Anne Collins Smith
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Anne Collins Smith |
| Alias(es): | dracsmith, Anne Collins |
| Type: | fan writer, zine editor, acafan |
| Fandoms: | Star Trek, Quark, The Prisoner, Doctor Who, Blakes 7, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Rat Patrol, LOTR, Harry Potter |
| Communities: | |
| Other: | |
| URL: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Anne Collins Smith is a gen writer and acafan who has written stories, poetry, and filks in a number of fandoms.
She also coedited the first two issues of The Wild Wild Fanzine with Vivian Arney.
Fan writer
Smith began writing fanfic in high school in the 1970s; her first two stories, which were published under her maiden name "Anne Collins" (no relation to the scriptwriter) were "The Conn Game" (Star Trek), which appeared in Diverse Dimensions 4, and "Bread and Ficuses" (Quark, parodying the TOS episode "Bread and Circuses"), which appeared in Everything But the Kitchen Sink 3.
While living in Austin during graduate school, she and a fellow fan of The Wild Wild West, Vivian Arney, decided to put out a fanzine entitled The Wild Wild Loveless, which was sufficiently popular that they put out a second issue, no longer restricted to Loveless; the zine was retronamed The Wild Wild Fanzine. After Smith moved away from Austin, Arney continued the zine with a third issue entitled The Wild Wild Crossover.
Smith was very involved in The Rat Patrol fandom. She wrote fanfic for a number of different zines, which was later collected by Kathy Agel into a zine called Desert Dispatches, and attended conventions, usually writing convention reports, e.g. Eclecticon 96, Archived version. She participated in costuming at MediaWest (Ratty Photos from MW*C), hosted room parties, and co-invented an M&M game (like a drinking game for fans who don't drink), which was added to, wiki-style, by fans over the years.
She organized panels for the Long Range Desert Convention and also co-edited the The Long Range Desert Convention Programme Book, which included fanfic and illustrations along with nonfiction material.
Smith's most recent fan fiction story was "Harbinger" (LOTR), which appeared in the fanzine Of Dreams and Schemes 24.
Acafan
Smith, now a professor of philosophy and classical studies, began teaching a course on Philosophy in Star Trek while in graduate school, an activity she described in an article for the journal Teaching Philosophy, The Philosophy of Star Trek: Popular Culture as Hermeneutical Springboard. The class was also described by science fiction journalist Kerry O'Quinn, who visited the class to write up a short feature about it for Starlog Magazine, That Snooty Word She writes philosophical analyses of various media universes, and for a long time did not publish on fandom, except to offer a fan's perspective by writing book reviews for academic journals of books that investigate fandom. For example, she reviewed Enterprising Women for the Journal of American Culture and Textual Poachers for the Journal of Popular Culture. In recent years, as theories appeared that fit certain aspects of fandom in robust and respectful ways, particularly Lamarque and Olson's theory of the philosophy of fiction and C.W. Walker's work/text model of communication, she began publishing on fandom. Her most recent research centers on the phenomenon of Wizard Rock.
Publications
- "It’s Real for [All of] Us: Wizard Rock and the Audience as Co-Creator," in Harry Potter and Convergence Culture: Essays on Fandom and the Expanding Potterverse, edited by Amanda Firestone and Leisa A. Clark, McFarland, April 2018.
- "Welcome to Hogwarts: Entering the Story through Wizard Rock," in Time Lords & Tribbles, Winchesters & Muggles: The DePaul Pop Culture Conference: A Five-Year Retrospective, edited by Paul Booth and Isabella Menichiello, May 2017.
- "Voldemort Tyrannos: Plato's Tyrant in the Republic and the Wizarding World." Reason Papers 34.1, June 2012. Co-authored with Owen Smith. https://reasonpapers.com/pdf/341/rp_341_9.pdf
- "Pragmatism and Meaning: Assessing the Message of Star Trek: The Original Series."Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 8.2, November 2011. Co-authored with Owen Smith. http://www.participations.org/Volume%208/Issue%202/1d%20Smiths.pdf Reprinted in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek: The Original Cast Adventures, edited by Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
- "Harry Potter, Radical Feminism, and the Power of Love," in The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles, edited by Gregory Bassham. Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010).
- "Memories Cloaked in Magic: Memory and Identity in Tin Man," in The Universe of Oz: Essays on Baum's Series and its Progeny. Kevin Durand and Mary Leigh, editors. McFarland Publishing, 2010.
- "Playing [with] Multiple Roles: Readers, Authors, and Characters in 'Who is Blaise Zabini?'" Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol. 3, 2009. http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/186
- “The Philosophy of Star Trek: Popular Culture as Hermeneutical Springboard,” Teaching Philosophy, Dec. 1995 (18:4).