Self-Promotion

I just got my copy of the book my Verbotene Liebe essay appears in! Check out the pretty cover.

My article is in part 2, “Constructing Identity in an Online, Cross-cultural World.” Here’s the full citation info.

Hellekson, Karen. 2012. Creating a fandom via YouTube: Verbotene Liebe and fansubbing. In New media literacies and participatory popular culture across borders, edited by Bronwyn T. Williams and Amy A. Zenger, 180–92. New York: Routledge.... read more »

I leave tomorrow for the Media in Transition 7 conference, the theme of which is Unstable Platforms: The Promise and Peril of Transition. My paper is called Academic Journals Online, and in a move that will surprise no one, I will talk about (among other things) Transformative Works and Cultures, the online-only Open Access Gold fan studies journal I coedit with Kristina Busse.... read more »

It’s out! Carlen Lavigne and Heather Marcovitch edited American Remakes of British Television: Transformations and Mistranslations, and I just received my contributor copy. My essay is entitled “Memory and the 1996 American Remake of Doctor Who.” Other TV shows discussed in the volume include American Idol, Cracker, What Not to Wear, Queer as Folk, The Office, Life on Mars, and Steptoe and Son. The essays are divided into three sections: Methods and Mechanics, Personal and Political, and Text and Context.... read more »

Journalist Matt “Darcey” Buttell, writing for the Web site So So Gay, interviewed me via e-mail for a story about slashing the characters in comic books: “Slash: Fan fiction’s sexist sub-culture.” Admittedly I know nothing about comic book slash, other than that Wolverine is hot, but I like Buttell’s thesis: that until comics’ TPTB get it together and introduce more canon gay characters, well, the unofficial stuff written by fans will have to do.... read more »

I’m pleased to announce that Practicing Science Fiction has been published and is available for sale from McFarland (the publisher) and Amazon.com. This edited volume is divided into four sections: Teaching, Reading, Media (that’s my section), and Women.... read more »

I just got my comp copy of Writing and the Digital Generation: Essays on New Media Rhetoric, edited by Heather Urbanski, which contains my essay “History, the Trace, and Fandom Wank.” My paper is about textual production as social and historical practice. I use a particular sample wank, “How NOT to date a celebrity,” as an exemplar to discuss notions of documentation, evidence, the trace, and community standards within the fan community.... read more »

I just received my contributor’s copy of Cinema Journal 48, no. 4 (2009). In it is an In Focus section edited by my Transformative Works and Cultures coeditor, Kristina Busse, about fandom and feminism, and I’ve contributed an essay about fan gift culture. Many of the other contributors are people I work with at TWC.

The In Focus section is available for download as PDF here. The contents are as follows:... read more »

Transformative Works and Cultures No. 3 has been released right on schedule.

The table of contents is here, and OTW’s announcement about it is here.... read more »

Madeline Ashby has started a blog that aims to round up details about research going on in fandom. Interested in seeing what sorts of questionnaires researchers are using? Wondering whether someone else already taken that great idea and started a project? Fandom Research wants to be the go-to place to answer these questions. It’s early days yet for the site, but the more people who contribute, the more useful the site will be.... read more »