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Posts Tagged ‘TWC’

(Journal) Births and (Blog) Birthdays

September 17th, 2008 | Jonathan Gray

I just realized that The Extratextuals has been around for a year now, so happy birthday to us. You may have realized that what was a group blog has taken on a decidedly Jonathan-ish flavor, but for the record, it’s still a group blog. Derek’s been writing his dissertation, while Ivan is creating extratextuals (see here in particular), and is often in the awkward position of having a lot to say but being constricted by contractual obligations. I’m enjoying the blog, though, so I’m quite happy to keep tooling along with my own offerings, knowing that occasionally one of my colleagues may pipe in with something.

Thanks to all our readers. I still don’t have any form of stat-tracker, so I only know who you are (or even that you exist) when you tell me or post a reply, and I’m always surprised and thoroughly pleased to see that it’s not just my wife and my mother reading.

Right now, I’m finishing a book, which has made writing tough, but once it’s in to the press, I’ll have much more time to relax and write for the blog. It’s due on September 30, and it’s all about extratextuals, so once it’s closer to publication, I’ll post more about it too.

Meanwhile, congratulations are also in order to Transformative Works and Culture, a brand new journal available for free to all with Internet access or a friend with a printer and toner. TWC, says its site, “is an international peer-reviewed journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works. TWC publishes articles about transformative works, broadly conceived.” (Think fan stuff if the terminology confuses). The first issue has pieces on Hillary fans, genre, BDSM symbolism, vidding, soap operas, horror, posthuman anxiety, and, yes, what’s a good journal launch without a piece on incestuous fan fiction? ;-)   There’s also symposia, interviews, and reviews. Apparently, editors Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse never got the memo that you start small and build in size: this is a sizeable volume, rich with material that puts other journal start-ups to shame and really deserves an audience. Very well done to Hellekson, Busse, and all involved.

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A New Journal: Transformative Works and Culture

March 22nd, 2008 | Jonathan Gray

A shout-out and pointer to a new journal, set to grace the net in September: Transformative Works and Culture. A project of the Organization for Transformative Works, a fan-run nonprofit organization established “to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms,” TWC will be an online journal, free and accessible to anyone online (not just in academic libraries, not just a year after publication, etc.). They’ll publish

articles about popular media, fan communities, and transformative works, broadly conceived. We invite papers on all related topics, including but not limited to fan fiction, fan vids, mashups, machinima, film, TV, anime, comic books, video games, and any and all aspects of the communities of practice that surround them.

The journals editors are Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson (editors of Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays), and their goals, they announce, are twofold: “to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics, and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community.” More below the fold

Read more…

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