Cal writes: > > Andrea MacDonald, Nawal Lutfiyya, et al: > > The idea of fan communities resonates for the work that I am doing about the > history of entertainment. Is there a literature on the topic? A couple of > articles? Anything by way of a theoretical statement? > > As you might guess this is a new idea for me in this context. You have been > reading different things that I have, I guess. > I guess this is where I tell my history.... I started the project as an attempt to see if some of the major paradigms of popular culture and pleasure held up when applied to a specific group of viewers. (Adorno, Mulvey, Foucault, et al) I am unsatisfied with the applicability of this material when it concerns fandom, especially fandoms that create other products. That's what started this project since then.... I've been reading, Constance Penley on Slash, Henry Jenkins on Slash and fan communites. I even recently scored a copy of Lisa Lewis's (editor) book on Fans (not yet available this was a preview copy a prof had). I've been reading Cavell to get an idea of what is an audience, star etc. and I have been attempting to define what is a fan as well as what separates a fan who creates vs one who just watches. I've been reading many of the essays from Cultural Studies (ed. by Grossberg, Treichler, and Nelson) and I've been talking to everyone who is doing work on this to see if any of us is coming up with anything. I'm pretty sure that a good deal of what I have read, is part of the list that ran around during the fan/slash conversation a month ago. If you want the authors specifically from the collections I mentioned I could compile a list, it might just be easier for me to post my reading list and go from there. Andrea ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andrea MacDonald [log in to unmask] (Internet) [log in to unmask] (Bitnet) ------------------------------------------------------------------------