Rukmini Pande

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Name: Rukmini Pande
Also Known As:
Occupation: academic
Medium:
Works: Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race, Decolonising Fan Studies: A Bibliography-In-Progress
Official Website(s): Twitter
Fan Website(s):
On Fanlore: Related pages

Dr. Rukmini Pande is an academic and fan who researches and writes about intersectionality, fandom, and postcolonial cybercultural theory. She is an Assistant Processor at Jindal Global Law School.[1] Her dissertation was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2018 as Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race.[2] Along with Samira Nadkarni, she was a contributor to Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World. She has appeared on the podcast Fansplaining several times. Pande and Swati Moitra co-authored "Yes, the Evil Queen is Latina!": Racial dynamics of online femslash fandoms, which was published in a 2017 issue of Transformative Works and Cultures.[3]

Her Twitter bio reads: "Working on the intersections of racial, cultural and ethnic identity in media fandom."[4]

In terms of fandom I’ve been a participant since around 2003 and I’ve moved through a lot of different fannish spaces. I’ve been in fandoms for Bollywood, Anime and Manga and USA/UK-based texts and also been fairly active in RPF (Real Person Fiction). I’ve also seen fandom move in terms of medium from platforms like Yahoo groups and Livejournal to Tumblr and Twitter. I’ve been studying fandom as a scholar since 2010 and recently completed my PhD at the University of Western Australia (Perth) on the intersections of racial/cultural/ethnic identity within these spaces.

- "The State of Fandom Studies 2018: Rukmini Pande and Rebecca Wanzo (Part 1)" from Henry Jenkins' blog Confessions of an Aca-Fan[5]

Squee from the Margins

Squee from the Margins was published in December 2018 by the University of Iowa Press.

Rukmini Pande’s examination of race in fan studies is sure to make an immediate contribution to the growing field. Until now, virtually no sustained examination of race and racism in transnational fan cultures has taken place, a lack that is especially concerning given that current fan spaces have never been more vocal about debating issues of privilege and discrimination.

Pande’s study challenges dominant ideas of who fans are and how these complex transnational and cultural spaces function, expanding the scope of the field significantly. Along with interviewing thirty-nine fans from nine different countries about their fan practices, she also positions media fandom as a postcolonial cyberspace, enabling scholars to take a more inclusive view of fan identity. With analysis that spans from historical to contemporary, Pande builds a case for the ways in which non-white fans have always been present in such spaces, though consistently ignored.

- University of Iowa Press[6]

References