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- Volume 2, Issue 1, 2014
Journal of Fandom Studies, The - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2014
Volume 2, Issue 1, 2014
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Tracing Textual Poachers: Reflections on the development of fan studies and digital fandom
By Lucy BennettAbstractIn 1992 Henry Jenkins’ influential work, Textual Poachers, was published, which contributed towards igniting the establishment of the fan studies field of research and re-morphing previous restrictive depictions of media fans. This article traces the work’s influence on my own steps as an early career researcher in the field and how it shaped my ideas and approach to scholarship. Speaking more broadly, it assesses the current state of the fan studies field, and how things have developed since Jenkins’ text was released. I reflect on what general fluxes, concerns and dimensions are currently with us, through a lens of the themes raised in Textual Poachers, most especially surrounding the development of technology and social media, methods in the field and fans’ relations with texts, assessing to what degree we have moved forward, or remained in stasis within fan studies scholarship. This study argues that technological advances have impacted on and shaped four key, often interconnected, areas of fandom and enquiry: (1) communication, (2) creativity, (3) knowledge and (4) organizational and civic power. Overall, this article shows how Textual Poachers is an invaluable source to measure the field and landscape of fandom, and determine the extent to which it has seemingly leaped forward.
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‘I’m a Lawyer, Not an Ethnographer, Jim’: Textual Poachers and fair use
More LessAbstractHenry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers (1992) remains an important text for many reasons. I will focus on its importance as a text that, while not in any way lacking in complexity, clearly and accessibly brings forth the positive aspects of fandom cultures and creativity. This is vital for very practical reasons: there are many institutions and copyright owners who believe that fandom should be owned – by them, and not by fans. In this context, Jenkins’ arguments form a key part of the case for continued, robust fair use doctrines that allow fans to make the things that they love to make.
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Doctor Who’s textual commemorators: Fandom, collective memory and the self-commodification of fanfac
By Matt HillsAbstractFollowing ‘first wave’ fan studies and the seminal Textual Poachers (1992) by Jenkins, much scholarly work has focused on fan fiction or fanfic. This article argues that an alternative genre of fan writing – the autobiographical account of fan memory/experience – forms part of media fandom’s ‘textual productivity’. Defining this as fanfac (reflexively produced fact or faction, often shaped to entertain fellow fans), I examine this mode of commemorative fan writing in relation to a case study of the British SF TV series Doctor Who (BBC, 1963–89, 1996, 2005–). Drawing on prior work in memory studies, I consider how fans’ memories provide a resource that can be self-commodified and sold back to the fan culture, thus making fanfac very different to the typical social relations surrounding fanfic. Fans’ production of textual memories can be thought of as a form of ‘banal commemoration’, which Doctor Who fans themselves auto-commodify within the ‘commemoration industry’ surrounding this TV series that celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. More so than ‘textual poachers’ creating fanfic, sections of UK and US Who fandom can be theorized instead as ‘textual commemorators’ producing fanfac, which contributes to, and sometimes contests, the fandom’s collective memory.
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Fan studies: Grappling with an ‘Undisciplined’ discipline
By Sam FordAbstractAs part of the Journal of Fandom Studies exploration of the field more than 20 years after the publication of Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers (which has been widely cited as one of the first major works paving the way for this area of study), this piece looks back at Textual Poachers’ approach to studying fandom, examines the dialogue that has taken place within fan studies over the past six years, and raises areas of consideration for fan studies to consider in the years ahead. In particular, the piece advocates for the need to continue to evolve the types of fandoms explored by fan studies scholars; to challenge ourselves to examine the field’s tendency to prioritize some forms of active audience engagement over others based on the media format or level of technical mastery the audience uses or the type of media text on which the engagement is focused; and to further explore what more widespread interest in, acceptance of, and adoption of the model of engagement from fandom means for our field.
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Fuck yeah, Fandom is Beautiful
More LessAbstractFirst-wave ethnographic work in fan studies, especially that of Henry Jenkins, Camille Bacon-Smith, Constance Penley, Roberta Pearson and John Tulloch, remains foundational to contemporary fan scholarship. Jenkins’ work in particular remains relevant for its ongoing commitment to fandom as a social identity and as a network; this contrasts sharply with the work of later scholars who see fandom as a matter of enthusiastic but individual engagement. It is important for fan scholars both to revisit and to emulate first-wave scholarship because the terms of the relationship between fans and the entertainment industry are being radically renegotiated. Fandom is increasingly understood to have economic and promotional value to content producers, and there is a danger that fandom-as-enthusiasm is being encouraged by producers even as fans are in danger of being alienated from their creative labour and from each other as a community.
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