13.05 - Special Issue: Aca-Fandom 
Telling Tastes: (Re)producing Distinction in Popular Media Studies
Eve Ng / University of Massachusetts-Amherst(2)
What we study and how we learn to talk about it is productive of our identities along mostly covert dimensions of power. How do scholars distinguish themselves from the mainstream critics?
Revisiting Fandom in Africa
Olivier J. Tchouaffe / Southwestern University
The application of fandom and its resources is not the same in all cultures, and African fans might not be recognized as legitimate fans. The point of this piece is to demonstrate that there is a unifying figure of American domination of mass culture.
Embracing the “Overly Confessional:” Scholar-Fandom and Approaches to Personal Research
Tom Phillips / University of East Anglia
A scholar argues that embracing an “overly confessional” approach to his academic writing is integral to the fidelity of his research.
The Gathering of the Juggalos and the Peculiar Sanctity of Fandom
Michael Dwyer / Arcadia University
There has been a peculiar framing of fan practices as inherently admirable, or at least deserving of respect, throughout recent scholarship on fandom. Yet some fan practices are repugnant. The Gathering of the Juggalos is the scene of questionable fan practices contrary to the noble portrait of fandom elaborated by several scholars.
More in this category:
- Stop Being an Elitist, and Start Being an Elitist
David Jenemann / University of Vermont - We Have Met the Fans, and They Are Us: In Defense of Aca-Fans and Scholars
Catherine Coker and Candace Benefiel / Texas A&M - Fandom In/As the Academy
Paul Booth / DePaul University - “We are all together:” Fan Studies and Performance
Jen Gunnels / New York Review of Science Fiction and M. Flourish Klink / MIT - Special Issue: Revisiting Aca-Fandom