the methodological assumptions shaping different models of fan studies (with strong focus on the work of Henry Jenkins).

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Anthologies

The expanding scope of fan studies has been defined and illustrated through a series of highly influential anthologies, each of which captures a different moment in the growth of the field. Lewis 1992 emerged in the midst of what many see as the foundational period of fan studies, during which it evolved from reception and audience studies to develop its own conceptual and methodological models. Published six years after Lewis 1992, Harris and Alexander 1998 provides a collection of contributions that are reacting to the first wave of published studies and operating as part of a field of shared research. Le Guern 2002 attempts to bridge conceptual and linguistic divides to situate work by English- and French-language researchers on cult media and fan culture side by side. Hellekson and Busse 2006 captures an emerging generation of “aca-fans” who draw on their knowledge as active participants in fan writing communities to inform their scholarship and who also seek to focus less on fan reception than on genres and modes of fan production. Gray, et al. 2007 offers an expansion of the space of fan studies to include many genres and debates that had been ignored by previous accounts and to explore the implications of fan studies for our understanding of globalization. Ford, et al. 2011 includes fans as active participants alongside scholars and industry insiders over the long-term viability of the US soap opera.

• Ford, Sam, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington, eds. The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011.

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  Rich anthology of perspectives on the crisis confronting US soap opera. Includes voices of fans, academics, and industry insiders. Section 4, “Learning from Diverse Audiences” (pp. 231–315), offers many takes on contemporary soap fan cultures.

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• Gray, Jonathan A., Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, eds. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

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  Offers a more expansive understanding of the fan. Includes examination of fans of the news, high culture, and even theory. Explores non-Western fan practices and situates fans in a broader historical context.

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• Harris, Cheryl, and Alison Alexander, eds. Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1998.

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  Captures the growing focus of fan studies on science fiction and soap opera as well as the increasingly central role that digital media plays in fan community building and cultural expression.

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• Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006.

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  Shifts attention from the study of fan-produced texts as signs of the reception of mass media texts to the examination of fan fiction as a literary and artistic phenomenon. Argues fan texts are “works in progress” that emerge from the social interactions of fan communities. Introduced a whole new generation of fan scholars who would reframe the conversation for the coming decade.

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• Le Guern, Philippe, ed. Les Cultes Médiatiques: Culture Fan et Oeuvres Cultes. Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2002.

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  Brings together an international mix of scholars focused on cult media and fan participation. Published as a mix of French- and English-language essays.

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• Lewis, Lisa A., ed. The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge, 1992.

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  First important anthology of work in fan studies. Includes key contributions from Lawrence Grossberg, John Fiske, Henry Jenkins, Jolie Jolson, Barbara Ehrenreich, and others. In many ways marked the emergence of fan studies as something distinct from the cultural studies of media audiences.

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Journals, Blogs, and Wikis

Two journals—the short-lived Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media and the now-thriving Transformative Works and Cultures—have specialized in the study of fans and cult media audiences, while several other more general-interest publications such as Flow TV have made fan studies a recurring topic of consideration. Several influential fan studies researchers, including Henry Jenkins (Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins), Jason Mittell (Just TV), and Nancy Baym (Online Fandom) maintain blogs that regularly feature interviews, essays, and other materials of interest to those doing research on fans. Moreover, several online resources (Metafandom and Fanlore) are published by fans who want to better understand their own communities and practices.

• Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins.

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  Published three or more times per week on a range of media studies topics, including new developments in fan culture and interviews with key scholars. Key contributions have included a discussion of gender and fan studies (see “When Fan Boys and Fan Girls Meet . . .”) involving forty researchers and a second conversation, “Acafandom and Beyond” (see “Acafandom and Beyond: Week One, Part One,”.

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• Fanlore.

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  A wiki by and for communities that produce and consume “fanworks.”

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• Flow TV. 2004–.

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  Online publication featuring primarily work by junior faculty and graduate students seeking to respond to contemporary media developments in a timely and engaging matter. Fan studies topics run throughout but of special interest is the December 2010 issue, which is focused on the concept of the aca-fan.

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• Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media. 2001–2007.

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  Published four issues from 2001 to 2007. Primarily involved British researchers, including Will Brooker, Lincoln Geraghty, Matt Hills, and Mark Jancovich.

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• Just TV.

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  Regularly updated blog from Jason Mittell includes reflections on the nature of fan-generated criticism, complexity in contemporary television, spoiling practices around Lost, and a range of other topics concerning fans and cult media.

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• Metafandom.

