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

[khellekson.livejournal.com]

(take 2—sorry)

I find the open-source LJ format so much more congenial and productive - and like fandebate wrap-up comments have noted, so noticeably different - I'd be reluctant to sacrifice such lively and welcoming commenting capacity to a desire to have the journal "stand-alone." Because ... er, it might do that then.

I agree, but at the same time, I kind of don't, if that makes sense, because LJ is a tiny little part of the online world. Of course, it's the most important part of the world! Clearly! But to outsiders, LJ is a little threatening, a little confusing, a bit too in your face, and if we took conversation off LJ, I fear that, like at Henry's blog, all the most interesting discussions would be taken off the main list and made not part of the MAIN text but some COROLLARY to it. And that kind of sucks.

So in short, LJ, sure! Why the heck not! But at the same time, there's going to be something shiny and new, and maybe that other space wouldn't feel so exclusionary to some of our target demographic. We're trying to create a space where both can meet and talk, that doesn't freak out either party.

Taking conversation off to LJ may just further the very divide that we are attempting to bridge with this project. We deliberately chose the journal software on the basis of, among other things, its commenting feature.

BUT also keep in mind that we're using a CC license for the copyright. That means authors may post their published articles to their LJs. And certainly that is fine by us and we anticipate that people will do that. That will also draw discussion to LJ.

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

Pardon me. I'm using "LJ" and the recent fandebate as simply one, admittedly limited, example of the potential and need to improve on the power-imbalanced, monologic, Owner-vs-guest structure of the typical blog format, which as we saw this summer, can ravage LJ too.

Form follows function; I love seeing fandom subvert and transform both. I hope to see OTW reach past dominant (!) computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools for something that would allow OTW's work to be as transformative to online commentary as fanworks are to their texts.

LJ is FAR from my ideal, especially after this year's demonstration of 6A's deep unprofessionalism and shallow social conscience. My fan activity takes place in many sites beyond LJ; similarly for many OTW folks, I know.

ANY software that allows for a robustly interactive, non-ephemeral, and many-to-many conversation --- the sort humans LIKE to have, as opposed to the sort computer limitations force upon us --- is going to be better than the one-sided conversation privileged by hierarchically structured fora and owner-dominated blogs. Those models are steeped in the same Sage-on-the-Stage, Voice-of-the-Master assumptions that I work to change in classrooms and other settings.

One reason I love fandom is its capacity (not always realized) to be non-hegemonic, to invite and include many voices, rather than being run by the few, to open up new frameworks for thinking and being, to have fic-fests rather than blogging flame-fests, or the physical slugfests that rule the RW news.

Just as fans surface "other voices" in a text, and fandom voices other views alongside the author's, and classrooms and meetings can either encourage or stifle new conversations and voices, so can CMC tools do, through structuring for it, or against it.

I agree the CMC options at hand have their limits.

I hope that OTW's journal fen (*g*) might seek maximum openness, USING ANY SOFTWARE, rather than default to software that is convenient, "shiny," and OMG beloved by the patriarchies it so perfectly replicates. That would be ironic since one purpose of OTW & its journal is to celebrate fandom being the opposite!

Amusing: Plus ca change ... .

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

So the more things change, the more they stay the same. (Not! Hopefully not!)

Feminist theory is one touchstone for me in work on environmental science and discourse. Currently on my desk for that are notes from Marilyn French's 1986 feminist classic, "Beyond Power." Maybe I'll get back to that from this lovely fun break to check email (and thus LJ) by sharing this incredible parallel.

Twenty years old and it's still so relevant:

Feminism is not [simply about] access to existing structures and their rewards. This is how many people see it, however: as a strictly political movement through which women demand entry into the "male" world, a share of male prerogatives, and the chance to be like men. This perception of feminism alienates many nonfeminist women.

Not to mention feminist ones too! Like me. Whether it's feminism vs patriarchy, "fanboy vs. fangirl," blog vs. LJ (IJ/GJ etc), "media fandom" vs. stabbity*hate*that*name, OTW "owners" vs fandom "users," I follow French's call to change the relations, not just the owners or their gender. Change the dualism - and not into monotonous all-the-same-ism, either.

