10th Anniversary Issue of PARTICIPATIONS on Fan Studies and Audience Interaction and Participation

Screenshot extract from Ten years old - and ready to try new things, an editorial by Martin Barker and Sue Turnbull in the the tenth anniversary issue of Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception  Studies

Film Studies For Free today wishes a very happy 10th year in online existence to the remarkable open access venture that is Participations. What a great achievement! The journal is stronger and more impressive than ever, as the below, very high quality (and enormous), latest issue -- on fan studies, and audience interaction and participation -- testifies

FSFF somewhat cheekily embeds the above screenshot from the opening part of this issues editorial, for its readers, as in it joint editors Martin Barker and Sue Turnbull raise some important matters concerning the long term viability and success of a journal like this. The editors are choosing to respond to these by recasting the journal in a number of interesting ways - you can read about these at greater length here.

If you are working in this area, now would be a really good time to consider what you would want from Participations in the years ahead. Feel free to post comments here, or contact the editors here.

Heres to the next ten years, Participations! And thank you.


Participations, Volume 10, Issue 1, (May 2013)

• Editorial by Martin Barker and Sue Turnbull (Joint Editors): Ten years old - and ready to try new things

Articles

• Bradby, Barbara: Our affair with Mila Kunis: A group ethnography of cinema-going and the male gaze’ Haslop, Craig: "I certainly wouldnt want to be portrayed as a boring straight person": Torchwood, meaning-making and the performance of gender and sexual identities

Special Section: The Fan Studies Network - new connections, new research

• Bennett, Lucy & Tom Phillips: An introduction: The Fan Studies Network - new connections, new research
• Booth, Paul & Peter Kelly: The changing faces of Doctor Who fandom: New fans, new technologies, old practices?
• Busse, Kristina: Geek hierarchies, boundary policing, and the gendering of the good fan
• Chin, Bertha & Lori Hitchcock Morimoto: Towards a theory of transcultural fandom
• Ellison, Hannah: Submissives, Nekos and Futanaris: a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Glee Kink Meme
• Hills, Matt: Fiskes textual productivity and digital fandom: Web 2.0 democratization versus fan distinction?
• Lamerichs, Nicolle: The cultural dynamic of doujinshi and cosplay: Local anime fandom in Japan, USA and Europe
• Pett, Emma: "Hey! Hey! Ive seen this one, Ive seen this one. Its a classic!": Nostalgia, repeat viewing and cult performance in Back to the Future
• Proctor, William: "Holy crap, more Star Wars! More Star Wars? What if theyre crap?": Disney, Lucasfilm and Star Wars online fandom in the 21st century
• Sandvoss, Cornel: Toward an understanding of political enthusiasm as media fandom: Blogging, fan productivity and affect in American politics
• Whiteman, Natasha, Joanne Metivier: From post-object to "Zombie" fandoms: The "deaths" of online fan communities and what they say about us

FSN Forum Discussion

• Bury, Rhiannon, Ruth Deller, Adam Greenwood & Bethan Jones: From Usenet to Tumblr: The changing role of social media
• McCulloch, Richard, Virginia Crisp, Jon Hickman & Stephanie Janes: Of proprietors and poachers: Fandom as negotiated brand ownership
• Freund, Katharina & Dianna Fielding: Research ethics in fan studies
• Jones, Bethan & Lucy Bennett: Blurring boundaries, crossing divides: An interview with Will Brooker
• Lozano Delmar, Javier, Victor Hernández-Santaolalla & Marina Ramos: Fandom generated content: An approach to the concept of fanadvertising
• Sturm, Damion & Andrew McKinney: Affective hyper-consumption and immaterial labors of love: Theorizing sport fandom in the age of new media

