Transformative Works and Cultures CFP: Centering Blackness in Fan Studies (3/15/2024; 1/1/2023)
Editors: Alfred L. Martin, Jr. and Matt Griffin
https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement/view/117This
special issue centers Blackness in fandom studies. Fandom studies has
gestured toward race generally, and Blackness in particular, from its
alleged white center while always keeping race at its margin. It has
largely co-opted the language of race, difference, and diversity from
the margins and recentered it around white geeks and white women.
Indeed, fandom studies has done lots of things—except deal with its race
problem. But as Toni Morrison (1975) asserts, that is the work of
racism: it keeps those at the margins busy, trying to prove that they
deserve a seat at the center table. In this way, those considered
marginal expend energy trying to be granted access to the center while
citing, reifying, and expanding the supposed universality of the center
that fails to engage the margin because it is too particular. If, as the
title of Audre Lorde’s famous 1984 essay reminds us, “The Master’s
Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” then it is time to
willfully ignore white fandoms, just as Black fandoms have been
willfully ignored.
For this special issue, we
seek to privilege and celebrate Blackness, not as a comparative but as
enough on its own. We want essays that build on the relatively small but
groundbreaking scholarly work that centers Black fandoms, including
work on young Black male (Brown 2000) and female (Whaley 2015) comic
readers; Black gay sitcom fans (Martin 2021a); Black fan “defense
squads” that protect fictional characters’ Blackness (Warner 2018);
Black fan labor (Warner 2015); Black antifandom (Martin 2019b); Black
fans’ enclaving practices (Florini 2019b); Black female music fans
(Edgar and Toone 2019); and Black acafans (Wanzo 2015). It also engages
and with and builds on our Black feminist foremothers, including bell
hooks (1992), Jacqueline Bobo (1995), and Robin Means Coleman (1998),
who showed us ways to think about how Black audiences engage with media.
This corpus of work on Black audiences and fandoms provides a base for
further theorization about the experiences and meanings of Black fandom.
We encourage work that engages, nuances, and challenges this
foundational work, leading to novel reconsiderations of how fan studies
defines and understands Black fandoms.
We
invite submissions that contribute to a conversation that centers Black
audiences, fans, antifans, and global Blackness itself. We are not
interested in comparative studies of Black fandom practices, because
Blackness is enough. This issue seeks to center Blackness and
(anti)fandom in all of its permutations. We hope the following suggested
topics will inspire wide-ranging responses.
Black folks and “doing” fandom.
Black fans and deployment of (anti)fandom.
Black fan practices imbricated in a politics of representation.
Affective Black fandoms.
The politics of Black (anti)fandoms.
Interactions between Black fans and media producers.
Audience/fan response to Black-cast remakes and recasting non-Black-cast texts with Black actors.
Black fandoms of non-Black-cast media.
Blackness and enclaving.
Black music fandom.
Black sports fandom.
Black fandom and labor.
Black fandom and affect.
Black antifandom and hate.
Global Black fandoms.
Black fandom and contemporary or historical politics.
Mediated constructions of Blackness.
Black fandoms and celebrities/parasocial relationships.
Black queer fandom.
Disabled Black fandom.
Case studies of specific texts related to Black fandom.
Historical and archival accounts of Black fandom.
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