fan studies and fandom

Single essay sought for inclusion in a collection of essays on literary tourism and the British Isles, under contract for publication by Lexington Books in December 2018, to round out a section on contemporary popular culture and tourism. The collection explores the complex and mutually informing relationships among narratives of history, fiction and film, and tourism via a series of studies of physical locations in the British Isles.

I am organizing a panel in response to this year's call for papers from the Religion and Popular Culture Unit of the American Academy of Religion. In particular, I am responding to the call for papers on the topic of "Fictional Religions in Film, Literature, and Other Media." The creation of fictional worldviews is a fascinating aspect of robust worldmaking and mythopoesis, and the phenomenon suggests all sorts of interesting questions about the relationship between artistic creativity and the religious imagination, the dis- or re-enchanted qualities of the secular, the role of mass media in forming our worldviews, ways of life, and identities, and other issues.

We have entered an historical moment in which political communication is filled with fandom. Grassroots fan communities mobilize to influence elections. Political candidates perform fandom on the campaign trail. And of course, rallies on both sides of the aisle are filled with bursts of fannish excitement. Examples range from the Princess Leia “We are the resistance” posters used during the 2017 Women’s March to Elizabeth Warren’s Harry Potter references to the strong attachment Trump fans felt for their candidate. Still, the affective nature of fandom is often treated as being at odds with the rational discourse of the political sphere, and the relationship between fandom and politics is often dismissed or ignored.

We are currently seeking 500-word abstracts for an edited collection on kink and other fringe texts (taboo literature, self-published erotica, SM narratives, fan fiction, disavowed fictions, and other marginalized texts). In this project, we define kink broadly to encompass a range of "inappropriate" texts, understanding that kink often refers to non-normative erotic fantasies and experiences. We are interested in contributions that focus primarily on contemporary written texts and do so by engaging theoretical frameworks such as psychoanalysis, queer theory, rhetoric, and feminist theory. One of the interests of this project is an exploration of the ways texts shift in and out of different canons and categories.

Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds

(ISSN: 1757191X / Online ISSN: 17571928)

As Reviews Editor for the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, I am always seeking reviewers for game/gaming-related academic books, websites, communities, and “popular” books, in addition to reviews of virtual environments and, of course, videogames (recent or older, single- or multiplayer, across all platforms).  If you are interested in writing a videogame-related or virtual space-related review, please email Matthew Johnson <matjohn @ siue . edu >.  Happy to entertain questions.

A Critical Introduction to R.E.M.

edited by Tom Hertweck (U of Nevada, Reno)

for inclusion in the series "For the Record: Lexington Studies in Rock and Popular Music" (Lexington Books)

Going Global: Steampunk and Transnational Cultures

Call for Papers

The Asylum Steampunk Festival Conference

Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln

25th – 26th August 2018

Keynote Speaker:

Yomi Ayeni – Transmedia Author, Producer, and Filmmaker

25 Years of Jurassic Park (1993): An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Palaeontological Imagination

Friday 8th June 2018

School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies

Cardiff University

Keynote speaker: Stephen Brusatte (University of Edinburgh)

Update (12/22/17): We are extending the deadline of this call for papers! Please submit your proposal by January 1st, 2018 for consideration. We also wanted to add that we now have four confirmed members for a "diversity in comics" roundtable: Saladin Ahmed (author of Marvel's Black Bolt), Andre Batts (independent comic producer of Dreadlocks, owner/operator of the Motor City Black Age of Comics Convention), Dr. Matt Yockey (Associate Professor of Film at University of Toledo, editor of Make Ours Marvel: Media Convergence and a Comics Universe), and Dan Merritt (owner of Green Brain Comics, Dearborn, MI). 

CALL FOR PAPERS: Fan Studies Network 2018 Conference

Fan Studies Network 2018 Conference
29th & 30th June 2018
School of Journalism, Media & Cultural Studies (JOMEC), Cardiff University, UK

Keynote Speakers:

Dr Mark Duffett, Reader, University of Chester, UK
Professor C. Lee Harrington, Miami University, USA 

The Journal of Communications Media Studies is broad in focus and welcomes submissions on a variety of communication topics including (but not limited to) mass communication, international communication, educational technology, rhetorical studies, and organizational/corporate communication. Article submissions should be directed to Editor Zack Stiegler (stiegler@iup.edu) for consideration. All article submissions undergo double blind peer review.

Seeking papers for a panel on "Comics and the Midwest" at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature annual symposium, May 17-19, 2018 at the Kellogg Conference Center, East Lansing, MI.

Reminder Call for Papers

The First International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors

University of Wolverhampton in collaboration with Light House Media Centre, Wolverhampton and Redeemer University College, Ontario presents

Gothic, Ghastly, Corporeal and Creaturely: Tim Burton's Curious Bodies

Thursday 15th February 2018 at Light House Media Centre*, Wolverhampton

Keynote: Professor Adam Barkman, Redeemer University College, Ontario

TransScripts Volume 7, Spring 2018

“Digital Media and Society”
Submission deadline: January 5, 2018

TransScripts—the interdisciplinary online graduate student journal based at the University of California, Irvine—invites graduate students to submit their work for publication. The theme of our seventh volume is “Digital Media and Society.”