Transformative Works and Cultures, No. 1 (September 15, 2008) Editorial TWC Editor, Transforming academic and fan cultures Theory Abigail De Kosnik, Participatory democracy and Hillary Clinton’s marginalized fandom Louisa Ellen Stein, "Emotions-Only" versus "Special People": Genre in fan discourse Anne Kustritz, Painful pleasures: Sacrifice, consent, and the resignification of BDSM symbolism in "The Story of O" and "The Story of Obi" Praxis Francesca Coppa, Women, "Star Trek," and the early development of fannish vidding Catherine Tosenberger, "The epic love story of Sam and Dean": "Supernatural," queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction Madeline Ashby, Ownership, authority, and the body: Does antifanfic sentiment reflect posthuman anxiety? Symposium Michael A. Arnzen, The unlearning: Horror and transformative theory Sam Ford, Soap operas and the history of fan discussion And now, a word from the amateurs Rebecca Lucy Busker, On symposia: LiveJournal and the shape of fannish discourse Cathy Cupitt, Nothing but Net: When cultures collide Bob Rehak, Fan labor audio feature introduction Interview TWC Editor, Interview with Henry Jenkins Veruska Sabucco, Interview with Wu Ming TWC Editor, Interview with the Audre Lorde of the Rings Review Mary Dalton, "Teen television: Essays on programming and fandom," edited by Sharon Marie Ross and Louisa Ellen Stein Eve Marie Taggart, "Fans: The mirror of consumption," by Cornel Sandvoss Katarina Maria Hjärpe, "Cyberspaces of their own," by Rhiannon Bury Barna William Donovan, "The new influencers," by Paul Gillin Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), ISSN 1941-2258, is an online-only Gold Open Access publication of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works. TWC is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. Download date: March 15, 2017. For citation, please refer to the most recent version of articles at TWC. Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 1 (2008) Editorial Transforming academic and fan cultures TWC Editor [0.1] Abstract—Editorial for Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 1 (2008). [0.2] Keywords—Fan studies; Open access; OTW; TWC; Web 2.0 TWC Editor. 2008. "Transforming academic and fan cultures" [editorial]. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2008.0071. 1. Introduction [1.1] The field of fan studies has exploded within the last few years, and with the publication of this first issue of Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), we're pleased to be a part of it. We've seen a shift toward a more introspective acafan model of scholarship, with self­ identified fan­scholars publishing work in a variety of venues. The expansion of Web 2.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0) and a wired Generation Next (http://people­ press.org/report/300/a­portrait­of­generation­next) means that work on fan­related topics, particularly topics related to online interactivity, has immense relevance. [1.2] TWC, the Organization for Transformative Works (http://transformativeworks.org/) (OTW)'s academic journal, aims to focus on this kind of fan­based interactivity. OTW, a nonprofit organization founded by fans as an advocacy group, also seeks to collect, archive, and contextualize fan works, and the academic journal grows out of OTW's desire to create a theoretical framework that explains and contextualizes fan artifacts. We think that discussion of fans and the derivative artworks they create are culturally meaningful, and the time has come for the creation of a venue to permit discussion and widen the playing field. We want to provide a place where the fan and the scholar come together—perhaps in the same person, perhaps not, but always with an eye to analyzing fans and their contributions to culture. [1.3] The last 15 years have seen a disciplinary expansion. Early fan studies grew out of media studies and ethnography, but today, historians, folklorists, and literary scholars are just as likely to write about fans, bringing with them exciting new critical frameworks and different methodologies. We hope—as the first issue of TWC demonstrates—that the interdisciplinary scope of the journal establishes a space where scholars from different disciplines can meet and share their various approaches. It's also an invitation for others to see the breadth of the field, learn of its relevance to other areas of study, and add new ideas. [1.4] In addition to providing a forum for essays, TWC, as an online­only journal, has the potential to be excitingly multimedia. Essays in this issue contain screencaps, embedded videos, audio clips, and hyperlinks. Our reading of fair use (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/submissions#copyrightNotice) means that TWC is able to consider essays that other journals will not. We hope that this will inspire authors to write essays that wouldn't be publishable in other venues. 