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  Once important, now largely inactive, LiveJournal community where fans theorized their own interpretive, expressive, and social practices.

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• Online Fandom.

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  Though inactive since 2011, Nancy Baym’s blog shared her occasional insights about Internet research, social media, and the collaborations between fans and music producers. Its archive contains many valuable entries, especially useful for those trying to understand new distribution and publicity models involving fan participation.

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• Transformative Works and Cultures. 2008–.

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  Published online two or more times per year by the Organization for Transformative Works. Mixes interviews, reviews, and critical essays. Sometimes organized around special themes (such as Volume 4, “Saving People, Hunting Things,” a special issue on the supernatural edited by Catherine Tosenberger in 2010, and Volume 7, “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein in 2011) and other times covering more general topics.

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Overviews of Specific Fandoms

Although media coverage has tended to focus on fans in relation to specific media franchises, fan studies has most often sought to examine the interconnections among different fandoms or to develop more generalized theories of fan culture. There have been, however, some important works that document the diverse range of fan practices and communities that have emerged around shared texts, including Harry Potter (Anelli 2008), Star Wars (Brooker 2002), Star Trek (Lichtenberg, et al. 1975; Tulloch and Jenkins 1995), and Doctor Who (Tulloch and Jenkins 1995).

• Anelli, Melissa. Harry, a History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon. New York: Pocket Books, 2008.

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  As the title suggests, an expansive and personal account of the cult phenomenon around the Harry Potter franchise. Includes extensive discussions of the development of fan websites and podcasts, the wizard rock movement, and the Harry Potter Alliance.

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• Brooker, Will. Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans. New York: Continuum, 2002.

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  Describes a range of different critical and creative responses to George Lucas’s film franchise. Especially useful in terms of its discussion of the distinction between official canon and unofficial fanon.

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• Lichtenberg, Jacqueline, Sondra Marshak, and Joan Winston. Star Trek Lives! New York: Bantam, 1975.

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  Account of the letter-writing campaign to save Star Trek as well as the emergence of early forms of fan culture. Details what was the entryway for the next generation of fans and a blueprint for many subsequent fandoms.

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• Tulloch, John, and Henry Jenkins. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek. London: Routledge, 1995.

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  Illustrates the diversity of fan interpretations, canons, and practices surrounding Star Trek in the United States and Doctor Who in England and Australia. Reads fans as a “powerless elite” that seeks to shape how texts are read but cannot shape the actual production process. Includes consideration of queer fan activism with Star Trek. Also see General Overviews.

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Documentaries

The more visually spectacular and performative aspects of fan culture have been captured by a series of documentaries, generally focused on a single media franchise and its fans. These films often isolate the specific individuals represented from a larger fan culture (which extends across multiple texts and has much longer traditions). Some of these films are sympathetic to fans (Cordova 2005, Philippe 2011), while others use fans as a foil for the amusement of “normal” viewers and thus reproduce some pathologizing stereotypes (Koury 2007, Nygard 1999). Schuyler and Schuyler 2008 represents the best of a growing number of fan-made documentaries, in which fans seek to record and explain their own cultural practices. Coppa 2008 was produced by the Organization for Transformative Works as a resource for Project New Media Literacies to help teach young people about fan vidding as a critical and creative practice.

• Coppa, Francesca, dir. Vidding. New York: Organization for Transformative Works, 2008.

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  The fan vidding community documents its own practices in an introduction intended for use in media literacy classes. Series of six documentaries available from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s TechTV.

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• Cordova, Carlene. Ringers: Lord of the Fans. DVD. Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2005.

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  Sympathetic exploration of how The Lord of the Rings has impacted our culture over the past fifty years.

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• Koury, Josh, dir. We Are Wizards. DVD. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Underground Films, 2007.

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  Explores the fan phenomenon around Harry Potter with a strong emphasis on the wizard rock music movement.

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• Nygard, Roger, dir. Trekkies. DVD. Hollywood, CA: Paramount, 1999.

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  Self-described as a “hilarious look at the universe’s most fervent fans.” Largely reproduces pathologizing stereotypes about those people who generally prefer to be described as Trekkers.

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• Philippe, Alexandre O., dir. The People vs. George Lucas, 2010. DVD. Santa Monica, CA: Lionsgate, 2011.

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  Documents the love-hate relationship between Star Wars fans and the franchise’s author. Includes many examples of Star Wars fan films.

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• Schuyler, Mallory, and Megan Schuyler, dirs. The Wizard Rockumentary: A Movie about Rocking and Rowling. DVD. Spokane, WA: GryffinClaw Productions, 2008.

