#acafan stuff

[ludi-ling]

I am now going to have to rethink my model of fan information behaviour, because I hadn't counted on the fact that the source text might actually be produced IN ITS ENTIRETY by fans themselves. 🤔😭

[ludi-ling]

FanLIS23! Call for presentations (CFP)!

Hi everyone! Every year I co-host a virtual symposium called #FanLIS - 'Fan' as in fans and fandom, 'LIS' as in Library & Information Science. Basically, #FanLIS is about the intersection between fandom, fans and libraries, galleries, museums and archives.

The theme for next year's symposium is “Halliday Journals and holodecks: audiences and information in sci-fi fandoms”. Here's the link to the call for presentations: https://blogs.city.ac.uk/fanlis/fanlis-symposia/fanlis-2023/call-for-presentations/

The TL;DR version of the CFP is - if you have something you want to talk about on sci-fi fandoms and fanworks that is somehow linked to libraries, information, data, archives, cultural heritage institutions, whatever, please feel free to submit a proposal. We'll consider it even if you don't have an academic background. Academics need to hear more from fans anyway.

We're geared to students, fans and first-time presenters, and we try to make the event as informal as possible so people aren't intimidated. Hell, running this thing is intimidating, but somehow I make it work despite tech fails and all that jazz.

If you're a fan, you're welcome to submit a proposal. Details are in the link above. If you have an idea, but aren't sure whether it fits - DM me and we can discuss it. My asks are open too. We want this to be as open as possible. And we're also open to interesting formats, not just slideshows. Workshops, vids, comics, whatever, we'll consider it. 😊

[ludi-ling]

Fanfic printing and publishing survey!!!!!

Fanficcers of the world, I need your help!!!

Are you a fic author or reader who has either their own fic, or other author’s fic, printed, published and/or bound in book format??

If so, PLEASE can you fill out my survey???

It’s part of a small research study I’m doing into why we get  fic printed up all nice and pretty when reading fic on the internet is free and accessible to pretty much all and sundry.

The survey is pretty short and shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes, depending on how much you put into some of the answers.

I’d REALLY appreciate it!

Alas, I can no offer no rewards but my undying gratitude. And cookies.

[chujo-hime]

It’s time to play every academic’s favorite guessing game!

How many times have I downloaded this exact same article onto my computer? 

[chujo-hime]

It looks like all of McFarland Publishing’s books are on sale for $3.99 on Google Play. They publish a lot of academic books on comic books and I’ve listed the ones that are just about Marvel, but check out their website because they have thematic collections that include essays on individual Marvel characters.

The Ages of the Avengers

The Ages of the Incredible Hulk 

The Ages of Iron Man 

The Ages of the X-Men 

Captain America and the Struggle of the Superhero  

Marvel Comics’ Civil War and the Age of Terror

Marvel Comics into Film 

Marvel Graphic Novels and Related Publications

Web-Spinning Heroics 

[chujo-hime]

softpunkbucky said: tbh i’m getting the heebie jeebies thinking about it?? like??? i haven’t read it yeah but western fans typically don’t see how imperialist it is esp. re: japan in asia and a western lens to that gives me the heebs 

you can't conflate Western academics working in anime studies with average Western fans' interpretation of anime, though. I mean, I'm not familiar with this author's work, but the book was published by Palgrave, not one of the pseudo-academic/fan publishers like McFarland. I googled the author and her research interests includes international animation, postcolonial theory, and transnational fandom studies. I haven't kept up with the literature since I left BGSU, but there's a large body of work on the reception of Japanese anime in other East Asian countries and this was long before Hetalia showed up on the scene. thb I can't see how you could analyses the transnational fandom for the series and not include it's reception in South Korea, Taiwan, and China.

[chujo-hime]

ok so because I'm a nerd, I was checking out what's new comic/manga/anime studies books have come out recently when something caught my eye:

and I'm like, wait what? Is that??

OH MY GOD IT IS

Western Academia has finally gotten around to publishing work about Hetalia

[chujo-hime]

Just want to start by saying this whole berkeley class with the mandated comments thing is horrifying (I dove briefly into the comments on waldorph's fic and I don't even know how I would react to getting those kinds of comments on my own fic). I'm curious though about your comment on engaging with fan creators only at the dissertation level. I'm looking into joining a research group that's actually part of the same lab Henry Jenkins is in, which is doing research on fan engagement with

the show Empire (and its music), Ellen, and Marvel, all with the blessing and more importantly, money from the aforementioned properties. Part of this is going onto social media sites and engaging with the fandom. I went to one meeting that rambled on about their ‘engagement groups’ but there didn’t seem to be much guidance on how they wanted us to interact with the fans. The group is mostly undergrads and the grad student I talked to didn’t even ask me anything besides my name and what property I want to look at (no resume either). On the one hand, I think it’s important that companies are doing this kind of research and really getting to know their fan base because the more accurate picture they have, the better for everyone, I think. But it also feels like there should be some kind of oversight on this? Like, we do have to get the actual surveys we’re giving focus groups approved. It seems just as valid to have the same kind of process for engaging with fans online.

hmm…without knowing more it’s hard to say if that project is really more fandom studies, which typically looks at the community/community practices, or more audience research, which tends to look at how individuals engage with media. To steal a phrase from flange5’s post, the former is the ‘anthropology of fandom’ while the latter is more akin to market research and by its nature requires less specialized experience than would be needed to embed oneself into a community in order to conduct research.

If this is a research project that is being supported by corporate money, then this is most definitely being directed by a faculty member, not a grad student doing their thesis. The grad student’s either getting paid through work study or a grant, or most likely it’s part of their assistantship, but either way they’re only on the middle of the totem pole between you and the academic. My guess is that they are trying to weed out the people who aren’t really serious before going deeper into what you’ll be doing. But to answer your main question, yes there is definitely going to be oversight. Now every school’s IRB process is different, so I can’t say if USC’s has looked over every single survey but if nothing else the process that you’ll be instructed in and the guidelines given to you in how to conduct the research will have been approved by the IRB