Special Section: COST - audience interaction & participation

• Damásio, Manuel José, Mélanie Bourdaa, Bozena I. Mierzejewska, Ana Milojević, José Manuel Noguera, Birgit Stark, Lucia Vesnić-Alujević & Igor Vobič: Editors introduction: Stakeholder essays on audience interaction and participation
• Stark, Birgit & Andy Kaltenbrunner: There is no such thing as a convergence continuum aiming towards the perfect solution
• Stark, Birgit & Ina von Holly: Social media is not a threat but a reward for companies!
• Haas, Josefa: New tools and scenes for the media play
• Nyirő, Nóra & Agnes Urban: Effects of audience participation in CSO communication
• Marmino, Michele, Mario Petitto & Andrea Pinchera: CSOs communication strategies and audience participation
• Joye, Stijn & Philippe Henon: Activating the audience in times of compassion fatigue
• Vozab, Dina, Eugen Jakovčić & Saša Šegrt: Croatian civil society and media from the perspective of two civil society organisations
• Harrison, Teresa: The "audience" as participative, idea generating, decision making citizens: will they transform government?
• Dahlgren, Peter: From public to civic intellectuals via online cultures
• Harrington, Stephen, Tim Highfield & Axel Bruns: More than a backchannel: Twitter and television
• García de Torres, Elvira: Audience territory
• Scolari, Carlos: Lost in the borderlines between user-generated content and the cultural industry
• Zamora, Rocío & Wayne Wanta: The influence of a mediating source – my friend – is now spreading the influence to others who may not have seen the news reports
• Vobič, Igor: Rethinking social life of radio news: Slovenian public radio journalists perceptions of audience interactivity
• Krstić, Aleksandra: When the audience changes a journalist
• Torres da Silva, Marisa: Professional views on letters-to-the-editor as a means of audience participation
• Vesnić-Alujević, Lucia: Online strategies of members of the European parliament
• Hänska-Ahy, Maximillian, Claire Wardle & Malachy Browne: Social media & journalism: Reporting the world through user generated content
• Milojević, Ana, Jelena Kleut & James Ball: Conversational style of journalism
• Milojević, Ana & Steve Herrmannl: Journalism taking up a curatorial role
• Maretić, Meri & Ante Babić: New political communication
• Buchanan, Margot & Fiona Hyslop: Transforming audiences, transforming audience expectations?
• Gallego, Manuel Javier Callejo & Convadonga Fernández: Producing information, producing and monitoring communication

Reviews

• Benwell, Bethan, James Procter and Gemma Robinson (eds.): Postcolonial Audiences: Readers, Viewers and Reception’ (Reviewed by Pinar Sadar)
• Jacobs, Katrien: Peoples Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet’ (Reviewed by Giovanna Maina)
• Lang, Anouk (ed.): From Codex to Hypertext: Reading at the turn of the twenty-first century’ (Reviewed by Julian McDougall)
• Rudolph, Jennifer Domino: Embodying Latino Masculinities: Producing Masculatinidad’ (Reviewed by Victoria Kearley)

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Up up and away! Transformative Works and Fan Activism

May the Fourth Be With You published on May 4, 2012 by thehpalliance.

Read Henry Jenkins and Ashley Hincks articles about the Harry Potter Alliance.

Many fans have resisted efforts to bring politics into fandom, seeing their fan activities as a release from the pressures of everyday life, or preferring the term charity rather than the more overtly political term activism to describe their pro-social efforts. Our goal is not to instrumentalize fandom, not to turn what many of us do for fun into something more serious; fandom remains valuable on its own terms as a set of cultural practices, social relationships, and affective investments, but insofar as a growing number of fans are exploring how they might translate their capacities for analysis, networking, mobilization, and communication into campaigns for social change, we support expanding the field of fan studies to deal with this new mode of civic engagement. [Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova, Up, up, and away! The power and potential of fan activism [1.9], Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 10 (2012)]

Film Studies For Free is a very big fan of the open access journal of Transformative Works and Cultures, so it is delighted that theres a new issue out.

Its a themed collection of studies of transformative works and fan activism, edited by media studies superheroes Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova. Links to abstracts of the articles (and from there to the articles themselves) are given below.

Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 10 (2012): Transformative Works and Fan Activism, edited by Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova, University of Southern California. 