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  Mostly a concert movie, capturing key performers from the Harry Potter wizard rock movement.

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Historical Perspectives

Although there is not yet a definitive account of the history of media fandom, there is now a series of more localized studies that detail fan activities during specific historical eras. Darnton 2009, for example, explores the shifting relations between readers and writers in early modern Europe. One key strand of research examines the emergence of amateur forms of cultural production, including the amateur radio movement (Douglas 1989), self-publishing practices (Petrik 1992), and science fiction fan cultures (Ross 1991), while another trajectory (Dell 2006; Ehrenreich, et al. 1992; Fuller 1996; Stacey 1994) traces the shifting relations between female spectators and media stars.

• Darnton, Robert. “Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity.” In The Great Cat Massacre, and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. By Robert Darnton, 215–256. New York: Basic Books, 2009.

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  Written by a distinguished cultural historian of early modern Europe. Emphatic that Rousseau’s readers were not fans in the modern sense of the word, yet their deep personal attachment to the author and their efforts to integrate aspects of his texts into their everyday lives certainly foreshadow many practices associated with contemporary fan cultures.

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• Dell, Chad. The Revenge of Hatpin Mary: Women, Professional Wrestling and Fan Culture in the 1950s. New York: Lang, 2006.

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  Through oral history and close examination of women’s scrapbooks, Dell examines the female-centered fan culture that emerged around wrestling in the early era of US television and considers how it prefigures later fan practices.

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• Douglas, Susan J. “Popular Culture and Populist Technology: The Amateur Operators, 1906–1912.” In Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899–1922. By Susan J. Douglas, 187–215. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

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  Describes the role of amateurs in the early history of radio—a group that had strong overlaps with early science fiction fandom largely due to the influence of pulp magazine editor Hugo Gernsback.

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• Ehrenreich, Barbara, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs. “Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. Edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 84–106. London: Routledge, 1992.

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  Suggests Beatlemania represents one of the first steps toward a female sexual revolution, as young girls asserted their desires in public.

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• Fuller, Kathryn H. At the Picture Show: Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.

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  Describes fandom in the silent film era in terms of both audience interests in celebrities and amateur desire to enter the moving picture industry.

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• Petrik, Paula. “The Youngest Fourth Estate: The Novelty Toy Printing Press and Adolescence, 1870–1886.” In Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents in America, 1850–1950. Edited by Elliott West and Paula Petrik, 125–142. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.

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  Traces the origins of the National Amateur Press Association to the 19th-century movement to use toy printing presses to create newsletters, which provided the infrastructure and model for subsequent zine publishers.

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• Ross, Andrew. “Getting Out of the Gernsback Continuum.” In Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits. By Andrew Ross, 101–135. London: Verso, 1991.

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  Documents the political debates and struggles that shaped the early history of US science fiction fandom.

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• Stacey, Jackie. Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. London: Routledge, 1994.

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  Explores the ways British women recall their fanship of US movies during World War II. Focuses on the performance of fan identities in everyday life.

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Roots of Fan Studies

Contemporary fan studies is an offshoot of audience research, subculture theory, and reception studies, especially as practiced by the Birmingham School and its followers in the 1980s and beyond. The full range of this tradition is beyond the scope of this entry, but here are some key contributions that mark the transition from audience research to fan studies. Hebdige 1979 establishes a focus on appropriation as a central aspect of meaning production, while the critique of Hebdige in McRobbie 1991 opens up a space for exploring less public and more domesticated kinds of media consumption practiced by girls and women. Brown 1990 and Seiter, et al. 1991 capture the transition from “audience research” focused around geographic and demographic communities to “fan studies” work focused on affinity groups. Fiske 2011 reframes the Birmingham tradition for a US audience, helping to inspire many of those who would be the first generation of fan studies researchers. Ang 1985 uses letters by fans and antifans to complicate previous assumptions about the pleasures of mass culture. Finally, Radway 1984, working from an alternative tradition, explores how canon formation works within disreputable forms of cultural production, such as romance novels.

• Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. Translated by Della Couling. London: Methuen, 1985.

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  Interprets a corpus of letters written by fans and antifans of primetime soap opera Dallas to develop a more complex vocabulary for thinking about the pleasures of consuming melodramatic texts.

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• Brown, Mary Ellen, ed. Television and Women’s Culture: The Politics of the Popular. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1990.

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  Key anthology that captures the emergence of fan studies from its roots in the study of media audiences and subcultures. Includes important early discussions of gossip and soap opera fans.

