The Journal team announces an exciting new resource for all fans of metadiscussion as well as the academic study of fandom: the Symposium Blog, edited by Dana Sterling and cryptoxin.
The blog, in the fan tradition of meta and academic analysis, will offer a bridge between the academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) and fannish discussions by covering both fannish meta topics and fannish perspectives on fan and media studies. We hope that this resource will fill an important niche in meta postings by crossing between primarily private fannish spaces, like LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, and more public fannish spaces, like io9 and Television Without Pity.
In addition to posting meta, the editors plan interviews, reflections on essays published in TWC, reviews of recent books and journal articles relevant to fan studies, and guest posts on a variety of topics. In line with the Journal group’s commitment to open access and reuse, the blog uses a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported license.
In their launch post, the Symposium Blog’s editors write, “We want to make this blog a bridge between the TWC journal and fandom, by producing a regular stream of content on meta and acafannish topics, content that will be available in a timely fashion, in between the semiannual journal issues.” The editors are hoping for lots of aca, fan, and acafan engagement in the comments.
If you’re interested in guest blogging, if you’re keen to publish an interview, or if you want to provide a tip on a subject you’d like to see disseminated, please visit the blog for directions. Meanwhile, put the SympBlog on an RSS feed, or subscribe to the feed on LJ or DW, and enjoy: it will be updated at least weekly.
About the editors
Dana Sterling was catapulted into online fandom when Peter Jackson made a movie of The Fellowship of the Ring, part one of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. She had loved those books since about age 11, and she’s never looked back from the fan community since discovering TheOneRing.net. In fact, she’s branched out into several other fandoms, while never losing her love of all things Middle-earth. She was trained as a journalist, and after a 20-year career in newspapers, television, radio, and magazines, now teaches a variety of communications classes at Oklahoma State University in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
cryptoxin is a longtime fan of science fiction TV, comic books, professional wrestling, and anime. He came into online media fandom a few years ago, and his fannish interests include meta and vidding. He maintains personal journals on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal.
UPDATE: Entry updated with hotlinks to the LJ and DW feeds.