Transformative Works and Cultures has released No. 11, a general issue with essays that focus on a variety of topics, including lip dubbing, fan fiction, early modern romance, pro fiction that includes fans as characters, and author’s notes. The issue comprises six theoretical essays, four Symposium pieces, and two book reviews.
- Natasha Simonova, in “Fan Fiction and the Author in the Early 17th Century: The Case of Sidney’s Arcadia,” argues for the early modern era as a point of origin for fan fiction with Sir Philip Sidney’s romance, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia.
- Nicolle Lamerichs’s “The Mediation of Fandom in Karin Giphart’s Maak me blij” looks for fannish tropes and narrative structures in nonfannish fiction, in this case a 2005 Dutch novel that features fans as characters, thus self-reflexively looking at the connections between lesbian fiction and fan fiction.
- Kyra Hunting’s “Queer as Folk and the Trouble with Slash” addresses the discrepancy between a show that already includes queer and explicit sexualities and its fan fictions by analyzing mpreg stories.
- Alexandra Elisabeth Herzog’s “‘But this is my story and this is how I wanted to write it’: Author’s Notes as a Fannish Claim to Power in Fan Fiction Writing” studies the particular genre of author’s notes to address the power struggle between readers and writers used to generate meaning.
- Mark C. Lashley’s “Lip Dubbing on YouTube: Participatory Culture and Cultural Globalization” reads lip dubbers as transnational creators as they appropriate and alter popular songs, thus resituating them within their own cultural contexts and performing them with their own, often non-Western, bodies.
- Finally, Heather Osborne looks at virtual performances in online gaming, in particular gender expressions within the games, in “Performing Self, Performing Character: Exploring Gender Performativity in Online Role-Playing Games,” and analyzes data from an online survey that addresses gamers’ gender and sexualities as well as their respective representations.
TWC’s Symposium section features shorter, often personal essays that address particularly fannish connections.
- D. Wilson’s highly personal meditation on “Queer Bandom: A Research Journey in Eight Parts” merges the author’s personal journeys of following several bands around the country with meditations on queer space and time in the shifting discourses of online band fandom.
- Sharon Wheeler, in “From Secret Police to Gay Utopia: How a Professionals Slash Writer Disrupts Readers’ Expectations” focuses on The Professionals (1977–1983) and provides a close reading of an alternate universe fan fiction series.
- Paul Mason looks toward the beginnings of tabletop role-playing games in “RPG Transformations: Fan or Pro?” Mason offers an important historical overview of the early years of Dungeons & Dragons and its fans.
- Finally, Staci Stutsman also addresses the unclear boundaries of authorship in “Blogging and Blooks: Communal Authorship in a Contemporary Context,” in which she studies popular blogs and the tendency to turn blog posts, including selected comments, into publications.
Two reviews appear in this issue. Francesca Coppa reviews Paul Booth’s Digital Fandom (Peter Lang, 2010), focusing on the use of fan cultures, and in particular multimedia digital fan works, to address the general tenets of media studies. Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine look at the shifting demands of media studies in the convergence age in their book Legitimating Television (Routledge, 2011), reviewed by Melanie E. S. Kohnen.
The next two issues of TWC, Nos. 12 and 13, will appear in spring 2013 as guest-edited special issues: Kazumi Nagaike and Katsuhiko Suganuma coedit the special issue on Transnational Boys’ Love, and Matthew Costello’s special issue focuses on transformation and comics.
TWC No. 14 will be an open, unthemed issue, and we welcome general submissions. We particularly encourage fans to submit Symposium essays. We encourage all potential authors to read the submission guidelines. The close date for receipt of copy for No. 14 is March 15, 2013.