Fandom, Now in Color: A Collection of Voices

264 Pages·2020·1.611 MB·English

by  Rukmini Pande

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fandom, now in color
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Fandom & Culture
Paul Booth and Katherine Larsen, series editors
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3Fandom, Now in Color
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A Collection of Voices
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11 Edited by Rukmini Pande
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19 university of iowa press
20 Iowa City
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University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Iowa Press
www.uipress.uiowa.edu
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Teresa w. Wingfield
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher. All reasonable steps have been
taken to contact copyright holders of material used in this book. The publisher
would be pleased to make suitable arrangements with any whom it has not been
possible to reach.
Printed on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pande, Rukmini, 1984– , editor.
Title: Fandom, Now in Color: A Collection of Voices / edited by Rukmini Pande.
Description: Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, [2020] | Series: Fandom &
Culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020017600 (print) | LCCN 2020017601 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781609387280 (paperback; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781609387297 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mass media—Social aspects. | Mass media and minorities. |
Fans (Persons) | Ethnicity. | Racism.
Classification: LCC HM1206 .F36 2020 (print) | LCC HM1206 (ebook) |
DDC 302.23—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017600
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017601
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11 In solidarity with all the bravehearts around the world
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13 who are striving against the forces of structural injustice
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15 in order to forge a more equitable and hopeful future.
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foreword For All Fankind ix
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Acknowledgments xi
A Note on Terminology xiii
Introduction 1
one. methodologies
1. A Case for Critical Methods: Sense Making, Race, and Fandom 17
Elizabeth R. Hornsby
2. The Intended vs. the Unintended Audience: Deconstructing
Positionality in Fandom 29
Sam Pack
3. The Absence of Race: Teaching Practices and Inclusion in the
Fandom Classroom 48
Katherine Anderson Howell
two. Otherness
4. Raceplay: Whiteness and Erasure in Cross-Racial Cosplay 65
joan miller
5. “But I’m a Foreigner Too”: Otherness, Racial Oversimplification,
and Historical Amnesia in Japan’s K-pop Scene 79
Miranda Ruth Larsen
three. Affirmative/Transformative
6. Alpha/Beta/Omega: Racialized Narratives and Fandom’s Investment
in Whiteness 95
Angie Fazekas
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1 contents
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11 7. Fill in the Blank: Customizable Player Characters and Video Game
12 Fandom Practice 109
13 Indira Neill Hoch
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8. Waiting in the Wings: Inclusivity and the Limits of Racebending 122
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Samira Nadkarni and Deepa Sivarajan
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17 9. Understanding Good and Evil: The Influence of Fandom on
18 Overcoming Reductive Racial Representations in Dungeons
and Dragons 136
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Carina Lapointe
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four. Identity/Authenticity
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23 10. Whose Representation Is It Anyway? Contemporary Debates
24 in Femslash Fandoms 151
25 Rukmini Pande and Swati Moitra
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11. Jane the Virgen or Virgin? The Dis-United States of (Latino)
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Fandom 164
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Jenni M. Lehtinen
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30 12. “Not My Captain America”: Racebending, Reverse Discrimination,
31 and White Panic in the Marvel Comics Fandom 181
McKenna James Boeckner, Monica Flegel, and Judith Leggatt
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33 13. Real Love? Authenticity as Capital in Let’s Play Culture 196
34 Al Valentín
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36Contributors 207
37Bibliography 211
38Index 239
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1 foreword
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6For All Fankind
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8 Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
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11 We are all the inheritors of long traditions of struggle. As the
12Black American descendant of people who were captured from West and
13Central Africa, enslaved in first the British North American colonies, then in
14the nascent United States of America, I know that every part of my education
15and lived experience has made me keenly aware of US-centric histories of
16exclusion, erasure, and marginalization. And thus far in fan studies, that
17perspective has been dominant in the few works that have considered race.
18 To look beyond academic fandom scholarship toward science fiction,
19fantasy, and horror studies, recent key critical works on race and speculative
20fiction of the 2010s include Ytasha Womack’s Afrofuturism: The World of
21Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, Sheena Howard and Ronald Jackson’s Black
22Comics: Politics of Race and Representation, André Carrington’s Speculative
23Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction, Michelle Commander’s Afro-
24Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic, Kinitra Brooks’s
25Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror,
26Diana Adesola Mafe’s Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive
27Portrayals in Speculative Film and TV, Sami Schalk’s Bodyminds Reimagined:
28(Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction, and my
29own The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the
30Hunger Games. Taken together, these and other critical works form an
31essential new canon for the study of race in contemporary science fiction,
32fantasy, and horror—although a canon centered almost entirely in the
33Global North and, as this volume notes, written exclusively by scholars who
34hail from minoritized and/or marginalized communities in the West.
35 When I was first asked to write the foreword to Rukmini Pande’s new
36and indispensable collection, I wondered what I could provide, since I had
37learned much from these pages. Although I am a longtime fan of literature and
38media, I entered academic fandom studies through the worlds of children’s
39literature criticism and educational research. Over the past twenty years, my
40primary considerations have been the diversification and decolonization of