Journal Committee Announced

[femmequixotic]

We'd like to announce our new Journal Committee, whose function is the launching of an international, blind peer-reviewed journal published online twice a year by the OTW. The journal will be committed to publishing high-quality academic research as a way to document and analyze fan histories, cultures, and artifacts. Its first issue is slated for publication in September 2008.

Journal Committee:
Chair: Karen Hellekson
Kristina Busse
Cynthia W. Walker
Deborah Kaplan
Alexis Lothian
Cole J. Banning
Julie Levin Russo

The journal has been named Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC). The committee is in the process of appointing scholars to the journal's advisory and review boards. They plan to have a call for papers by February 2008.

Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at MIT, author of such works as Textual Poachers; Fans, Gamers and Bloggers; and Convergence Culture and member of TWC’s advisory board, says:

The field of Fan Studies has come of age: there are dozens of gifted young scholars from a range of different disciplines doing groundbreaking work in the field at the moment, each bringing their own distinctive theoretical and methodological perspectives to the topic, each connecting the study of fans to larger debates surrounding media and society. The time is ripe for a journal which will bring all of these researchers together and provide them with an intellectual home. And ideally that journal will come bottom up—from the community of fans and fan scholars. Given this context, Transformative Works and Cultures is a dream come true—an exciting chance to consolidate this field and at the same time, bridge the gap between fans and fan scholars.

TWC will publish articles about transformative works and related areas, including fan fiction, fan vids, fan communities, film, TV, anime, comic books, video games, and machinima. The journal invites a variety of critical approaches and encourages authors to consider writing personal essays integrated with scholarship, hyperlinked articles, or other forms that test the limits of the genre of academic writing. TWC’s aim is twofold: to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community, and to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics.

TWC plans a mix of traditional academic articles and shorter contributions in a Symposium section. We hope to solicit contributions from leading figures in the field, emerging scholars from a variety of disciplines, and theoretical-minded fans. Like OTW, TWC has an expanded notion of fair use. The publication permits the duplication of stills, and the journal will include the ability to embed video clips. TWC will be copyrighted under a Creative Commons license.

ETA: From the Journal Committee... The journal accepts four types of contributions: theory, practice, Symposium, and reviews. Theory is comprised of full-length research essays that are 6,000–9,000 words long. Essays in this section propose novel ideas that are placed within a coherent theoretical framework and add something new to the field.

Practice is comprised of 3,000–6,000 words long essays that apply a specific theory to a community; explicate fan practice; perform a detailed reading of a specific text; or otherwise relate practice to theory within a theoretical framework. Theory and Practice essays are blind peer-reviewed by up to three reviewers, who are scholars in media studies, fan studies, English, communication, and related fields.

Symposium is named in homage to the fan-based collection of meta essays and in its spirit collects collects short, thematically contained essays. These 1,500-word essays provide insight into current events on any topic.

Reviews are of items of interest in the fields of fan and media studies and include a description of the item's content, an evaluation of its importance in a larger context, and an assessment of the likely audience. Symposium essays and reviews will be editorially reviewed.

---femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee

Comments

[loligo.livejournal.com]

The committee is currently soliciting members for the journal's advisory and review boards.

To whom can we direct our offers to serve on the board? I don't see contact info for this one on the original list of committees.

[femmequixotic]

You can reach them to share your interest in participating at editor@transformativeworks.org! (Apologies for the earlier deleted comment; I was just corrected on it. *G*)

[kbusse.livejournal.com]

Loligo,

TWC will be a traditional academic peer-reviewed journal and, as such, the review boards are selected from academic and independent scholars who have published in the respective fields. If you are an acafan who publishes on fan studies and fan cultures, please feel free to contact the journal with your cv. We can be reached at editor at transformativeworks dot org.

I am terribly sorry for the misunderstanding, and the post will be changed to clarify this.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Can't wait to read the first issue!

[cleo]

As with loligo's request, I would like to know as well. Thanks.

[femmequixotic]

You can contact the journal team at editor@transformativeworks.org. :)

[hope]

Awesome! I have forwarded the link to this entry to a few of my academic peers, with instructions to pass it on to anyone else they think might be interested :)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Thirding the above requests for contact information. I would very much like to participate.

[femmequixotic]

The journal committee can be reached at editor@transformativeworks.org!

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

I've got a quick question, only marginally related to the post:

In the Clarification and Answers (http://community.livejournal.com/otw_news/10668.html#cutid1) post from last month, you stated you'd been paying attention to the discussions about the perceived exclusions in your terminology, and were considering revisions to the mission statement (although, the mission statement wasn't the only place problematic language was used, but *stops self from digressing*).

