Coming Soon: Global Fandom Jamboree
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This year, I am putting this blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, into the service of an ambitious project. I have sought to map fandom and fandom studies across as many different countries as I can. I spent time this summer tapping my various networks seeking to identify early career scholars — advanced PhD candidates, junior faculty, independent scholars — who were doing work on fandom broadly defined to include cult media, comics, sports, and music — and who were willing to engage in conversations with other scholars doing similar work somewhere else on the planet. To date, the series has participants from almost 40 countries. The terminology here is challenging — global, transnational, transcultural will all crop up in our discussion here. I am thrilled by the scope and diversity of participation but also painfully aware of absences here.
Each week, we will present opening statements from 2-3 scholars doing loosely related work, whether organized around shared objects or themes, followed by several posts worth of back and forth conversations among them about whatever these statements inspired. The series is currently scheduled to run from Mid-October through late April, representing all together 25 pairings of participants. I am still open to further participants, but only if they come from countries which are not currently represented. The included countries so far are:
Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Bulgaria
Cameroon
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czechia
Denmark
Ecuador
Finland
France
Great Britain
Greece
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Korea
Lebanon
Malaysia
Mexico
The Netherlands
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
Spain
Syria
Thailand
Turkey
United States
Vietnam
I am especially interested in filling holes from the Global South . So if you would like to participate and represent those countries, reach out to me at hjenkins@usc.edu and I will do my best to get you paired off.
There’s much to look forward to in this epic conversation series. Based on the materials produced so far, there’s much we can learn about geographies of distribution, about the spaces of fandom in different countries, about issues of translation, about how smaller countries get absorbed into global fan cultures or exist as crossroads for multiple national fandoms, about process of localization, about the particularity of fandom as it operates in the islamic world, in post-socialist and socialist economies, and so much more. We will be talking about soccer, Turkish drama, K-Pop, Bollywood, Anime, games, Game of Throne, Hollywood, Netflix, comics, pop music, and so much more.
Keep an eye on this space. I am going to be taking a little downtime over the next few days but we will be back soon with the debut of the series and it won’t slow down much from there.