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• Fiske, John. Television Culture. 2d ed. London: Routledge, 2011.

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  Distinctive approach to understanding how audiences make sense of television. Draws on semiotic and Birmingham cultural studies approaches. Helped to promote the ethnographic investigation of media audiences and to pave the way for fan studies. Originally published in 1987, this new edition includes a detailed introduction (“Why John Fiske Still Matters” by Henry Jenkins) that situates this framework in relation to postdigital developments.

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• Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979.

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  Focuses on how subcultures construct meanings through resources they borrow, appropriate, or remix from their parent cultures. Provides a core foundation for the concept of fans as resistant audiences.

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• McRobbie, Angela. Feminism and Youth Culture: From “Jackie” to “Just Seventeen.” Boston: Hyman, 1991.

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  From within the Birmingham School tradition, critiques earlier work on subcultures, stressing the importance of what takes place inside girls’ bedrooms as well as what takes place in masculine street cultures. Opened up a space for examining female-centered fan cultures.

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• Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

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  Informed by American studies and literature perspectives, applied ethnographic methods to examine a community of women readers of romances, with a strong focus on the process of appraisal and interpretation.

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• Seiter, Ellen, Hans Borchers, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-Maria Warth, eds. Remote Control: Television, Audiences and Cultural Power. London: Routledge, 1991.

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  Key time capsule of the state of audience research at the end of the 1980s, out of which contemporary fan studies emerged. Includes significant early work on soap opera fans alongside more conventional kinds of audience studies focused on specific geographic or demographic populations.

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Foundational Works

The early 1990s represented a key turning point in the emergence of fan studies as a distinctive strand of research with the publication of Bacon-Smith 1992 and Jenkins 1992, both widely seen as providing a blueprint for the next decade of research on this topic. The emphasis of fan studies on fandoms related to science fiction dates from this period, as does the strong emphasis on fan fiction—especially the homoerotic slash genre—as a form of cultural appropriation and resistance. These themes surface not only in Jenkins 1992 but also in Penley 1991 and Penley 1992. Amesley 1989 explores ways fandom operates as an interpretive community. Bacon-Smith 1992 describes strategies for managing risk. Fiske 1992 applies Pierre Bourdieu’s work on taste cultures to fandom. Grossberg 1992 develops a widely cited theory of affect, and Penley 1992 applies psychoanalytic theories of fantasy. Each moved away from a focus on meaning making (as seen in early audience research) toward an emphasis on the emotional dimensions of fandom—ideas already prefigured by Ang 1985 (cited under Roots of Fan Studies) and developed further by Hills 2002 and Sandvoss 2005 (both cited under General Overviews). Jenkins 1992 and Jenson 1992 directly tackle some of the negative stereotypes surrounding fandom, including the pathologization of fans by earlier sociological and anthropological accounts, while also suggesting ways that fan mastery of texts mirrors and may even surpass scholarly practices.

• Amesley, Cassandra. “How to Watch Star Trek.” Cultural Studies 3.3 (1989): 323–339.

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  Ethnographic account of a fan collective viewing of a Star Trek episode. Seeks to map core evaluative and interpretive norms shaping the community’s shared experiences. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• Bacon-Smith, Camille. Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

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  Ethnographic account of how female fans manage risk and express their shared fantasies through consumption and production of fan texts. Includes key considerations of fan fiction and fanvids.

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• Fiske, John. “The Cultural Economy of Fandom.” In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. Edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 30–49. London: Routledge, 1992.

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  Applies the theories of taste cultures developed by Pierre Bourdieu to talk about the forms of “discrimination” and “distinction” practiced within fan cultures. Claims fan culture represents a more intense form of the selectivity and meaning making practiced by mainstream audiences.

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• Grossberg, Lawrence. “Is There a Fan in the House? The Affective Sensibility of Fandom.” In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. Edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 50–65. London: Routledge, 1992.

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  Offers an initial model of the emotional investments that fans make in texts. Forms foundation for later work on how and why popular culture matters to the people who consume it.

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• Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.

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  Introduces the concept of fan culture as “textual poaching.” Shares useful snapshot of a transitional moment in fandom’s historical development as pre-Internet fandom gave way to digital practices.

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• Jenkins, Henry. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

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  Collects more than twenty years’ worth of Jenkins’s essays about fans and participatory culture, from his initial “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten” (pp. 37–60) essay through more recent work on collective intelligence, digital games, and globalization.

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• Jenson, Joli. “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization.” In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. Edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 9–29. London: Routledge, 1992.

