Synopses & Reviews
We are all fans. Whether we log on to Web sites to scrutinize the latest plot turns in
Lost, “stalk” our favorite celebrities on
Gawker, attend gaming conventions, or simply wait with bated breath for the newest
Harry Potter novel—each of us is a fan. Fandom extends beyond television and film to literature, opera, sports, and pop music, and encompasses both high and low culture.
Fandom brings together leading scholars to examine fans, their practices, and their favorite texts. This unparalleled selection of original essays examines instances across the spectrum of modern cultural consumption from Karl Marx to Paris Hilton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer to backyard wrestling, Bach fugues to Bollywood cinema¸ and nineteenth-century concert halls to computer gaming. Contributors examine fans of high cultural texts and genres, the spaces of fandom, fandom around the globe, the impact of new technologies on fandom, and the legal and historical contexts of fan activity. Fandom is key to understanding modern life in our increasingly mediated and globalized world.
Review
“Fandom pushes the boundaries of fan studies in bold directions, incorporating high culture fandoms, global fan cultures, fan technologies, and antagonistic anti-fandom, while rethinking the core tenets of fan studies concerning aesthetics, place, intellectual property, and interpretive communities—all presented with a lively, accessible, and engaging writing style.”
-Jason Mittell,Middlebury College
Review
“Highly recommended.”
-Choice,
Review
“One of the best aspects of the text is the way that the contributors do not merely typecast fans as those interested in modern and popular culture, but also examine fans of mediums typically considered 'high culture.' This makes the book much friendlier to pop-culture fans, whose practices are typically considered lowbrow and fanatical when compared to someone who holds season tickets to the opera or visits an art gallery every weekend. As a fan, it's nice to see that the behavior is not reduced to unnecessary fanaticism and is examined on a more subjective level.”
-M/C Reviews,
Review
"Fandom pushes the boundaries of fan studies in bold directions, incorporating high culture fandoms, global fan cultures, fan technologies, and antagonistic anti-fandom, while rethinking the core tenets of fan studies concerning aesthetics, place, intellectual property, and interpretive communities all presented with a lively, accessible, and engaging writing style." - Jason Mittell, Middlebury College
Review
"A rich compendium of theory, argument, and observation of a wide variety of types of fandomfrom fans of cultural theory to fans of the Sopranos and of Chekhov, from presidents who are fans of country music to fans of the news. As the active ‘prosumers of the digital media's niche markets come to be increasingly central to their operation, fan studies shows us the emerging dynamics of how the cultural industries are going to work in the future." - David Morley, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Review
“Thought-provoking. . . . Well-selected and challenging collection.”
-Screen,
Review
“Thought-provoking. . . . Well-selected and challenging collection.”
“Fandom explores the multidimensional aspects of the fascination, enthrallment, obsession that fans have with their various interests.”
“Highly recommended.”
“One of the best aspects of the text is the way that the contributors do not merely typecast fans as those interested in modern and popular culture, but also examine fans of mediums typically considered 'high culture.' This makes the book much friendlier to pop-culture fans, whose practices are typically considered lowbrow and fanatical when compared to someone who holds season tickets to the opera or visits an art gallery every weekend. As a fan, it's nice to see that the behavior is not reduced to unnecessary fanaticism and is examined on a more subjective level.”
“Fandom pushes the boundaries of fan studies in bold directions, incorporating high culture fandoms, global fan cultures, fan technologies, and antagonistic anti-fandom, while rethinking the core tenets of fan studies concerning aesthetics, place, intellectual property, and interpretive communities—all presented with a lively, accessible, and engaging writing style.”
Review
“Fandom explores the multidimensional aspects of the fascination, enthrallment, obsession that fans have with their various interests.”
-Journal of Mass Communication Quarterly,
Review
Review
"Johnstone's description of the tumultuous events in George Eliot's work is an excellent illustration of applied psychoanalysis." -George H. Pollock, M.D., Ph.D.,Psychoanalytic Books
Synopsis
The first edition of a seminal work on fans and communities
We are all fans. Whether we log on to Web sites to scrutinize the latest plot turns in Lost, "stalk" our favorite celebrities on Gawker, attend gaming conventions, or simply wait with bated breath for the newest Harry Potter novel--each of us is a fan. Fandom extends beyond television and film to literature, opera, sports, and pop music, and encompasses both high and low culture.
Fandom brings together leading scholars to examine fans, their practices, and their favorite texts. This unparalleled selection of original essays examines instances across the spectrum of modern cultural consumption from Karl Marx to Paris Hilton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer to backyard wrestling, Bach fugues to Bollywood cinema, and nineteenth-century concert halls to computer gaming. Contributors examine fans of high cultural texts and genres, the spaces of fandom, fandom around the globe, the impact of new technologies on fandom, and the legal and historical contexts of fan activity. Fandom is key to understanding modern life in our increasingly mediated and globalized world.
Synopsis
George Eliot has been widely praised both for the richness of her prose and the universality of her themes. In this compelling study, Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone goes beyond these traditional foci to examine the role of aggression in Eliot's fiction and to find its source in the author's unconscious sense of loss stemming from traumatic family separations and deaths during her childhood and adolescence. Johnstone demonstrates that Eliot's creative work was a constructive response to her sense of loss and that the repeating patterns in her novels reflect the process of release from her state of mourning for lost loved ones.
About the Author
Jonathan Gray is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. He is author of
Watching with The Simpsons and co-editor of
Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World and
Battleground: The Media.
Cornel Sandvoss is Subject Leader in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Surrey and author of Fans: The Mirror of Consumption.
C. Lee Harrington is Professor of Sociology at Miami University and co-author of Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life.
C. Lee Harrington is professor of Sociology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In addition to her books with Denise Bielby, she is co-editor (with Jonathan Gray and Cornel Sandvoss) of Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World (NYU Press, 2007).