2. Open access [2.1] It isn't just the ideas expressed in this first issue's essays, reviews, and interviews that excite us—although they do, with submissions from acafans, journalists, and creative writers that run the gamut from personal essay to deeply theorized academic writing. Fan culture has long struggled with issues surrounding copyright, generating many a heated discussion about the legality of derivative artworks such as fanfic. In addition, access by nonacademics to academic texts has been made unnecessarily difficult. We think it's important that knowledge not be locked away behind university subscriptions and password­protected access. [2.2] TWC has therefore chosen to copyright under a Creative Commons Attribution­ Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc/3.0/). Our commitment to open access (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/editorialPolicies#openAccessPolicy) guarantees that the research TWC publishes will be available to all, including and especially the fan communities that are the subjects of many of the essays. TWC's copyright guarantees that the ideas presented in TWC are freely shareable: the content may be reposted anywhere with proper credit. To ensure that the content is as widely read as possible, TWC indexes through EBSCO (along with several other services) and files metadata with DOI (http://www.doi.org/) to make sure that the URLs to the essays will persist. In fact, we chose to use an open access system for our software as well: Open Journal Systems (http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs), which is part of the Public Knowledge Project. 3. Theory [3.1] The peer­reviewed Theory section of TWC is traditionally academic. In this issue, the Theory section exhibits the range of content and theoretical approaches within current fan studies. De Kosnik's analysis of the current political landscape, Stein's contribution to genre theory, Kustritz's engagement with gender and queer theory, and Coppa's documentation of an important part of fan vidding history show how broadly fans and fan theories can and must be understood. Abigail De Kosnik's "Participatory Democracy and Hillary Clinton's Marginalized Fandom" applies fan theoretical models to contemporary Democratic political behavior. She reads Obama supporters as a dominant fandom and explains the strong emotional responses among many Clinton voters through the lens of marginalized fandom. This essay demonstrates how fan theory can be utilized in other disciplinary arenas—here, applied to the political arena to explain patterns of behavior while calling for a critique that could strengthen participatory democracy. [3.2] Louisa Ellen Stein's "'Emotions­Only' Versus 'Special People': Genre in Fan Discourse" uses the case study of Roswell and its fan discourses to stage an intervention in genre theory. By arguing for genre as a set of discursive threads that include not only the TV text but also production and fan authorship, Stein suggests that such an understanding allows for more differentiated readings of fan conversations. The essay looks at the complex responses of Roswell fans to the story lines and marketing strategies, and it suggests the importance of listening to fans' complex engagements with genre discourse. [3.3] Anne Kustritz's "Painful Pleasures: Sacrifice, Consent, and the Resignification of BDSM Symbolism in The Story of O and The Story of Obi" uses a close reading of two short novels— one an erotic classic, the other an homage and fan classic—to explore the role of BDSM discourse and symbolism within general and fannish contexts. By focusing in particular on the feminist and queer inflections of the fan story, Kustritz suggests that BDSM in fan discourse offers a multidirectional interrogation of power and its erotic force within and outside of the narrative itself. [3.4] Francesca Coppa's "Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding" offers an historical overview of the beginnings of fannish vidding culture as well as an interpretive framework to understand fan vids. By tracing current fan vidding practices to an originary interpretive and identificatory place in the reception of Star Trek, Coppa locates fan vidding as a deeply feminist endeavor, one that melds the desiring body and the technological mind. Vids are fundamentally different from more contemporary user­generated content in the way the vids' creators engage critically and theoretically with the media text. Vids thus require a different analytic and interpretive approach, even as they partake in current remediation and remixing culture. 4. Praxis [4.1] TWC's