Fandom and Neomedia Studies Conference

The Fandom and Neomedia Studies Conference or FANS Conference is an academic conference held annually in Dallas, Texas (hosted by A-Kon). It is "dedicated to the study and appreciation of all fandom and media products and phenomena."

The FANS Association also publishes open-access in their peer-reviewed online journal The Phoenix Papers.

History

The first FANS Conference was held on the first and second of June 2013.

2013 presentations

• "Why Would Anybody Want to Watch Our Lives?": Metatextual Mediation of Fan Desire in Supernatural (Dr. Margo Collins, DeVry University)
• For Love and Money: Professionalism and Community in Anime and Manga Artists' Alleys (Jennifer Fu, FUNimation)
• What Is Intellectual Property? (Melissa Lum, Public Relations Committee of the State Bar of Texas)
• The Destruction of Tokyo (Jonathan Tarbox, CEO Arashi Productions)
• No Final Frontier: The Scholar as Explorer (Helen McCarthy, Independent Scholar and Author)
• "Draw a Circle": An Examination of World Englishes in Hetalia Fandom (Chelsea Murdoch, University of Kansas)
• How to Win Fans and How Not To (Anthony Brownrigg, Executive Producer at Cashel Entertainment)
• Muslim Manga (Hamed Nouri, University of North Texas)
• "The Green Priestess and the Cosmic Computer": Star Trek and the Aesthetics of Camp (Lauren Levitt, New York University at Steinhardt)
• The Real O(taku)-G: Murder, Suicide, and Product Placement in Edo’s Kabuki Theatres (Dr. Darren-Jon Ashmore, Akita International University)
• Cultural Memory as Fan Ideology in the Remediated World (Poe Johnson, University of Texas at Dallas)
• Rewarding Viewing: Television Check-In Social Networks and Fan Activity (Cory Barker, Indiana University)
• Beyond the H8ter: Theorizing the Anti-Fan (Dr. Kimberly Springer, University of Michigan)
• Who You Want to Be: Video Games as Identity-Reflective Texts (James Bales, University of Texas at San Antonio)
• Fantasy and Fandom: Race, Desire, and the Libidinal Economy (Jerome Dent, Mt. St. Mary’s College)
• Fandom Assemble: Joss Whedon's The Avengers in Fandom (Scott Caddy, University of Michigan at Flint)
• Secret Agent Shepard: An Examination of the Role of Agency in the Mass Effect Franchise (James Bales, University of Texas at San Antonio)

2014 presentations

• A Phenomenology of Americans and Anime: How Tropes Predict Experience
• Bad Science Makes Bad Cinema: Geologic "Science" in Volcano, The Core, and Dante's Peak
• Steampunk as an Indicator of Paradigmatic Shift: Nostalgia for a Time That Never Was
• There Is Nothing New under the Sun
• Visual Storytelling!: A Structural Analysis
• The Furry Identity: Notes from the Field about Interacting with People Who Possess This Stigmatized Identity
• Fandom and Fundraising in Tabletop Gaming
• Control and the Controller: Narratives of Imperialism and Empire in Modern Military Shooters
• Funeral for a Friend: Chiba Tetsuya and the Immortality of Heroism
• "This Is Trash": Apology Ritual and Yogscast Fandom on Tumblr
• From the Damsel in Distress to Kickass Babes: The Cultural Expansion and Internationalization of the Heroine through Sexuality in the Graphic Novel
• Pale and Geeky: Prevailing Stereotypes of Anime Fans
• No Country for Old Women
• Rogue Rabbits and Steampunk Bobcats: Biopolitics and Queer Longing in Online Taxidermy Fandoms
• Brown Pride vs. White Supremacy: Competing Fan Discourses of Ethnic Authenticity and Racial Pride in the Careers of Three Mexican American Prizefighters.
• Science Fiction and Salvation: Shifting Modes of Religion and Science in Popular Series
• Is Copyright a Dirty Word?