Let me change "feminism" to "fandom," as French continues, to underscore the striking parallels to one wonderful debate OTW's start-up has started up (because debates are wonderful! like OTW!) -- the question of how transformative OTW is really meant to be. Will OTW be politically advantageous for some, or the many? Will OTW transform how fandom is viewed -- even, how society views itself? -- or just how some fandom scholars, fanartists, or BNFs are viewed? Where French wrote this for "feminists" or "feminism," I'll change it to fandom:

[Fandom] is a political movement demanding access to the rewards and responsibilities of the "male" [mainstream corporate ownership-of-text] world.

[This absolutely includes the highly conservative, power-world of academia!]

It is more: it is a revolutionary moral movement, intending to use political power to transform society, to "[fandomize]" it. For such a movement, assimilation is death. The assimiliation of [fans] to society as it presently exists would lead simply to the inclusion of certain women/fans (not all, because society as it presently exists is highly stratified) along with certain men [male fans/academics] in its higher echelons.

It would mean continued stratification and continued contempt for "[fandom]" values. Assimilation would be the cooption of [fandom]. Yet it must be admitted that the major success of the movement in the past twenty years [past summer's fandebate?] has been to increase the assimilation of [academic fans] into the existing structure. This is not to be deplored, but it is only a necessary first step.

Some would disagree with French's last sentence. What strikes me is how well her critique applies to fandom's efforts to gain not only a similar social parity, but beyond that, to "transform" the society that so automatically defaults to DIS-parity.

I assume, however, that the collective and very bright minds in OTW's 'management' have noted that yes, even such a small (?!) thing as the journal's comment function can be as transformative as the work OTW supports, or can simply default into the structures of control that already exist to suppress fandom, feminism, and other social movements for new forms of col/laboration.

I feel sure that at least some of you in OTW will do your best to make the journal and its comments as supportive to wide-open conversation as you can. What a grand experiment in so many ways! Those of us who use CMC for teaching, for team-based widely-based research, for institutional governance and for public participation work (yes, some of us bravely fight to make even the current US government more publicly responsive and accountable) will find this journal not only a source of information and great pride -- but an additional case study in the global struggle for peaceful and productive multivocality.

Whee!

Re: Amusing: Plus ca change ... .

[khellekson.livejournal.com]

I assume, however, that the collective and very bright minds in OTW's 'management' have noted that yes, even such a small (?!) thing as the journal's comment function can be as transformative as the work OTW supports, or can simply default into the structures of control that already exist to suppress fandom, feminism, and other social movements for new forms of col/laboration.

I love your feminism/fandom recasting!

I don't really know what to do about the structures of control. The journal will be less fannish and more academic, because we want the journal to be authoritative and important. It will be geared to that acafan-meta intersect mostly. But we want to be sure we have timely, accessible, shorter content too. So we're trying to have a little something for everybody thinky.

I haven't experimented much yet with the software's commenting feature, but we need the software for a bunch of things other than commenting, like tracking MSS through peer review and keeping a database of subscribers so they can RSS feed the articles. We need a lot of functionality, and we have to make compromises while keeping within our #1 priority, which is open access and freedom of exchange of information. I have no idea if commenting is going to be such a compromise. I hope not.

I also hope that the people who want to discuss the articles will do it within the purview of the journal and its software, to keep it all together (TEXT and COROLLARY permanently linked, so the COROLLARY becomes part of a DIALOGUE). LJ is so easy, so comfortable, and we all know so well how to handle it—I personally get irritated at, say, WordPress or Blogger because they are so stupid. But I'd hate to see discussion moved elsewhere simply because the software is annoying. Work with us here!

Of course, we're not live yet, and so who knows how it will all play out? I'm just really excited that people are excited. How bad is it that we had to start a new journal because fan studies is so inadequately represented in media studies outlets? What is that even about??

There's a niche that we need to fill, and we want to do it right.