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  Critique of the double standards that apply positive terms to consumers and scholars of high culture and negative terms to consumers and scholars of popular culture.

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• Penley, Constance. “Brownian Motion: Women, Tactics, and Technology.” In Technoculture. Edited by Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, 135–161. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.

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  Explores female fanzine publishing as a practice that deploys grassroots technologies toward alternative ends. Questions why many fans resist calling themselves feminists despite their clear critique of gender relations.

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• Penley, Constance. “Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture.” In Cultural Studies. Edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, 479–500. New York: Routledge, 1992.

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  Celebrates slash fan fiction as a vital form of women’s writing that critiques traditional constructions of masculinity. Reads fan fiction through the lens of psychoanalytic writing about erotic fantasy.

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Fan Taste

One key way of understanding fandoms is through an understanding of their processes of shared meaning making and evaluation—in other words, through their tastes. Consideration of fandoms as interpretive communities date back at least to Amesley 1989 and as taste cultures to Fiske 1992 (both cited under Foundational Works). Askwith 2009 shows how competing theories of television production shape fan evaluation of Lost as a cult series, while Jancovich 2002 digs deeper into Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of cultural distinction to explore how cult media offers forms of subcultural capital. McKee 2001 offers alternative models for examining popular aesthetics, and McKee 2007 documents different systems of appraisal that operate within various popular genres and traditions. McLaughlin 1996 examines how theory gets formed outside of academia, viewing fans as a source of cultural analysis. Pustz 1999 shows how recent and historic developments in the aesthetics of comic books reward fan investments and mastery of the medium. Sconce 1995 explores the fan practices that grew up around “trash” or “psychotronic” films, often involving a reversal of the aesthetic criteria that operate within other cinéaste communities. Lastly, Spence 2005 explores the pleasures of regularly viewing soap operas. Subsections that follow focus on the relations between popular and high culture, the practices of antifans (who have intense oppositional investments), queer perspectives on fandom and sexual desire, fan pilgrimages and tourism, and the values of collecting.

• Askwith, Ivan. “‘Do You Even Know Where This Is Going?’ Lost’s Viewers and Narrative Premeditation.” In Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show. Edited by Roberta Pearson, 159–180. London: Tauris, 2009.

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  Discusses how producers of a cult television series confront the conflicting expectations of fans who fear that the authors are making up the series as they go.

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• Jancovich, Mark. “Cult Fictions: Cult Movies, Subcultural Capital and the Production of Cultural Distinctions.” Cultural Studies 16.2 (2002): 306–322.

  DOI: 10.1080/09502380110107607Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Explores claims made by those most invested in particular cult media properties about their sophistication and cultural discrimination. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• McKee, Alan. “Which Is the Best Doctor Who Story? A Case Study in Value Judgements outside the Academy.” Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 1 (2001).

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  Using a fan survey as a starting point, McKee challenges traditional notions of cultural hierarchy and canon formation to consider how enthusiasts decide what constitutes the best exemplars of a favored series or genre.

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• McKee, Alan, ed. Beautiful Things in Popular Culture. London: Blackwell, 2007.

  DOI: 10.1002/9780470690994Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Experts on various forms of popular culture (from sports to porn, from comics and games to cult television) explore how judgment and assessment operate among the most dedicated and invested consumers of these genres.

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• McLaughlin, Thomas. Street Smarts and Critical Theory: Listening to the Vernacular. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.

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  Considers fans as one important source of vernacular theory of media and culture.

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• Pustz, Matthew J. Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999.

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  Combines a history of comic book fandom with a consideration of how fan tastes and interests shape contemporary comics production.

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• Sconce, Jeffrey. “‘Trashing’ the Academy: Taste, Excess, and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style.” Screen 36.4 (1995): 371–393.

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  Describes how concepts of taste and authorship operate within “trash” or “psychotronic” film culture. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• Spence, Louise. Watching Daytime Soap Operas: The Power of Pleasure. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.

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  Reflects on the pleasures and displeasures of watching daytime television, drawn from extensive interviews with soap opera fans.