Editorial

• Up, up, and away! The power and potential of fan activism by Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova

Theory

• Fandom meets activism: Rethinking civic and political participation  by Melissa M. Brough and Sangita Shresthova
• "Cultural acupuncture": Fan activism and the Harry Potter Alliance by Henry Jenkins
• Experiencing fan activism: Understanding the power of fan activist organizations through members narratives by Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Christine Weitbrecht, Chris Tokuhama
• Theorizing a public engagement keystone: Seeing fandoms integral connection to civic engagement through the case of the Harry Potter Alliance by Ashley Hinck
• The German federal election of 2009: The challenge of participatory cultures in political campaigns by Andreas Jungherr
• Wonder Woman for a day: Affect, agency, and Amazons by Matt Yockey

Praxis

• Fan activism, cybervigilantism, and Othering mechanisms in K-pop fandom by Sun Jung
• Being of service: "X-Files" fans and social engagement by Bethan Jones
• Fan action and political participation on "The Colbert Report" by Marcus Schulzke
• Even a monkey can understand fan activism: Political speech, artistic expression, and a public of the Japanese dôjin community by Alex Leavitt, Andrea Horbinski
• "Past the brink of tacit support": Fan activism and the Whedonverses by Tanya R. Cochran
• Nerdfighters, "Paper Towns," and heterotopia by Lili Wilkinson
• The absence of fan activism in the queer fandom of Ho Denise Wan See (HOCC) in Hong Kong by Cheuk Yin Li
• Too fat to fly: A case study of unsuccessful fan mobilization by Tom Phillips

Symposium

• Of snowspeeders and Imperial Walkers: Fannish play at the Wisconsin protests by Jonathan Gray
• On the ordinariness of participatory culture by Aswin Punathambekar
• Imagining No-place by Stephen Duncombe
• Fan activism for social mobilization: A critical review of the literature by Lucy Bennett
• Flash activism: How a Bollywood film catalyzed civic justice toward a murder trial by Ritesh Mehta

Review

• "Fan fiction and copyright: Outside works and intellectual property protection," by Aaron Schwabach: Review by Stacey Marie Lantagne

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On Spectatorship Reception Studies Fandom and Fan Studies In Media Res and Flow

Picture from Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla via Flickr, used and altered under Creative Commons License permission.

Film Studies For Free wanted you to know you have to go with the new issue of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture on Fandom and Fan Studies.  Oh, and then you can join the party already started at In Media Res on issues of spectatorship. The great contents of these worthy e-journals are directly linked to below:


In Media Res December 13-17, 2010 (Theme week organized by Ian Peters [Georgia State University])

• Sarah Sinwell (Northeastern University) presents: The Art of Seduction: Film Spectatorship in the Age of the Cell Phone

• Ross Melnick (Emory University) presents: BIG News from India: BIG Cinemas and Diasporic Indian Moviegoing in the United States

• Sarah Hamblin (Michigan State University) presents: Puzzling Spectatorship

• Daniel C. Faltesek (University of Iowa) presents: The 3D Machine: An Experiment With Aura, Television, and Installation

• Jesse Schlotterbeck (University of Iowa) presents: DVDs Like LPs: The Official Websites of Musical Biopics and the Contemporary Film Collector

Flow: A Critical Forumon Television and Media Culture

• "Fandom In/As the Academy" by Paul Booth A look at the specific pedagogical value of fandom as an activity and how it can be appropriated in a variety of educational contexts.

• "We Have Met the Fans, and They Are Us: In Defense of Aca-Fans and Scholars" by Catherine Coker and Candace Benefiel  Fans hold their objects of study to a higher standard. How can the critical study of any text succeed without the passionate and knowledgeable participation of the scholar?

• "The Gathering of the Juggalos and the Peculiar Sanctity of Fandom" by Michael Dwyer The Gathering of the Juggalos is the scene of questionable fan practices contrary to the noble portrait of fandom elaborated by several scholars.

• "We are all together: Fan Studies and Performance" by Jen Gunnels and M. Flourish Klink Gunnels and Klink argue that fan studies parallels performance studies in discerning tensions between researcher and subject.

• "Stop Being an Elitist, and Start Being an Elitist" by David Jenemann Given how Aca-fandom has created its own canon and looks down its nose at certain cultural forms like sports broadcasting, we could use a little of Adornos elitism in the discipline today.

• "Telling Tastes: (Re)producing Distinction in Popular Media Studies" by Eve Ng What we study and how we learn to talk about it is productive of our identities along mostly covert dimensions of power. How do scholars distinguish themselves from the mainstream critics?

• "Embracing the Overly Confessional: Scholar-Fandom and Approaches to Personal Research" by Tom Phillips A scholar argues that embracing an "overly confessional" approach to his academic writing is integral to the fidelity of his research.

• "Revisiting Fandom in Africa" by Olivier J. Tchouaffe The application of fandom and its resources is not the same in all cultures, and African fans might not be recognized as legitimate fans. The point of this piece is to demonstrate that there is a unifying figure of American domination of mass culture.

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This and that Perkins Rich on Kuchar Bros Westerns Fan Videos Timecode Kubrick and the Coens

Trailer for It Came From Kuchar - As Alexandra Juhasz writes at Media Praxis: [This] documentary does little more than let the brothers, their films, and fans speak for themselves. And what more do we need? Inventive, life-long bohemians making their work outside dominant structures and to an international fanbase of crazed cineastes. As I implied regarding Fig Trees recently: it becomes an increasingly rare pleasure to see work that resides outside the dumbed down regime of the popular.

Having been briefly out of action, Film Studies For Free is sorting through its in-tray and to-do lists. Below are some assorted bits of online news and links that it wanted you not to miss:

• Film Studies For Free was delighted to hear from VF Perkins who generously offered up some frame stills to help illustrate the first of the two sequence analyses in his online essay "You Only Live Once" which FSFF linked to some weeks back (also see HERE). FSFF has posted the stills in three sections, one HERE, two HERE and three HERE.
• Listen to B Ruby Rich on the Kuchar Brothers (also see video above) in a great podcast interview for Outtake:

In this audio interview Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson talks with B Ruby Rich, American Scholar and Film Critic about Director Jennifer M. Kroot’s documentary “It Came From Kuchar.” Long before YouTube, there were the outrageous, no-budget movies of underground, filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar. George and Mike grew up in the Bronx in the 1950’s. At the age of twelve, they became obsessed with Hollywood melodramas and began making their own homespun melodramas with their aunt’s 8mm camera. They used their friends and family as actors and their Bronx neighborhood as their set. Early Kuchar titles featured in this film include “I Was A Teenage Rumpot” and “Born of the Wind”. In the early 1960’s, alongside Andy Warhol, the Kuchar brothers shaped the New York underground film scene. Known as the “8mm Mozarts”, their films were noticeably different than other underground films of the time. They were wildly funny, but also human and vulnerable. Their films have inspired many filmmakers, including John Waters, Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin and Wayne Wang (all are interviewed in this film). Despite having high profile fans, the Kuchars remain largely unknown because they are only ambitious to make movies, not to be famous.

• Thanks to David Hudsons indispensable Twitter feed for The Auteurs Daily, FSFF was happy to hear of a great blog about Westerns -- Decisions at Sundown -- by Joseph "Jon" Lanthier, Ed Howard, Kevin J. Olson, Tony Dayoub, and Tommy Salami. You must read Ed Howards lovely piece on Rio Bravo.
• Karen Hellickson has a nice essay on some fairly high profile transformative fan artworks: “The Hunt for Gollum” and “Battlestar Redactica”.
• Do check out Nick Daviss innovative approaches to Mike Figgiss Timecode (2000). Also see HERE (it works best on Firefox).
• And two interesting English-language film articles from the latest special issue of online journal Image [&] Narrative (Vol.X, issue 2 (25.) June 2009), devoted to The author and his imaginary: the development of particularity: Elizabeth Mullens Do you speak Kubrick? Orchestrating Transgression and Mastering Malaise in The Shining (for those interested in Kubrick, please also see The Kubrick Site and Kubrick Multimedia Archive - thanks to Jason Sperb) and Arne De Boevers The Politics of Retirement: Joel and Ethan Coens No Country for Old Men after September 11
  

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