Since then we haven't heard anything about the issue, and the language those of us who spoke up considered problematic is still being used. So I'm just curious as to the status of the issue - is it being discussed, is the discussion over and you just haven't updated us, was there never much discussion in the first place, etc.

In that Clarification post, you did defend your use of "transformative works" and "media fandom" - however I'm unclear as to whether that was meant as a "we're not changing this at all because..." or "this is where we're coming from". And if the former is the case, then my question really is, what revisions were you considering at all, since those were the terms that were causing problems?

If you are still discussion the terminology issue, I find the use of the phrases we argued against troubling, as it opens the door for someone to say "well, you raise good points, but we've already been using them so much it'd be silly to change."

Heh, I went a little tl;dr. So, in short: Are you still "considering revisions" as you stated in the Clarification post? If so, why the continued usage of the problematic terminology, and if not, why?

[femmequixotic]

There will be a post coming soon regarding the mission statement; there have been changes made to it, and as soon as we're able, we'll be sharing it here with the community at large.

[fuschia.livejournal.com]

This is great news. Congratulations!

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[i-the-eo.livejournal.com]

This is so exciting. *I* am so excited. What a fantastic opportunity for fen, in so many fashions.

[jmtorres.livejournal.com]

*single perfect tear of joy*

I wish this journal had existed 5 years ago when I was trying to research papers!

[cryptoxin.livejournal.com]

Great news, and a stellar committee!

Building on fandebate, I'd love to have a forum for discussion of the articles as the journal takes shape. I've seen some journals whose online sites incorporate "eLetters" for reader responses, but an LJ comm (or the like) could facilitate much richer and broader dialogues.

[kbusse.livejournal.com]

Karen would be able to answer that better, but afaik, the journaling software actually allows for blog-like interaction. We hadn't thought of a separate LJ comm, but that could be really interesting. Thanks for the great suggestion!

academia + fandom! It's like : crack + crack

[the-emef.livejournal.com]

holy cow

I think I just came in my pants

[anoel.livejournal.com]

Yay! This is so incredibly awesome. It's good to have our own journal :) There's so many fabulously smart, well-written acafans in fandom that deserve to have that recognition.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

that's fucking awesome!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I am extremely excited about this. Congratulations!

[phantomas.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant.
Thanks for working on it, thanks for..well, everything. :)

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, and I'm looking forward to reaping the results of the committee's hard work. (Sort of seems unfair...)

[khellekson.livejournal.com]

Heh. Don't think you'll escape lightly, missy.

[(Anonymous)]

are you srs.....?

dude. it's fucking FAN FICTION. people who can't even be arsed to create their own worlds and characters. it's not a group of goddamn nobel laureates.

and yeah, fanfic can be good and can be well written, but i don't think it merits even a fraction of this swollen pomposity.

it would, perhaps, do you all some good to take turns sticking pins into one another's inflated ass heads; let that portentous, portentous air seep out slowly so that you may sink gently, peacefully back down into REALITY.

[(Anonymous)]

and yes, i'm an anonymous coward; let's get that out of the way right now so that we may address my comment and not the fact that it has no name attached to it.

[(Anonymous)]

LOL.

[treewishes.livejournal.com]

Yay! Great idea, and best of luck with it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

<3!

[ex-rosegany.livejournal.com]

This is fantastic news! The acafen community has been growing exponentially in the last few years, and it's great to see that we're finally getting the attention and respect deserved. Kudos to you for setting up a scholarly forum where our views can be aired!

Also, I was curious: I'm a Master's student (embarking on my PhD next Fall, I hope), and I would be interested in submitting some of my work for consideration in the journal. If that's possible, how would I go about this? I wasn't able to find any submission information on the web site.

Thank you!!

[shrift.livejournal.com]

We're glad that you're excited about the journal! The first issue of Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is slated for September 2008. They plan to have a call for papers by February 2008, and TWC should be able to accept electronic submission of essays through its web site. They're not quite there yet, but we hope you'll keep an eye on the community and submit your work when the time comes!

You may also contact the editors at: editor@transformativeworks.org

Journal documentation

[paradise-city.livejournal.com]

Where can I find documentation on the journal's submission guidelines, such as a description of their review board and policies on informed consent?

Re: Journal documentation

[femmequixotic]

Hi! I just checked with our journal committee and they said they're in the process of finishing the journal website which they're planning to have up and announced here in otw_news within the next month.

That announcement and the website itself should be able to provide the information you're looking for.