Sarah is organizing a Race, Ethnicity, and a(New( Media conference at her university (A&M) (which is the flagship of the system in which my uni is one small part): Henry Jenkins has posted part one of an interview with her on his blog today:

Click here to read!

And the deadline isn't until December 31! I've sent in my proposal (based on work I did earlier on racism imboglios in fandom and on anti-racist work done via icons in fandom)!

Gacked from slit: LiveJournal Academic Research Bibliography.

More evidence that academics are ruining not only fandom, but *all* of LJ!!!!! OMG!!!

Because writing analysis about anything totally ruins it.

Partly_bouncy argues for the "right" to link fan pseuds, LJ username, and legal names in some cases because otherwise it would not be "true" history.

As both are BNFs and influence peddlers in fandom and people stepping out publicly to represent fandom to the media and academics, you can't really present their identities as separate with out perpetuating a false history.

Given the amount of incorrect information tolerated in her wiki, I find her usage of the term "false history" to be bizarre: for one thing, it assumes that there is a "true" history. I have also learned in the past few days that the wiki outs more people than I'd realized, and at least one person I know was told her outing would not be removed from the wiki because it would not be true to history.

( And that false idea is the subject of this post: History: I do not think that word means what you think it means )

¹( The Oxford English Dictionary's definitions and history of usage, cut for length )

A data point for those interested in the issue of how aca-fen (academics in fandom who are also open about their fandom affiliation if not their individual pseuds when writing scholarship on some aspect of fan culture) are benefitting *hugely* (or at all) from their work.

A colleague and I are putting together a Big Federal Grant Proposal. We sent it in for review by a grant officer. We have been told that any mention of fandom in said proposal would be the Kiss of Death (actual words) for it.

The only mention of fandom is a half sentence talking about my being an invited speaker on fanfiction at an academic conference. We'll take it out of course though too bad because being plenary speaker usually means something in aca-speak.

So by doing fan scholarship (and one often has to send in one's complete curriculum vita for this sort of thing), I may be disqualifying myself from being considered a Serious Real Scholar in *some* arenas (those having the most power, status, and in this case moola to hand out).

Some days, doing what I do is more than worth it. Other days, and there have been a few of them recently, when some parts of fandom are stomping around accusing aca-fen in general and some of us in particular of all sorts of Unnatural Perverse Evil Profit-mongering Running Dog Activities exploiting fandom for the lulz, it kinda isn't.

*back to encyclopedia*

ETA: My Shiny New Icon! From caras_galadhon!!!!!!!!

"Harry Potter and the Laboratory of Creativity: Fandom Infringement of Copyrights and a Proposed Exception for Experimental Use" by Rachel Stiegel.

Link leads to abstract with another link that allows you to download pdf copy of paper (or print it out)!

Link posted by rivkat in fandom_lawyers.

I am trying to read some of the legal scholarship on copyright issues and fandom although it's tough going (let me see, yep, I'd definitely say it's HARD to read. I even have to look up words, and I know that I'm missing a helluva lot of the nuances). But it's fascinating!

Aha!

OK, here's a question (this is against background of OTW).

How many of you see "aca-fan" and think: an academic who is also a fan?

See, because if that's true, that maybe explains some of the rhetoric I've seen. Maybe.

Aca-fan, coined by Matt Hills in his Fan Cultures, refers to academics who are also actively engaged in fandom *and* who are writing scholarship about fandom.

An entirely different group than academics who are engaged in fandom and wouldn't write scholarship about fandom even if bribed heavily.

I don't know, because it's not always clear from bios, about the Board, but I'd say that from what I see on the OTW page that only two of the Board are aca-fen: Francesca Coppa and Rebecca Tushnet (i.e. are fans, are academics, are publishing scholarship on fandom). THe others? I don't know.

Board Info: http://transformativeworks.org/about/people.html

Michelle Tepper might be an aca-fan (she writes about online communities and the internet, but again, news flash: there is a fraking huge amount of academic scholarship on online communities and the internet that doesn't even mention fandom--you know, they look at all the OTHER communities that are out there on the internet and write about them. Crazy, huh?)

There are some other academics who might or might not be aca-fans, but I hope people realize that it is possible to be an academic doing fandom for fun and not be writing about it. I suspect aca-fen are the *minority* of academics on the internet. And the academics are not going to be running/controlling either the archive or the wiki!

***

Otherwise, damnit, you aca-fen who are sekritly planning to take over all of fandom and bend it to your will, let me know so I can get involved with the Ruling Council, puh-leeze! I never heard about slash when I was a Trekkie, and I'm gonna be pissed if I'm left out of the Super Sekrit Aca-Fan Rulers of the World Queens of the Universe plot!

******

ETA: OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH! Someone pointed out that when a lot of fans say "academic" they are thinking of the meta-fandom crowd, writing meta, etc., so it's this long-standing hostility that's being transferred to 'aca-fen.' I'll have to backtrack and get linky.....OK, I looked for comment and cannot find it, and am sorry. My brain may be dead (I was in a 2 hour faculty meeting this morning).

ETA #2: Thanks to stasha2g, here is the meta connection made by ethrosdemon!

OTW=Organization for Transformative Works

Disclaimer: I am a volunteer in a minor way (have worked on editing *one* section of TOS, and am on the Board for the academic journal--which is *not* a journaling service).

Am still seeing lots and lots of misinformation about OTW being spread around the internets. Some of it's getting even weirder than before.

It's a stupid name that will turn fans off!

That's understandable (although clearly it does not turn all fans off!), but it's a question of audience and purpose.

( cut for length )

OTW is perhaps unusual in fandom but not unique (there are other non-profit organizations--you need a larger group with stabilizing elements to achieve certain types of tasks).

However, the one thing OTW is not and never meant to be: a business.

They are not in this for the profits (monetary).

They are not a corporation.

They have to meet certain legal and financial requirements or lose their non-profit status: at this point, they been recognized by the state, but not yet on the federal level, so they're not "tax-exempt" -- i.e. a donation to them cannot be deducted *yet*.

( cut for length )

Here's the transcript of the second chat

Behind the cut are excerpts from that log supporting what I've said above.

( excerpts from second chat log to back up what I said above )

( specifically, the question of Heidi )

OK, and finally to two of my pet peeves: the issue of RPF/RPS *not* being part of media fandom, and "jargon."

Media does not mean "fiction."
( cut for length )

"Pot calls kettle jargon": if I have to read any more complaints about the horribly awful language/jargon used by OTW, I may just have to smack somebody.

Fans do not get to complain about academics using specialized language or terminology.

*Every* word above links to a *different* fan glossary/fandom terminology.

All human interest groups/sub-cultures develop specialized terminology, from wine-makers, to knitters, to truckers, to fans (multiple terminologies actually!). Academics, ditto.

People are lazy and abbreviate terms liek whoa, and abbreviations are not jargon.

And please don't give me the "we're all fans here we should be able to understand everything OTW says," because dude, there are lots of areas of fandom where I don't understand diddlysquat, whether it's because of the different technology, the different source text, the different generations, the different nationalities, or who knows what else.