Fan Culture @ Swarthmore

Before the screening Tuesday night, Lauren and I briefly the various meanings that the word ‘fandom‘ can possibly have.  The Wikipedia definition touches on the fact that fandom can refer to narrow or broad subcultures. The term has been used in a wide array of ways throughout class and blog discussions, and I definitely felt uncertain while writing my paper about whether or not I was using the term correctly.  To me, fandom refers mostly to the phenomenon of people clustering towards a text.  For example, in my paper I referred to Star Trek as the “object of a fandom.”  Considering that I have already handed in my paper, I hope that I was on the right page as far as my usage.  But, the main goal of my post is to hopefully illicit discussion and establish a flexible class definition of fandom.