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Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame, and Fan/ Producer Relationships by Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen. Cambridge Scholars Press. 2012. $33.42 paper. 259 pages.
Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls by Katherine Larsen and Lynn S. Zubernis. University of Iowa Press. 2013. $14.90 paper; $9.99 e-book. 246 pages.
reviewed by MonicA FleGel
Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis published Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame, and Fan/Producer Relationships and Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls in quick succession in 2012 and 2013. Both books take on a similar subject-the authors' immersion in the fandom of Supernatural, a horror and dark-fantasy television series airing on the CW network from 2005 to the present, and their subsequent desire to take on the "pervasive sense of shame" that "permeates both fan spaces and academic approaches to the subject."1 Nevertheless, the two texts are quite different: the first represents the authors' academic analysis of fandom, whereas the second is more biographical in its approach, recording the authors' journey into fandom and their own joys and difficulties in negotiating their status as fans, while also performing research on the topic as academics. What both books share is a belief that, contrary to the recent theorization of fandom as "a common and ordinary aspect of everyday life in the industrialized world," stereotypes of the libidinous, crazed fan ( particularly in regard to female fans) still persist.2 Rather than disavowing this stereotype (though certainly problematizing it), the authors set out in these two texts to instead embrace the affective aspects of fandom, answering Henry Jenkins's call to "get intimate with [popular culture], let it work its magic on us, and then write about our own engagement."3 Pointing out that in the academic study of fandom "few fan theorists grant us access to their own fan lives beyond the safety of academic analysis," the authors promise to write from "their own immersion within Supernatural fandom."4
While the authors successfully bring their own passion for Supernatural under the lens in ways that open up interesting concerns for fan studies, I was left with several questions: When academic fans open up about their own engagement in fandom, is that engagement taken to be representative? Are academic fans substantively different from other fans? Or is the category of "aca-fan" in itself a construct...