Studies in Literature and Culture (385-0-20)

Topic

Followers, Fans, and Fanatics: Pondering Participa

Instructors

Samantha Marie English

Meeting Info

University Hall 412: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

"We can now look back on November 28, 2025, as the start of a mass-psychosis event," writes E. Alex Jung of Heated Rivalry, the Canadian television series about two professional hockey rivals and their seven-year sexual situationship. By March 2026, over 10.6 million U.S. viewers had watched it—and, around the same time, the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) saw a 17% increase in audience attendance from their inaugural season. Heated Rivalry and professional hockey are excellent examples of the ways that fan cultures (in this case, hockey fans) spawn other fan cultures—that, in fact, produce new fans of the original fandom. This course serves as an introduction to participatory cultures from the perspective of literary and cultural studies. Through case studies of specific fan groups—the Gothic, Jane Austenites, Star Trekkies, K-Pop, and American football, to name a few options—we will explore the ways that people create, engage with, discourse about, expand, and reject cultural materials. Who gets called a fan or follower as opposed to a groupie or a stan, and how do those labels relate to gender, race, and sexuality? Who writes (and reads) slash fiction? What kinds of feelings do fan cultures stir up or mediate? How do we understand our attachments to certain stories or genres, especially when those attachments feel at odds with our identities? Are fandoms just byproducts of capitalism, or can they be anticapitalistic? Assignments will include writing and analyzing fanfiction to examine our own relationships with cultural genres. Primary texts may include works by Jane Austen, Qui Nguyen, and Esther Li; episodes of Star Trek (1966) and Friday Night Lights (2006); films such as Austenland (2011) and I Saw the TV Glow (2024); and criticism from Stewart Hall, Claudia Johnson, Amanda Montell,and Andrea Long Chu, among others.

Teaching Method

Seminar discussion, short lectures.

Evaluation Method

Blue Book notebook, leading discussion, short cumulative assignments including a fanfiction analysis.

Class Materials (Required)

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1817); Rudyard Kipling, The Janenites (1924); Austenland (2011), dir. Jerusha Hess; Qui Nguyen, She Kills Monsters (2011); Esther Yi, Y/N (2023); I Saw the TV Glow (2024), dir. Jane Schoenbrun; episodes of Star Trek (1966), Friday Night Lights (2006), Swarm (2023), and Heated Rivalry (2025); criticism from Andrea Long Chu, Stewart Hall, Claudia Johnson, and Amanda Montell, among others.

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Humanities and Fine Arts Distro