2015 presentations

• Cultures in Select Science Fiction, Utopian and Dystopian (Evan Kowalski, Collin College)
• Latinas Are My Favorite Fruit: The Consumption of Hispanic Women in Hollywood Cinema (Sonya Herridge, University of Houston at Clear Lake)
• Unfortunate Son: The Captain America of the 1950s and the Historical Memory of McCarthyism (Dr. Michael A. Davis, Laredo Community College)
• Fairy Tales Revisited (Nathan Robert Brown, Mythologist)
• A Person, Not a Pin-Up: Subverting the Asian Action Heroine with Pacific Rim's Mako Mori (Megan Fowler, University of Florida)
• Saibata Puppets: Bamboo Shoots (西畑人形:たけのこ) (Dr. Darren Jon Ashmore, Yamanashi Gakuin University)
• Cyborg: 009: An Anime Retrospective, sponsored by Funimation (Ishikawa Mitsuhisa of Production IG, Helen McCarthy, Jonathan Tarbox, Justin Rojas, Tara McKinney, J. Holder Bennett)
• "You Cannot See Yourself Unless There Are Others": Sekaikei as Existentialist Exhortation of Societal Participation (Stefanie Thomas, Ohio State University)
• "Ode to Joy": Beethoven's Daiku in Anime (Heike Hoffer, Ohio State University)
• An Examination of Anime Fan Stereotypes (Dr. Stephen Reysen, Texas A & M University at Commerce)
• The Joining of Church and State: The Tyranny of the Prophet in BioShock Infinite (Daniel Archer, Abilene Christian University)
• Investigating Queer Revolt in Atsuko Asano's No. 6 (John Francis, Independent Scholar)
• "Everything Was Anticipated, Every Eventuality Allowed For": Fan Service, Past and Present, in “The Empty Hearse" (Maria Alberto, Cleveland State University)
• Different Motivations as Predictors of Psychological Connection to Fan Interest and Fan Groups in Anime, Furry, and Fantasy Sport Fandoms (Catherine Schroy, Texas A & M University at Commerce)
• Dragons, Dwarves, and Cubes: The Role of Player Agency in Games and its Effects on Modding Communities (Brian McKitrick, University of Texas at Dallas)
• Misogyny and Philogyny in the Vampire Mythos (Rachel Head, University of North Texas)
• The Tropes that Time Forgot (Melissa Frennea and Lisa Bonanni, BL Garden of DFW)
• Yaoi, Bara, and Slash: A Comparative Analysis of Gay Media in Japan and the West (Melissa Frennea, Lisa Bonanni, and Cho Large; BL Garden of DFW)
• Real Money in Gaming Economies (Jonathan Davis, FANS Committee)
• Fans' Parasocial Connections to Dystopian Literary Characters: A Conceptual Typology (Dr. Jacki Fitzpatrick and Felix Morgan, Texas Tech University)
• Sacred Time and Ritualistic Behavior at Harry Potter Book Releases and Film Premieres (Tyler Jean Dukes, Texas State University)
• Viewers, Users, Fans: Brazilian Telenovelas and Cross-Media Usage (Júnia Cristina Ortiz Matos, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Authoring Bronies (Meta Henty, Texas Christian University)

2016 presentations

• Toward a History of Cosplay, v2.0: Notes on Definitions, Protocols, and Pitfalls (Helen McCarthy, author and founder of Manga UK magazine)
• Anime Fans to the Rescue: Evidence of Daniel Wann's Team Identification-Social Psychological Health Model
• Reflection in a Sea of Stars: Heroism in an Age of Despair
• Hiroshima to 3/11: manga and Anime in the Aftermath of Tragedy (Angela Drummond-Matthews and Deborah Scally, University of North Texas at Dallas)
• The Takarazuka Revue’s Kabuki Connection: Gender Performance as Escape and Indoctrination (Stefanie Thomas, Ohio State University)
• Accuracy of Perceived Prejudice toward One's Fan Group
• Otome: Games and the Fan Community (Dr. Fujimoto Yukari, Meiji University)
• The Discourse of the Sci-Fi Fan Civil War of 1980 as Seen in Anime Magazines (Dr. Renato Rivera Rusca, Meiji University)
• Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood, a Reading by the Author (Northrop Davis, University of South Carolina)
• The Ancestral Aesthetics as Dialectics of Transformation in African Poetry (Olayinka Martins Ojo, Adekunle Ajasin University)
• ESRB and You: Understanding the Function and Role of the ESRB in Gaming (Andrew Tague, Texas A & M University at Commerce)
• Ukiyo-e, World War II, and Walt Disney: The Influences on Tezuka Osamu's Development of the World of Anime and Manga (Katherine A. Thornton-Gibson, Oklahoma State University at Stillwater)
• Medieval Manga: Representational History (J. Holder Bennett, Odessa College)

Links

• Official website
• Twitter