Call for Articles for a Special Issue of Fandom | Cultures | Research
Deadline for Abstracts: December 1st, 2025
Deadline for Manuscripts: July 1st, 2026
For its forthcoming issue, the international peer-reviewed journal Fandom | Cultures | Research invites contributions that respond to and help shape the emerging scholarly conversation on the intersection of fan cultural activity and practices of memory and remembrance. This themed issue aims to explore how fans engage with literary texts, histories, and cultural narratives in order to remember, (re)construct, and (re)interpret both personal and collective memory within participatory (digital) cultures. We welcome proposals that examine fan activities that contribute to the negotiation, transmission, or contestation of memory—such as fan fiction, cosplay, reenactments, or other performative and embodied forms of fan engagement.
As Garde-Hansen noted, “fan collectivity […] suggests that there is room for notions of collective and personal memory in […] research of fan behaviour” (2011, p.123). Yet, sustained academic attention to the interconnectedness of fandom and (cultural) memory remains a relatively recent phenomenon (cf. De Kosnik 2016; Hills/Garde-Hansen 2017; Glawion 2023). Conceptualisations that frame fans as “historians” (Stevens/Webber 2022), “archivists” (Einwächter 2015), or curators of “rogue archives” (De Kosnik 2016) underscore their role not only as consumers but as producers, preservers, and interpreters of social, collective, and connective memory.
Despite increasing scholarly interest, the specific role of fan-created works as media of memory remains under-examined. While Hills (2014) describes fans as “textual commemorators,” the specific mnemonic functions of and practices in fan cultures warrant closer scrutiny: In her analysis of “rogue archives,” De Kosnik argues that engagement with (fan-)cultural memory “occurs at every step throughout the process of making” (2016, p.4), beginning with the recollection and reinterpretation of a beloved (or reviled) text by selecting, revising, and reworking of their elements. In this sense, fan fiction and other fan cultural practices may engage in memory work by remembering, re-collecting, and re-calling characters, genres, and worlds, both fictional and historical. Thereby, they fulfil a multitude of mnemonic functions, such as imaginatively recreating past life-worlds, negotiating competing memories and cultural narratives for identity construction, and reflecting on how memory is formed, transmitted, and contested.
Digital platforms, such as archives and forums, further facilitate these processes within globally networked, affective, and participatory cultures of memory. Serving as ‘sites of memory’ (cf. Nora 1989), these platforms enable fans to collaboratively preserve, interpret, and reinvent cultural narratives across temporal, spatial, and generational divides, thereby engaging in participatory memory (cf. Potts/Beattie/Dallaire/Grimes/Turner 2018). As Niemeyer observes, media make memory “shareable” (2014, p.4)—and, through its digital distribution and accessibility, fan fiction and art facilitate this kind of global and transcultural mnemonic circulation (cf. Erll 2011). Fan forums and platforms may thus be conceptualised as sites of culture(s) of remembrance.
These various perspectives raise a range of compelling questions: Where and how do Cultural, Literary, Memory, and Fan Studies ‘intersect’? Which memory and remembrance practices can be identified within fan activities? How do fan-cultural artifacts operate as media of (cultural) memory and what mnemonic functions do they perform? What (digital) methodologies are best suited to studying fan practices and fandom’s contributions to memory cultures and studies?
The themed issue of Fandom | Cultures | Research (2/26), complemented by an in-person workshop in Marburg/Germany, seeks to explore fan fiction as a repository, mirror, and transformative site of cultural, literary, and historical memory. We invite contributions that engage with fan fiction and fan practices through the lens of memory discourses and commemorative practices, including theoretical reflections, case studies (both qualitative and quantitative), and data papers.
Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:
- Conceptual or methodological approaches linking fan studies and memory studies
- Embodied or performative memory practices in fandoms
- Transmedia memory, intertextuality, and canon revision
- Fan fiction and (fan/celebrity) memory work, mnemonic functions of/practices in fan fiction
- Fandoms as communities of remembrance/heritage communities, commemorative traditions/practices of commemoration, and measures of forgetting
- Intergenerational memory transmission in fandom
- Paratextual memory
- Rewriting history and memory: (Historical) fan fiction and marginalized (e.g., queer, diasporic, or postcolonial) perspectives, trauma and healing, historical events and counter(factual)-narratives
- Remembering in real time: fan fiction as a response to global crises (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic, climate anxiety, war, and displacement)
- Storytelling-(fan-)platforms and other digital archives as sites of memory and the challenges of archival loss
- The role of emotions and nostalgia in the interplay between memory and fan-cultural practices
- Cinephilia as nostalgic film fan practice
- Other aspects of “participatory historical culture” (Keidl/Waysdorf 2022), e.g., curating practices in museums, podcasts, and non-fiction publications
- Producer/fan relations and the ‘writing’ of shared/contradictory history
- Appropriation of memory—ethics and politics of remembering and forgetting in transformative works
- Uses of fan fiction for engaging with memory, history, and identity in educational settings
We encourage abstract submissions from scholars at all career stages and practitioners across a range of disciplines, including—among other adjacent fields—Fan Studies, Literary Studies, Media Studies, Social Studies, (Cultural) Memory Studies, Digital Humanities, Gender and Queer Studies, Holocaust and Trauma Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Archival Studies.
The AG Partizipations- und Fanforschung of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft is also organizing an on-site workshop related to this topic. Authors intending to contribute to the issue are warmly invited to participate and to present and develop their ideas in dialogue with peers. The workshop will take place on February 27, 2026, at the Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany) and will be conducted in German and English; proposals and presentations in either language are welcome and may be submitted for consideration for the journal, the workshop, or both. The deadline and requirements are the same.
Language: Bilingual, English/German
Please send your proposals (working title, abstract of max. 300 words, short biography) to
fcr-journal [at] uni-marburg [dot] de by December 1st, 2025
Please indicate with your submission whether you plan to attend the accompanying workshop.
In case the proposal is accepted, the full paper will be due on July 1st, 2026
Papers must be submitted via our OJS platform:
https://journals.uni-marburg.de/fcr/user/register
References
De Kosnik, Abigail: Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016.
Einwächter, Sophie G.: “Preserving the Marginal. Or: The Fan as Archivist.” In: Beltrame, Alberto/Fidotta, Giuseppe/Mariani, Andrea (eds.): At the Borders of (Film) History: Temporality, Archaeology, Theories. Udine: Forum, 2015, pp.359-369.
Erll, Astrid: Memory in Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Garde-Hansen, Joanne: Media and Memory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011.
Glawion, Anastasia: Remembering World War II: A Mixed-Methods Exploration of Memory Practices on an Online Forum. Heidelberg: J.B. Metzler, 2023.
Hills, Matt: “Doctor Who’s Textual Commemorators: Fandom, Collective Memory and the Self-Commodification of Fanfac.” In: Journal of Fandom Studies 2 (1), 2014, pp-21-51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs.2.1.31_1
Hills, Matt/Garde-Hansen, Joanne: “Fandom’s Paratextual Memory: Remembering, Reconstruction and Repatriating “lost” Doctor Who.” In: Cultural Studies in Media Communication 34 (2), 2017, pp.158-167.
Keidl, Philipp Dominik/Waysdorf, Abby: “Fandom Histories.” In: Transformative Works and Cultures, Special Issue: Fandom Histories 37, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2022.2299
Niemeyer, Katharina: Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Nora, Pierre: “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” In: Representations 26, 1989, pp.7-24.
Potts, Liza/Beattie, Melissa/Dallaire, Emily/Grimes, Katie/Turner, Kelly: Participatory Memory: Fandom Experiences Across Time and Space. Intermezzo, 2018.
Stevens, E. Charlotte/Webber, Nick: “The Fan-Historian.” In: Transformative Works and Cultures, Special Issue: Fandom Histories 37, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2022.2125
Source and more Information: https://journals.uni-marburg.de/fcr/announcement/view/74
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