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Fan Production

A key contribution to emerge from the first wave of fan studies (see Foundational Works) was the recognition that fans blur the lines between consumption and production. Since that time, a central focus has been placed on fans as authors of their own culture based on materials appropriated from mass media. Specifically, such scholarship has attempted to understand the distinctive genres and forms of fan cultural production. This focus on cultural production has extended beyond fandom proper to provide a lens through which to understand remix culture and user-generated content more broadly, helping to make fan studies perspectives central to understanding cybercultures. Sonvilla-Weiss 2010 brings together researchers looking at mashup cultures, showing how central theories of fan appropriation and remixing are to any analysis of contemporary culture. Onion 2008 describes how steampunk culture reconstructs an alternative vision of technology—one more closely aligned with beauty and humanity—through the production and exchange of gadgets made from old materials. Moving beyond this general consideration, subsequent sections consider fan fiction, along with vidding/fan filmmaking, as the two forms of fan production that have attracted the greatest amount of scholarship. Beyond these activities, fan studies researchers also investigate other genres of fan performance and kinds of knowledge-gathering activities associated with spoiling. Finally, researchers have studied the relationship between these various forms of fan production and our current understandings of intellectual property law.

• Onion, Rebecca. “Reclaiming the Machine: An Introductory Look at Steampunk in Everyday Practice.” Neo-Victorian Studies 1.1 (2008): 138–163.

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  Discusses steampunk as a particular mode of consumption with strong emphasis on crafts and material culture dimensions.

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• Sonvilla-Weiss, Stefan, ed. Mashup Cultures. Vienna: Springer, 2010.

  DOI: 10.1007/978-3-7091-0096-7Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Anthology that explores the place of mashups and remixes in contemporary culture from high art to popular culture. Especially strong representation of European scholars working on these topics.

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Online Communities and the Digital Economy

Although most of the foundational work in fan studies was done in a world where zines were traded through the mail, the field’s growth coincided with the popularization of the Internet. Some have argued that the dispersed networks of fans who engaged regularly with each other around common interests through the mail prefigured later forms of virtual communities. Fans were early adapters of digital media, helping to close the gender gap in terms of women’s participation in the online world. Baym 2000 and Bury 2005 provide extensive accounts of female fan communities. Clerc 1996 studies the gender wars that occurred as male and female fans met online and clashed over conflicting norms and expectations. Cumberland 2003 considers shifts in fan publication practices as a result of the archival capacities of the web, a line of research that culminates in Hellekson and Busse 2006 (cited under Anthologies). Ross 2008 describes how collective online experiences and discussions heighten fans’ willingness to criticize producers’ creative decisions, Thompson 2007 discusses ways that producers court influential web-based fans, while Wexelblat 2002 explores tensions that erupt when television authors meet their audiences online. Booth 2010 (cited under General Overviews) uses alternative reality games as an analogy for understanding the kinds of engagement and participation that surround fan culture in the digital era. The term “Web 2.0” describes a business model and commercial strategy that has emerged within the digital economy and is based on principles of crowdsourcing and user-generated content. Web 2.0 approaches rely on the consumer actively contributing to the value of the platform or service. The increased interaction between fans and producers in a networked culture has generated many critical concerns. Subsections that follow discuss debates around user-generated content and unpaid labor, the concepts of moral economy and gift exchange as alternatives to corporate conceptions of the commodity, the relationships of fans to other kinds of consumers, and the worry that corporate efforts will come to dominate more grassroots forms of fan participation.

• Baym, Nancy K. Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2000.

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  The first significant study of an online fan community. Defined both the research agenda and methodologies for the coming decade.

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• Bury, Rhiannon. Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online. New York: Lang, 2005.

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  Situates the study of online fandom within a larger consideration of social norms and gender identities online.

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• Clerc, Susan. “Estrogen Brigades and ‘Big Tits’ Threads: Media Fandom Online and Off.” In Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Edited by Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth Reba Weise, 73–97. Seattle, WA: Seal, 1996.

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  Describes how female fans seek their own online communities, often heavily segregated by gender due to conflicts with male Internet fans.

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• Cumberland, Sharon. “Private Uses of Cyberspace: Women, Desire, and Fan Culture.” In Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Edited by David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins, 261–279. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

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  Considers how the hybrid nature of online space as both private and public has empowered women to forge stronger connections through their sharing of erotic stories.

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• Ross, Sharon Marie. “Fascinated with Fandom: Cautiously Aware Viewers of Xena and Buffy.” In Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet. By Sharon Marie Ross, 35–70. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008.

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  Explores how ongoing, real-time interactions around cult television series heighten Internet fans’ sense of ownership over the franchises and thus intensify their belief that they are entitled to be heard by producers and networks.

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• Thompson, Kristin. The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

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  Overview of The Lord of the Rings franchise. Close consideration of the strategies with which producers courted online fan communities and the ways fan fiction writers appropriated elements from the films. In particular, see “Click to View Trailer” (pp. 133–164) and “Fans on the Margins, Pervy Hobbit Fanciers and Partygoers” (pp. 165–190).

