Hot off the presses! #TWC44, a special issue on Centering Blackness in Fan Studies, is now live! This issue was guest edited by @alfredmartin.bsky.social & Matt Griffin, and includes a range of articles and essays including our inaugural Fans of Color prize winner! Dig in here: bit.ly/3VIk1xU
Vol. 44 (2024): Centering Blackness in Fan Studies
| Transformative Works and Cultures
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December 15, 2024 at 2:59 PM
Hot off the presses! #TWC44, a special issue on Centering Blackness in Fan Studies, is now live! This issue was guest edited by @alfredmartin.bsky.social & Matt Griffin, and includes a range of articles and essays including our inaugural Fans of Color prize winner! Dig in here: bit.ly/3VIk1xU
Next in #TWC44, @caramartamessina.com argues that Black characters are often used only as part of white characters' stories through an examination of Missandei from #GoT. Read '"Missandei deserves better": A case study on loving Blackness through critical fan fiction' here:
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January 4, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Next in #TWC44, @caramartamessina.com argues that Black characters are often used only as part of white characters' stories through an examination of Missandei from #GoT. Read '"Missandei deserves better": A case study on loving Blackness through critical fan fiction' here:
Next in #TWC44, Allyson F. Smith analyzes a social media page that sells merchandise for Black-cast shows that are otherwise ignored by mainstream merchandise vendors! Read "Black fan evangelism and transactional fan participation space in the Hillman Bookstore" today:
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December 26, 2024 at 2:27 PM
Next in #TWC44, Allyson F. Smith analyzes a social media page that sells merchandise for Black-cast shows that are otherwise ignored by mainstream merchandise vendors! Read "Black fan evangelism and transactional fan participation space in the Hillman Bookstore" today:
#TWC44 opens with an editorial by @alfredmartin.bsky.social & Matt Griffin in which they explain that this issue “brings together scholars working across an array of disciplines to center Black fandom” and “responds to [a] lack of privilege shown to Black fans.” Read it here: bit.ly/3OZG4MF
Putting the "Black" in fan studies
| Transformative Works and Cultures
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December 17, 2024 at 1:59 PM
#TWC44 opens with an editorial by @alfredmartin.bsky.social & Matt Griffin in which they explain that this issue “brings together scholars working across an array of disciplines to center Black fandom” and “responds to [a] lack of privilege shown to Black fans.” Read it here: bit.ly/3OZG4MF
Rounding out #TWC44's Symposium section, Onyinyechukwu M. Chidi-Ogbolu's "To love and to labor: The Black female fan experience" offers an intersectional approach illuminating how fans engage with a text beyond its readily available content. Read here: https://bit.ly/4215d1l
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January 6, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Rounding out #TWC44's Symposium section, Onyinyechukwu M. Chidi-Ogbolu's "To love and to labor: The Black female fan experience" offers an intersectional approach illuminating how fans engage with a text beyond its readily available content. Read here: https://bit.ly/4215d1l
#TWC44 continues with a roundtable discussion of the landmark essay on Black audiences by @rawreader.bsky.social . The discussion features @alfredmartin.bsky.social @andrecarrington.bsky.social @mediaequity.bsky.social Faithe Day, and Sascha Buchanan. Read it here:
The onus is not on us: Race and fan studies ten years after "African American acafandom and other strangers" | Transformative Works and Cultures
Rebecca Wanzo's landmark 2015 essay "African American Acafandom and Other Strangers" called for taking Black audiences, fandom, and critique seriously. In this roundtable interview, five Black…
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December 30, 2024 at 2:39 PM
#TWC44 continues with a roundtable discussion of the landmark essay on Black audiences by @rawreader.bsky.social . The discussion features @alfredmartin.bsky.social @andrecarrington.bsky.social @mediaequity.bsky.social Faithe Day, and Sascha Buchanan. Read it here:
The Symposium section of #TWC44 begins with @fcoppa.bsky.social essay which imagines how fan studies theory could be less centered on whiteness and more attentive to the lived experiences of Black female fans, especially in vidding communities. Read it today:
Vidding and the oppositional gaze: The pleasures of critique | Transformative Works and Cultures
What's the same and what's different about a fan studies field built on bell hooks rather than on Henry Jenkins, Constance Penley, or Lisa Lewis? As a visual art practice, vidding in particular would…
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January 2, 2025 at 2:27 PM
The Symposium section of #TWC44 begins with @fcoppa.bsky.social essay which imagines how fan studies theory could be less centered on whiteness and more attentive to the lived experiences of Black female fans, especially in vidding communities. Read it today:
Our 2025 Fans of Color prize-winning Article was published in #TWC44, our special issue on “Centering Blackness in Fan Studies,” on December 15, 2024. You can read it here: buff.ly/sycJso7
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August 29, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Our 2025 Fans of Color prize-winning Article was published in #TWC44, our special issue on “Centering Blackness in Fan Studies,” on December 15, 2024. You can read it here: buff.ly/sycJso7
Our 2025 Fans of Color prize-winning Article was published in #TWC44, our special issue on “Centering Blackness in Fan Studies,” on December 15, 2024. You can read it here: buff.ly/sycJso7
August 12, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Our 2025 Fans of Color prize-winning Article was published in #TWC44, our special issue on “Centering Blackness in Fan Studies,” on December 15, 2024. You can read it here: buff.ly/sycJso7
Osarugue Otebele's prize-winning article is up next in #TWC44! Otebele examines how Black K-pop fans perform their fan identity in "The (anti)fan is Black: Consumption, resistance, and Black K-pop fan vigil labor". Read it here: https://bit.ly/4gm0E67
The (anti)fan is Black: Consumption, resistance, and Black K-pop fan vigil labor | Transformative Works and Cultures
The continuous international rise of K-pop demands that current discourse on the industry consider its artistic model and the labor of its fans. Much of this fan work occurs on digital platforms such…
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December 23, 2024 at 2:42 PM
Osarugue Otebele's prize-winning article is up next in #TWC44! Otebele examines how Black K-pop fans perform their fan identity in "The (anti)fan is Black: Consumption, resistance, and Black K-pop fan vigil labor". Read it here: https://bit.ly/4gm0E67
Closing out #TWC44, Brandon Blackburn reviews "The Privilege of Play" by @aarontram.bsky.social calling it "the most comprehensive history of race in contemporary American hobby culture"! Read Blackburn's review here:
"The privilege of play," by Aaron Trammell | Transformative Works and Cultures
Aaron Trammell, The privilege of play. New York: New York University Press, 2023, paperback $30.00 (240p), ISBN 978-1479818402.
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January 8, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Closing out #TWC44, Brandon Blackburn reviews "The Privilege of Play" by @aarontram.bsky.social calling it "the most comprehensive history of race in contemporary American hobby culture"! Read Blackburn's review here:
First up in #TWC44, Mel Monier and Kristen Leer share insights from interviews with Black horror fans in '"Since the moment pictures could move, we had skin in the game": Black horror podcasters as fans, critics, and creators'. Read it here:
"Since the moment pictures could move, we had skin in the game": Black horror podcasters as fans, critics, and creators | Transformative Works and Cultures
Black horror is often investigated within film and television studies, but there is a lack of further inquiry into how Black horror exists within fandom, audience, and podcast studies. Upon…
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December 20, 2024 at 2:27 PM
First up in #TWC44, Mel Monier and Kristen Leer share insights from interviews with Black horror fans in '"Since the moment pictures could move, we had skin in the game": Black horror podcasters as fans, critics, and creators'. Read it here:
Kadian Pow offers an examination of the tensions among Black women fans of Scandal, using her own experience on Tumblr as generative, in "A true sista: Exploring intraracial fantagonisms among Black women fans of Scandal" Read it in #TWC44:
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December 28, 2024 at 2:27 PM
Kadian Pow offers an examination of the tensions among Black women fans of Scandal, using her own experience on Tumblr as generative, in "A true sista: Exploring intraracial fantagonisms among Black women fans of Scandal" Read it in #TWC44: