Annotated Bibliography of Academic Resources on Fandom and Fan Fiction
compiled by Vehemently

The works cited below are only those which I have read and think germane to fandom and fanfic questions. You may note a certain emphasis on women and gender study; the statistical makeup of the fandom for which I write and the historical conflation of fanfic with women's involvement in fandom both demand such a focus. Suggestions are welcome, but my ability to obtain a suggested work and my own evaluation of it will be factors in a work's inclusion.

 

Aulfrey, Penelope. Petrarch's Apes: Originality, Plagiarism and Copyright Principles within Visual Culture MIT Media-in-Transition Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 8, 1999.
http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/articles/index_alfrey.html

A dense, shrewd argument about the nature of copyright in the context of art and industry. Provides legal terms for copyright argument, focussing on painting and sculpture but with new media images implicit.

Bacon-Smith, Camille. Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1992.

Considered in many ways the ur-text of fandom study, this is a personal odyssey into the fan practices of Star Trek, from collecting, to convention attendance, to filking, writing and fan art. I found it old-fashioned in many ways, not just in that it predates most online fandom, but in its emphasis on women's writing, community and fantasy life as a startling new occurrence.

Cicioni, Mirna. "Male Pair-Bonds and Female Desire in Fan Slash Writing," in Harris, Cheryl, ed. Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity. Cresskill, NY: Hampton Press. 1998.

A key article in the study of slash writing, this work examines the slash that is fallout from male-male 'buddy' shows. (Under observation are The Professionals, a sort of British Starsky and Hutch, and Inspector Morse.) Cicioni plots the placement of the feminine perspective in the romanticization of the 'buddy' bond. Her arguments can be easily adapted to male-female bonds as well, in that she and the writers she studies focus on a romanticization fraught with gender roles and often culminating in a de facto 'marriage'. (Whether you still find her arguments entirely relevant to the current trends of slash, and to your specific fandom, may be an individual value judgement.)

Clerc, Susan. "Estrogen Brigades and 'Big Tits' Threads: Media Fandom Online and Off," in Cherny, Lynn and Elizabeth Reba Weise, eds. Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seattle: Seal Press, 1996.

While somewhat marred by a rah-rah-women's-culture tone, this article covers the details of a composite 'Mary Sue' arriving on the internet and describes the standard fandom flame-a-thons of USENET from a specifically gendered viewpoint. Statistics on who posts how often, and how threads are followed up, help explain the trend towards mailing lists and other, more private ways for women to get together and get on with being a fan. Statistics are four years old, but I bet you'll recognize some of the low-IQ tactics of USENET alt.tv.* groups. Thanks to Lynn Cherny for pointing this work out to me.

Cline, Cheryl. "Essays from Bitch: The Women's Rock Newsletter with Bite," in Lewis, Lisa, ed. The Adoring Audience. New York: Routledge. 1991.

A clever, witty and confessional article approaching fandom from the rock music perspective. This article discusses the derogatory meanings of fandom, especially from a woman's perspective in the male-dominated rock world, interrogating the 'groupie' stereotype.

Cumberland, Sharon. Private Uses of Cyberspace: Women, Desire, and Fan Culture MIT Media-in-Transition Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 8, 1999.
http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/articles/index_cumberland.html

Alternately charming and gruesomely naive, this little article didn't tell me anything new about women and sexual writing within fandoms. I include it as evidence of the academy taking notice of fan erotic practices and as a depressing marker of how far academic discussion of sex-oriented fanfic has come -- and how much further it needs to go.

Dery, Mark. Slashing the Borg: Resistance is Fertile.
http://www.dds.nl/~n5m/texts/markdery.htm

A witty and surprising article on Star Trek slash and the contradictory pleasures of gay erotica. Exploring what Dery calls the tension of 'Nazi cheesecake' imagery in the twin concepts of mechanization and domination, the work both critically and playfully loosens that tight Starfleet collar.

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Random House. 1994.

Feminism didn't happen overnight. A readable, fast-paced analysis of television from the boomer perspective, showing how average viewers could decode Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie for their feminist and anti-feminist messages.

Dyer, Richard. "Don't Look Now: The Male Pin-Up," in Caughie, John and Anette Kuhn, series eds. The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality. New York: Routledge. 1992.