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• Wexelblat, Alan. “An Auteur in the Age of the Internet: JMS, Babylon 5, and the Net.” In Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture. Edited by Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc, 209–226. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

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  Describes the sometimes combative relationship that emerged between Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski and early Internet fans.

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Learning through Fandom

Work in the learning sciences has expanded in recent years to incorporate forms of informal learning taking place outside of schools. This move has been fueled by the efforts of the MacArthur Foundation to construct a field around the study of digital media and learning. As a specific set of cultural practices involving the production of knowledge and media, fandom has been central to these discussions, as has the broader concept of participatory culture that has emerged from the fan studies tradition. The focus in this section is on work that specifically addresses the pedagogical value of fan practices, because work on participatory culture and learning more generally is too extensive to list here. Belcher and Stephenson 2011 explains how fan culture practices around Harry Potter are spilling over into the classroom yet are also at risk in an era of increasingly standardized instruction. Other accounts describe fan fiction sites (Black 2008) and fantasy baseball leagues (Halverson and Halverson 2008) as supporting robust forms of informal learning and providing insights for the design of other learning environments. Ito 2008 discusses the production and sharing of knowledge within a community of Western fans of Japanese anime and manga franchises. Jenkins 1995 discusses what Star Trek means within the context of a specific educational institution—the science and engineering cultures at MIT. Knobel and Lankshear 2010 gives models for how teachers and educators might embrace do-it-yourself media practices; Lange and Ito 2010, more broadly, offers a broader context for understanding fandom alongside other forms of grassroots media activities in which young people are involved.

• Belcher, Catherine L., and Becky Herr Stephenson. Teaching Harry Potter: The Power of Imagination in Multicultural Classrooms. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

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  Engages with fan culture in relation to the pedagogical practices of teachers who use J. K. Rowling’s books to engage students with the pleasures of reading.

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• Black, Rebecca W. Adolescents and Online Fan Fiction. New York: Lang, 2008.

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  Explains how the writing and critiquing of fan stories focused on anime and manga are particularly supportive for those who are learning English.

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• Halverson, Erica Rosenfeld, and Richard Halverson. “Fantasy Baseball: The Case for Competitive Fandom.” Games and Culture 3.3–4 (2008): 286–308.

  DOI: 10.1177/1555412008317310Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Studies the competition and the exchange of statistics between baseball fans for what it might suggest about the design of highly motivated learning communities. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• Ito, Mizuko. “Amateur Cultural Production and Peer-to-Peer Learning.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, 24–28 March 2008.

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  Considers the characteristics of the learning that occurs through Western fan production in response to Japanese “media mix” properties.

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• Jenkins, Henry. “‘How Many Starfleet Officers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?’ Star Trek at MIT.” In Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Dr. Who and Star Trek. Edited by John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins, 213–236. London: Routledge, 1995.

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  Analyzes the functions that Star Trek performs at a school noted for its promotion of science and technology: namely, shaping professional goals and providing a vehicle for deploying knowledge.

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• Knobel, Michele, and Colin Lankshear, eds. DIY Media: Creating, Sharing and Learning with New Technologies. New York: Peter Lang, 2010.

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  Offers both a how-to and a why-to account of how forms of grassroots cultural production, including anime music videos and machinima, can be integrated into schooling and learning.

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• Lange, Patricia G., and Mizuko Ito. “Creative Production.” In Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. By Mizuko Ito, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, et al., 243–293. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.

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  Discusses anime music videos and podcasting as part of a range of creative media practices that encourage young people to learn by making and sharing media with each other.

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Fan Activism

Fans have historically demonstrated a remarkable capacity to mobilize around shared concerns, using a range of strategies in their attempts to shape network and producer decisions impacting favored franchises. Increasingly, researchers focusing on civic engagement are seeking to better understand what fan practices might teach about getting citizens more involved in the political process, while fans are seeking to turn their organizational and expressive skills toward changing the world. The texts included in this category explore the role of fans as citizens and the relationship between fan activism and civic engagement. Duncombe 2007, Earl and Kimport 2009, and van Zoonen 2005 approach this question by focusing on traditional activism and existing theories of citizenship, while Scardaville 2005 asks whether the sense of engagement that emerges as fans rally to protect a television program can be deployed toward other ends. Harrington 1998 and Stein 2002 offer differing perspectives on what happens when news reports intrude on fan interests. Reality television provides a particularly rich space for exploring how fans might act collectively to change the real world, as illustrated here by Punathambekar 2009 and Wilson 2004.

