East Asian pop culture has been increasingly in vogue across the globe since the 1990s, and the Hallyu wave of the early 2000s has further propelled the momentum of this movement. With the growth of this incredible cultural enterprise arose the global fandoms, paving way to the birth of novel fan cultures and traditions and, furthermore, to a global tribe of its own. This presence, which is felt internationally, calls for a space of parrhesia, of breaching certain boundaries, of destroying normative assumptions, of suggesting deviancies, of reclaiming spaces, and so on. The BTS revolution exemplifies this changing geo-cultural flux rather well. In such a situation, it becomes imperative to study the pluralities of identity formation, gender, and culture as intersectional propensities — not parallel to one another but overlapping as well as interconnecting.

The positioning of East Asian Pop Culture as a point of mediation between sensitive issues in relation to queer identities, sexualities, mental health issues, cyberbullying, and such other socio-culturally volatile matters vests in them an immense amount of authority, global sanction, and competence. For instance, many fans challenge normative gender roles as well as binary positions using the examples of Asian pop-stars. Chinese and Korean fan communities use social media platforms to fight against societal issues, urging social change through their activism. This ability of fandoms as communities to accommodate these pluralities makes it a pertinent area of humanities research.

The proposed book will explore the ways in which East Asian pop culture fandoms are shaping our understanding of identity formation and challenging traditional notions of gender and culture. We invite scholarly papers from researchers and experts in the field of Fandom Studies as well as fans of East Asian Popular Culture. We are looking forward to contributions which focus on the field of East Asian pop culture studies by offering new insights into the intersectional nature of identity formation, gender, and culture in fandoms.

We are planning to publish the book under a renowned publishing house and the deadlines are as follows:

Submission of abstracts along with a brief bio-note: April 15th, 2024

Selection of abstracts: April 30th, 2024

Final paper submission: June 5th, 2024

Review of the papers: June 30th, 2024

Final submission of papers with corrections: July 31st, 2024.

Please send your submissions to intersectionalfandomstudies@gmail.com.