The Singing Detective (2007)

Glen Creeber, The Singing Detective, London: BFI TV Classics, 2007.
My rating: ***
The Singing Detective by Glen Creeber
Television doesn’t always age well, but Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective more than twenty years later is still just as riveting and confronting. I saw the series when it originally aired in 1986 and was completely fascinated, even [...]

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Star Trek (2008)

Ina Rae Hark, Star Trek. London: BFI publishing, 2008.
My rating: ***
Star Trek by Ina Rae Hark
The author of this book, Ina Rae Hark is a long-standing fan of the series, dating back to the original 1960s series. She is currently professor of English and Film Studies at the University of South Carolina. In [...]

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Doctor Who (2005)

Kim Newman, Doctor Who. London: BFI publishing, 2005.
My rating: ***
Doctor Who by Kim Newman
Kim Newman is a well-known and prolific author of genre novels, overviews on cult and horror film and TV and a reviewer for the film magazine Empire.
This book, an entry in the excellent BFI TV classics series, is an enjoyable [...]

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‘Public Intellectuals 2.0′ (2008)

Daniel W. Drezner, ‘Public Intellectuals 2.0′, Chronicle of Higher Education, v 55 n12, Nov 2008, p. B5
My rating: ***
Link to article (word doc)
Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the USA and has run his own blog for about seven years. [...]

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Textual Poachers

Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.
My rating: ****
Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins
This is the seminal foundational text in terms of academic studies of fandom. Even if it was published in 1992 before the explosion of internet fandom and a more mainstream (even [...]

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Theorizing fandom

Cheryl Harris, Alison Alexander (eds). Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture, and Identity. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 1998.
My rating:***
Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity by Cheryl Harris
This is a rather useful edited collection about various media fandoms and fan practices. There is the usual stuff on slash included. Of course the book’s appearance in 1998 [...]

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Looking Awry

Slavoj Zizek. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991.
My rating: ***
Zizek paraphrases and inverts de Quincey’s famous propositions concerning murder:
If a person renounces Stephen King, soon Hitchcock himself will appear to him dubious, and from here it is just a step to a disdain for [...]

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The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context

Sheenagh Pugh, The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context. Bridgend: Seren, 2005.
My rating: ****
The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context by Sheenagh Pugh
This book offers an excellent and sympathetic overview of fan fiction as a literary form. The author uses material from both media and literary fandoms as illustrations, including [...]

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Academic blogging

Joy Wattawa (2008) ‘Can Academic Blogging Advance Wisdom Research? Defining Wisdom project.
My rating: ***
I have just found another useful article on the benefits of academic blogging. From the references it appears to have been written this year (2008). In case you were wondering, given this is my second post on academic blogging, I wouldn’t really [...]

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Fan Fiction and Fan Communities

Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (eds.) 2006. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co.
My rating: ***
My review
Quite interesting with some useful if rather rushed definitions of the some of the jargon used by fan fiction writers in the introduction. A large proportion of [...]

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