This week, Henry & Colin are joined by three fan studies scholars, andré m. carrington,author of Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction; Abigail De Kosnik, author of #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation; and Rukmini Pande author of Fandom, Now in Color and Squee from the Margins. We talk about how race has been addressed (or not) in fandoms and fan studies, digging into recent fandom controversies over race, such as Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and the legacy of fandom’s roots in America. We ask how Squid Games can be the most popular series on Netflix, even as we are seeing an unprecidented wave of anti-Asian hate crimes or why fandom has tended to ignore some of the characters of color who have emerged through popular entertainment franchises. Ultimately, how can we look beyond the competing narratives of “fandom will save us” vs. “toxic fandom” for more nuanced ways to understand and deal with societal biases through fandoms?

A full transcript of this episode will be available soon!

Here are some of the references from this episode, for those who want to dig a little deeper:

andré m. carrington - Associate Professor of English at the University of California-Riverside, author of Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction

Abigail De Kosnik - Associate Professor and Director, Berkeley Center for New Media, author of #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation

Rukmini Pande - Associate Professor, Literary Studies and Writing, Jindal School of Liberal Arts & Humanities, author of Fandom, Now in Color and Squee from the Margins

Original Star Trek series – origins of fandom

Star Wars Last Jedi trolling - Kelly Marie Tran, Krystina Arielle, John Boyega

Tolkien fandom dust-up

Early Sherlock Holmes fan clubs

Star Trek, Blake’s 7 60s-70s

Early internet fandom – usenet, geo cities, yahoo groups

Live Journal

Fan Pressure to integrate:

Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone Reboot

Ava duVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time

Disney’s live action version The Little Mermaid

The Flash – pushback on casting Iris as Black

Netflix announces Squid Game is bigger than Bridgerton

Wendy Chun – High-Tech orientalism

Concept of “ships”/"shipping"

Bong Joon-ho, Steven Yeun

Bruce Lee (actor) vs. Kato in the Green Hornet (character)

Simu Liu (actor) vs. Shang-Chi (character)

Korean media wave: BTS, Parasite

Fan fiction and diversity/inclusion

Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley)

Tenoch Huerta as Namor (Black Panther character)

Oscar Isaac

Tony Leung

Lead Users and Democratizing Innovation book by Eric Von Hipple

Robert Kozinets

Review of #Republic (and the value of deliberating enclaves) by David Weinberger

Michael Saler - a public sphere of the imagination

Episode #79: Hope for New Online Public Spaces with Talia Stroud and Eli Pariser

Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at [email protected].

Music:
“In Time” by Dylan Emmett and “Spaceship” by Lesion X.
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In Time (Instrumental) by Dylan Emmet  https://soundcloud.com/dylanemmet
Spaceship by Lesion X https://soundcloud.com/lesionxbeats
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/in-time-instrumental
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/lesion-x-spaceship
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/AzYoVrMLa1Q
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Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at [email protected].

Music:
“In Time” by Dylan Emmett and “Spaceship” by Lesion X.
In Time (Instrumental) by Dylan Emmet  https://soundcloud.com/dylanemmet
Spaceship by Lesion X https://soundcloud.com/lesionxbeats
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/in-time-instrumental
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/lesion-x-spaceship
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/AzYoVrMLa1Q
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

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