• Duncombe, Stephen. Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. New York: New Press, 2007.

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  Offers a theory of “ethical spectacle” as a participatory political practice, suggesting traditional activists can learn from popular culture.

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• Earl, Jennifer, and Katrina Kimport. “Movement Societies and Digital Protest: Fan Activism and Other Nonpolitical Protest Online.” Sociological Theory 27.3 (2009): 220–243.

  DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01346.xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Explores how online platforms designed to support civic participation are also leading to nonpolitical forms of organization and mobilization. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• Harrington, C. Lee. “‘Is Anyone Else Out There Sick of the News?!’ TV Viewers’ Responses to Non-routine News Coverage.” Media, Culture and Society 20.3 (1998): 471–494.

  DOI: 10.1177/016344398020003007Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Examines how soap opera viewers frame critiques of networks preempting their regular series with news coverage. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• Punathambekar, Aswin. “Television, Participatory Culture, and Politics: The Case of Indian Idol.” Flow TV 10.5 (2009).

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  Describes how the Indian Idol competition became complexly intertwined with regional politics, blurring the distinction between fans and citizens.

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• Scardaville, Melissa C. “Accidental Activists: Fan Activism in the Soap Opera Community.” American Behavioral Scientist 48.7 (2005): 881–901.

  DOI: 10.1177/0002764204273174Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Asks whether participants in an online campaign, such as the movement to protect Another World from cancellation, are more or less likely to join future fan activist efforts. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• Stein, Louisa Ellen. “Subject: ‘Off Topic: Oh My God, US Terrorism!’ Roswell Fans Respond to 11 September.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 5.4 (2002): 471–491.

  DOI: 10.1177/1364942002005004297Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Documents how the fan infrastructure around Roswell enabled fans “to mourn, to cope, to give support, to debate, to question and to organize community social action” (p. 471) in the wake of 9/11. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• van Zoonen, Liesbet. Entertaining the Citizen: When Politics and Popular Culture Converge. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

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  Argues that fan enthusiasm and participation are closely related to ideal forms of civic engagement.

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• Wilson, Pam. “Jamming Big Brother USA: Webcasting, Audience Intervention and Narrative Activism.” In Big Brother International: Formats, Critics and Publics. Edited by Ernest Mathijs and Janet Jones, 194–209. London: Wallflower, 2004.

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  Describes how fans and culture jammers conspired to disrupt the live webcast of Big Brother.

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Global Fans

A major development in recent years has been the expansion of the fan studies paradigm from a focus on primarily Anglo-American cultural practices to a consideration of media audiences in other parts of the world, including enthusiasts of Swedish popular music (Baym and Burnett 2009) and Indian audiences of Bollywood (Punathambekar 2007). The largest single body of work in this area to date, however, has focused on Japanese media and fan cultures (see Otaku Culture). Although some of this research deals with specific national cultures, significant work explores the place of fandom within processes of globalization or at least transnational flows of media content (Baym and Burnett 2009, Jenkins 2004). Fans have played a key role in the informal importation of media from other parts of the world, especially by translating and subtitling works across languages (a process known as “fansubbing”) and educating local audiences about the genre traditions from which these works come. Harrington and Bielby 2007 examines the flow of fan studies across national borders. A subsection here focuses on the case of the Otaku in Japan, a subculture that has received a good deal of attention in the fan studies literature.

• Baym, Nancy K., and Robert Burnett. “Amateur Experts: International Fan Labour in Swedish Independent Music.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 12.5 (2009): 433–449.

  DOI: 10.1177/1367877909337857Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Examines debates about fan labor and intellectual property by studying online exchanges between Swedish independent musicians and their transnational followers. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

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• Harrington, C. Lee, and Denise D. Bielby. “Global Fandom/Global Fan Studies.” In Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. Edited by Jonathan A. Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 179–197. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

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  Discusses the development of fan studies as a global scholarly community and as a tool for thinking about the transnational production of knowledge.

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• Jenkins, Henry. “Pop Cosmopolitanism: Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age of Media Convergence.” In Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium. Edited by Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard, 114–140. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

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  Theorizes how “otaku” (fans) and “desi” (immigrants) are shaping the flow of Asian media into the United States (see also Otaku Culture). Posits a generation of “pop cosmopolitans” who seek cultural difference through the transnational exchange of popular culture.

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• Punathambekar, Aswin. “Between Rowdies and Rasikas: Rethinking Fan Activity in Indian Film Culture.” In Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. Edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 198–209. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

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  Situates online fandom of Bollywood composer A. R. Rahman within the global context of fan studies.

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