Global Fandom Jamboree: Anastasia Rossinskaya
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Screenshots of TV newsreel (360 TV channel) about all-Russia soccer fans protest actions against police violence. The posters say “A fan is not a criminal”.
https://youtu.be/4FHioPMBGYo
Let me start with a short introduction. I am a senior researcher in Moscow City University, Russia. I study informal educational practices and develop methods of teaching using cultural institutions, media, city environment, and community resources.
Russian editions of SKAM scripts are sold in plastic cases and marked 18+ according to laws that prohibit to mention LGBT characters in books for people under 18 years old. People under 18 cannot buy these books legally. Photo by A.Rossinskaya
My interest in fan studies started in 2019 when I came across SKAM youth TV show and its universe of remakes and consequently joined its Russian and international fandom. Very soon it became clear that as a fan I cannot put aside my professional view as an educator. I started to analyze the fandom, fans’ activities, and SKAM universe through the prism of my academic interest in education. As a result, I discovered a lot of educational and teaching potential in both the show and its fandom activities. I will touch upon them later. First, I would like to give a short overview of Russian fan studies.
I started my research by looking around and trying to locate academic works on fan practices, fandoms, and fanfiction in Russia. It transpired that there has been relatively little done in this field apart from works by Natalia Samutina[1] (1972-2021), who systematically studied Russian fandoms of Harry Potter and manga. Most other publications are sporadic works. The only exclusion is made by the studies of sports fans, especially soccer fans. Keyword search for “fan” on the largest Russian scientific e-library Cyberleninka brought back 91 articles published in 2011-2021. 74 of them discuss soccer fans, mostly legal aspects that focus on topics of crime and aggression among fans. It also became apparent that a substantial part of soccer fan studies is done in the psychological field. Most of them as well discuss the origins of aggressive fan behavior or how to deal with it. Some linguistic studies focus on soccer fan folklore and forms of verbal abuse that soccer fans use. This focus on the negative aspects of sports fandoms may stem from the perception of fans as a destructive group of young people inherited from the Soviet period when any youth activity not sanctioned by the communist authorities was considered potentially dangerous for the state.
Books and movies fandoms have also attracted some interest from Russian linguists and literary scholars. Besides seminal works by Natalia Samutina[2], some articles focus on stylistic, genre, and linguistic specifics of fanfiction. Most researchers are interested in popular fandoms like Harry Potter, Tolkien, and BBC’s Sherlock. There has also been some research on fanfiction for XIX century classical Russian literature (e.g. little known to Western readers author A.K. Tolstoy, not to be mistaken for Leo Tolstoy) as well as poets of the beginning of the XXth century such as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergey Yesenin.
Harry Potter fan graffiti in Ivanovo “Harry will win!”. Photo by A. Rossinskaya
In the last ten years, only five Ph.D. dissertations were defended on fan studies in Russia. Three of them are written on sports fans and two are on fanfiction. They reflect the trends I mentioned above. If we look at students’ theses, we won’t see many works either. In HSE University, one of Russia’s leading universities, only nine theses (of 61 thousand total) were written on fan studies during 2013-2021: four bachelors’ and five masters’. Among them seven were on fandom activities, one about sports fans and one focused on fanfiction. In MCU out of 13 thousand bachelors’ and masters’ theses, defended between 2015-2021, only four bachelors’ were written on fan studies, three of them on fanfiction and one on sports fans. This is a very small number for such a large country as Russia.
How can this limitation be explained? Regrettably, the very word “fan” (Rus. fanat) in the Russian language has very strong negative connotations of fanaticism, radicalism, intolerance, and violence. Moreover, fan studies in Russia often come into conflict with the official stance and state policies on issues like family and sexuality. For example, LGBTQ+ topics are not allowed to be discussed with or in the presence of children under 18, and public demonstration of the so-called ‘non-traditional relationships’ (the term coined by and used in Russian legislation) or anything associated with them (e.g. a rainbow flag) is prohibited by several federal laws. For these reasons scholars who study fan practices and fandoms often hide their research interest under less provocative terms such as poklonnik (admirer) or lyubitel’ (fancier, enthusiast) instead of fanat (fan) or soobschestvo (community) instead of fandom. Such scholastic camouflage makes it very difficult to conduct fan studies discourse in Russia as well as for researchers to find other scholars with similar interests.
My interest in fan studies is heavily influenced by my main field of research – education, to be exact – informal educational practices and the possibility to implement them into formal and non-formal education. Therefore, while watching SKAM and its remakes, observing its fandom, and participating in its activities, I focus on the following questions:
· To what extent participating in fandoms is an educational experience?
· Which fan activities can be utilized in formal and non-formal education and how?
· How may educational content be successfully included in youth shows without being overly didactic?
I approach the first two questions with the 21st-century skills concept scale. My observations show that participating in fandom requires cognitive, communicative, collaborative, and creative skills – the so-called 4Cs, the core of the 21st-century skills model. It is possible to theorize fandoms as mutual-teaching and self-educating communities where people master these skills with the help and encouragement of fellow fans. Thus, fandoms can be seen as a potentially rich resource to teach the 4Cs. This is especially pertinent in Russia where teaching these skills in schools is underdeveloped or non-existent even though it is proclaimed among the goals of education.
Formal school education in the Russian Federation is a highly centralized system. Federal State Educational Standards define the goals students must achieve at each stage of education – elementary, middle school, and high school. These goals include three types of achievements: acquiring subject knowledge and skills, acquiring transferable skills, and personal development. While Russian teachers have a lot of experience in teaching subject knowledge and skills, the other two goals present a challenge for many of them. This can be explained by the relative novelty of these requirements, lack of well-developed teaching materials for regular classrooms, and lack of time allocated to teach them. Thus, there is an acute need for educators in Russia to acquire new ways to teach 21st-century skills which are both effective and practical. I believe fandom practices may serve as a useful tool for teachers to meet this need.
I will be happy to discuss the educational side of fandom activities and youth TV shows with fellow scholars from around the world.
Anastasia Rossinskaya, Ed.D., is a senior researcher in the Laboratory of Sociocultural Practices, Research Institute of Urban Studies and Global Education, Moscow City University, Moscow, Russia. She is the program director of the Master’s program ‘Teacher-researcher’ in MCU and a guest lecturer at the Institute of Education, HSE University, Moscow, Russia.
[1] Samutina, N. (2019). Japanese manga in Russia: Introduction to research on reading practices. NOVOE LITERATURNOE OBOZRENIE, (160), 307-321.
[2] Samutina, N. (2013). The Great Female Readers: Fan Fiction as a Literary Experience. Russian Sociological Review 12 (3):137-194.
Samutina N. (2016) Fan fiction as world-building: transformative reception in crossover writing, Continuum, 30:4, 433-450, DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2016.1141863.
Samutina N. (2017) Emotional landscapes of reading: fan fiction in the context of contemporary reading practices. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 2017;20(3):253-269. doi:10.1177/1367877916628238.