Tackling the industry of tittilation for straight women, Dyer argues that that the concept of being a lust object -- sitting still for someone else to look at -- conflicts with standard stereotypes of masculinity. This article says perhaps more about hysterical masculine display than about women's tastes, but it's worth a look nonetheless.

Ehrenreich, Barbara, et al. "Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun," in Lewis, Lisa, ed. The Adoring Audience. New York: Routledge. 1991.

An illuminating take on why adolescent girls went bananas in 1964, this article breaks down the social pressures high school girls faced as they foresaw the gender-based strictures of adulthood. Recasts Beatle frenzy as an impulsive groundswell of feminist rebellion.

Fiske, John. "The Cultural Economy of Fandom," in Lewis, Lisa, ed. The Adoring Audience. New York: Routledge. 1991.

A complicated study of the ways that fandom works parallel to, and in opposition to, the mainstream measures of power like money, race and gender. As sites for communal participation, and especially as the raw materials for a fan's own cultural productions -- from fanfic to dressing like Madonna -- popular culture and the 'shadow economy' of fans provide a space for experimentation removed from traditional social barriers. A rewarding if at times difficult read.

Gledhill, Christine. "Pleasureable Negotiations." Originally published in Pribram, D., ed. Female Spectators. London: Verso, 1988. Excerpted in Storey, John, ed. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: a Reader. 2nd ed. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. 1998.

Discusses the contrast of commerical and artistic impulses both in the creation and in the reception of a work of television (Cagney and Lacey).

Green, Karen and Tristan Taormino, eds. A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World: Writings from the Girl Zine Revolution. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. 1997.

A collection of zine excerpts, many introduced by their authors. Deeply personal and often explicitly sexual, these readings are a prime example of zine writing. Includes a section on fandom. With a list of contributors and a Girl Zine Reference Guide.

Green, Shoshanna, et al. "Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking: Selections from The Terra Nostra Underground and Strange Bedfellows," in Harris, Cheryl, ed. Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity. Cresskill, NY: Hampton Press. 1998.

An amusing and enlightening article which argues primarily by quoting at length the discussions of a slash-oriented fanzine. Ranges from the fandom- specific to broader questions of pornography for women.

Grossberg, Lawrence. "Is there a Fan in the House?: The Affective Sensibility of Fandom," in Lewis, Lisa, ed. The Adoring Audience. New York: Routledge. 1991.

What, exactly, makes a fan? Is it the 'legitimacy' of the product to whom the fan is devoted? Is a fan an elite sort of consumer who can rework a product, as opposed to mundane, passive consumers? Or is it way more complicated than that? Grossberg coherently interrogates both the dismissive assumptions of non-fans and the superior assumptions of fans to arrive at a sense of the fan situated within a culture. An engrossing and pleasant read.

Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge. 1992.

A very well written, in-depth and sympathetic description of fan practices, including art, filking, fiction and song tapes. Provides deep analysis of the psychology of fandom and fan fiction, working from Star Trek, The Professionals, Beauty and the Beast, and Doctor Who perspectives. It should be noted that this volume predates both The X-Files and the critical mass of online communication; I have corresponded with the author and he agrees that a new edition is warranted but does not currently have plans to create one. With appendix, bibliography and index.

Jenkins, Henry. Congressional Testimony on Media Violence. The text of testimony presented before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Washington, D.C., May 4, 1999.
http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/articles/index_dc.html

An impassioned argument in response to Congressional stereotyping of violent teenaged behavior, delivered very soon after the multiple murders at Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado. Provides a clear analysis of the complexity of a consumer's relationship to the commercial products he consumes, dismissing that convenient 'see violence = do violence' equation of popular psychology.

Lewis, Patricia Scheiern. "Pass the Crisco, Spock," formerly available from the Columbia University web site. No longer to be found online (as far as I can tell); please email me if you would like a copy.

I may go to Hell if I admit that I include this article largely for its great title. Actually, it's a reasonable roundup of slash history and criticism, offering little that's new, but boiling down and examining several of the authors on this bibliography.

MacDonald, Andrea. "Uncertain Utopia: Science Fiction Media Fandom & Computer Mediated Communication," in Harris, Cheryl, ed. Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity. Cresskill, NY: Hampton Press. 1998.

