Apart from the regular reading group meetings, we also organise events such as a book launch, talk, and workshop. Watch this space for more upcoming events!
Previous Events
Date: 1 March 2024
Time: 9.30 am – 5.00 pm
Venue: Music Room, The Storey, Lancaster, LA1 1TH
Keynote Speaker: Dr Bethan Jones
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fan-studies-and-design-symposium-tickets-780627396557
Fan studies and design are both relatively young disciplines, and ones which are familiar with interdisciplinarity, and with co-production and participation. Many fans take part in activities which might be considered design; from production of creative outputs such as fanvids and fanart, to community-led projects for activism, and creating platforms such as Archive of Our Own.
The purpose of this symposium is to bring together fan studies scholars and design researchers to discuss where new exciting research may emerge at the intersection of these two areas. We invite those who work in fan studies, and those who work in design research, or those who are already working between these areas. This joint expertise is not required, only a curiosity about one or both areas.
Symposium Programme
9:00 Arrival and coffee
9:30 Welcome
9:45 – 10:45 Keynote: Dr Bethan Jones
10:45 – 11:45 Panel Discussion: Digital contexts
- Naomi Jacobs
- Suzanne Black
- Violet Owens
- Chris Elsden
11:45 – 12:00 Coffee break
12:00-13:00 Panel Discussion: Material contexts
- Eva Cheuk-Yin Li
- Sejal Changede
- Matt Hills
- Sabina Fazli
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 17:00 Zine-making workshop
Date: 1 February 2024
Time: 2:00-3:00pm (UK Time)
Speaker: Dr Judith May Fathallah, Lancaster University
Format: Online on Microsoft Teams
Registration: Please register here
At this online launch event, Judith May Fathallah will discuss the process of researching, writing and publishing her new open-access book, Killer Fandom. There will be time for questions and answers following.
Killer Fandom is the first long-form treatment of serial killer fandom. Fan studies have mostly ignored this most moralized form of fandom, as a stigmatized Bad Other in implicit tension with the field’s successful campaign to recuperate the broader fan category. Yet serial killer fandom, as Judith May Fathallah shows in the book, can be usefully studied with many of the field’s leading analytic frameworks. After tracing the pre-digital history of fans, mediated celebrity, and killers, Fathallah examines contemporary fandom through the lens of textual poaching, affective community, subcultural capital, and play. With close readings of fan posts, comments, and mashups on Tumblr, TikTok, and YouTube, alongside documentaries, podcasts, and a thriving “murderabilia” industry, Killer Fandom argues that this fan culture is, in many ways, hard to distinguish from more “mainstream” fandoms. Fan creations around Aileen Wuornos, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Richard Ramirez, among others, demonstrate a complex and shifting stance toward their objects—marked by parodic humour and irony in many cases. Killer Fandom ultimately questions—given our crime- and violence-saturated media culture—whether it makes sense to set Dahmer and Wuornos “fans” apart from the rest of us.
Killer Fandom is published Open Access by mediastudies.press, an open-access publisher for the media and communication studies fields. Launched in 2019, the press is nonprofit and scholar-led. Killer Fandom is available online, and as a free download in PDF and ePub. A paperback version is also available.
Judith Fathallah is a Research and Outreach Associate at Lancaster University and a Research Fellow at Coventry University. Her research interests include new media, media convergence, digital literacies and fan and subcultures in addition to Open Access publishing. For the past 3.5 years she has worked on the creation and launch of the Open Book Collective, and on communal forms of governance.
FAN STUDIES LANCASTER/ANLU/TAP –
Fan/Audience Studies Joint Seminar Series
Date: 18 January 2024
Time: 1:00-2:30 pm (UK Time)
Speaker: Dr Kirsty Sedgman, University of Bristol
Link to join the seminar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85791361402
In order to survive, the arts need to reverse the trend that sees audiences diminishing, ageing, and relatively homogenous. In order to thrive, we need first to understand what audiences want – and then to turn spectators into fans. In this talk, Dr Kirsty Sedgman asks why fandom in the arts has often been ignored or dismissed over history by the very people who should welcome it – with everyone from the 19th century Matinee Girls to today’s Phans sneered at for liking the wrong kind of theatre, or for enjoying things in the wrong way, or even for damaging the cultural experience itself. This talk is a call to arms to take fans seriously: by dismantling the ableist, classist, racist structures that exclude marginalised audiences, and welcoming genuine demonstrations of enjoyment, pleasure, and joy.
Speaker’s Bio
An award-winning cultural studies scholar based at the University of Bristol, Dr Kirsty Sedgman has spent her career studying how we construct and maintain our competing value systems, working out how people can live side by side in the same world yet come to understand it in such totally different ways. Her research asks how audiences find value in cultural participation. How are these experiences made meaningful within their lives?
Kirsty is the author of numerous academic publications and is Editor of the Routledge book series in Audience Research. She has also spoken on the BBC’s Front Row and World Service programmes, at BroadwayCon in New York and IETM in Croatia, and on numerous podcasts and local radio shows. Her writing has appeared in The Stage, Exeunt, and the BBC’s Expert Network, and her work has featured in outlets like the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the New York Times.