MacDonald takes a hard look at the utopian pronouncements of online culture and finds that the online world in many ways replicates RL, including hierarchies of respect and attention, cliques and communities, gossip and 'official' information. This examination of USENET and mailing lists mines the space between fandom study and computer mediated communication study for a clever assessment of fandom today.

Neale, Steve. "Masculinity as Spectacle," in Caughie, John and Anette Kuhn, series eds. The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality. New York: Routledge. 1992.

The power of looking and being looked at are the focus of this article, taking a long, evaluative look at what markers signify the heterosexual male. Film analysis tradition has it that being the object of the gaze is a position of lesser power, but the iconography of the lone, silent hero suggests that the relationship between viewer and viewed is more complex. A dense, Freudian article, best read with some film criticism under your belt.

Penley, Constance. NASA / Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America. New York: Verso. 1995.

Meditations on science, culture, and their meeting points. I have found Penley abrasive in some works, but worth reading always. Her perspective is somewhat pie-in-the-sky feminist, but a major voice in fandom study. And check out that drawing of Kirk/Spock in the pictures section. Embarrassing Borders Bookstore employees everywhere.

Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1984.

An historical examination of women's reading practices and how they differ from cultural judgements about great works. Sort of a background work for a lot of current fandom study and study of women's cultural practices.

Roberts, T. L. "Are Newsgroups Virtual Communities?" in ACM SIGCHI. [Association for Computing Machinery, Special Interest Group: Computer-Human Interaction]. 1998.

Don't let the excessively technical journal put you off this article. Via simple techniques like interview, surveys and the charting of topicality in newsgroups, this author broke down USENET by volume of posts, (apparent) gender of poster, and topic of group, and found that in some instances, one could indeed call a newsgroups a 'community' without sarcasm.

Stacey, Jackie. "Desperately Seeking Difference," in Caughie, John and Anette Kuhn, series eds. The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality. New York: Routledge. 1992.

If the male viewer is the default, what does a woman see when she looks? Discusses both the woman looking at a cultural product, and the female-to-female gaze within a film, examining All About Eve and Desperately Seeking Susan.

Stewart Millar, Melanie. Cracking the Gender Code: Who Rules the Wired World? Toronto: Second Story Press. 1998.

Not specifically about fandom, this volume argues -- rather pessimistically -- about women's roles and stereotypes in the online world. Judge for yourself whether her analysis of feminism and pornography on the internet rings true. With glossary, bibliography and index.

Tushnet, Rebecca. Legal Fictions: Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law. Originally published in the Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal in 1997, now available on the author's web site.
http://www.tushnet.com/law/fanficarticle.html

Is fanfic a violation of copyright? Do we need all those disclaimers in the headers? This article breaks down the concepts of copyright in readable legal language. In the tangled history of 'fair use' exceptions, Tushnet suggests that fanfic may indeed be perfectly legal, and by the bye answers the question of why that legality has never been set forth in a courtroom.

General Resources

MIT Media-in-Transition.
http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/

Scholarly articles about all things web and cyberspace, with several key articles about science fiction, television, new media and fandom.

Nicholas, K. S. Fan Fiction on the Net.
http://members.aol.com/KSNicholas/fanfic/fanfic.html

A general clearinghouse of links for a wide variety of fandoms, including manga, comics and movies as well as television. Well-organized and nonjudgemental, this web site is not consistently updated but it provides essays and articles, authors' website links, and copyright information for both gen and slash fanfic.

Prosser, K. Katherine and Lisa Swope. The Quick and Dirty Guide to Fanzine Publishing.
http://www.oocities.org/Hollywood/9015/zinefx.htm

Exactly what the title says it is. A site chock full of practical advice for starting a (paper) fanzine.

Storey, John. ed. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: a Reader. 2nd ed. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. 1998.

A book of articles about different aspects of popular culture analysis, with a tendency to stress British culture. With separate sections about feminism, Marxism and postmodernism, this work is primarily academic, with the reading at times dry and at times screamingly abstruse. Includes a great deal of essential background reading for study of popular (and hence fan) culture, but articles are often excerpted rather than reprinted completely. With bibliography and index.

Thanks to Katie King at the University of Maryland for exposing me to a number of the sources discussed above.