[Air-L] [Book announcement] Feminist Fandom: Media Fandom, Digital Feminisms, and Tumblr

[Briony Hannell]

**Apologies for cross-posting**

Dear all,

I am delighted to announce that my book, Feminist Fandom
<https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/feminist-fandom-9798765101803/>, is out now!

Feminist Fandom: Media Fandom, Digital Feminisms, and Tumblr (Bloomsbury
Academic, 2024)

Adopting an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, bringing together
media and communications, feminist cultural studies, sociology, internet
studies, and fan studies, Hannell locates media fandom at the intersection
of the multi-directional and co-constitutive relationship between popular
feminisms, popular culture, and participatory networked digital cultures.
Using a layered methodological approach comprising participant observation,
surveys and interviews, Feminist Fandom constructs a multifaceted
ethnographic account of how feminist identities are constructed, lived, and
felt through digital fannish spaces on the microblogging and social
networking platform Tumblr.

Feminist Fandom captures the richness and diversity of young people’s
creative engagement with the competing meanings and representations of
digital feminism, locating Tumblr as a fruitful site for young people to
engage in interest-based feminist activism, community building, and
knowledge sharing. The experiences of over 300 feminist fans captured
throughout the book speak to how broader shifts within feminist practice,
theory, and activism over the past decade have shaped and informed the
social and cultural practices of media fandom, while also complicating
utopian framings of these practices to reveal the contradictory and
ambivalent processes of inclusion and exclusion at work within them.

Please consider requesting a copy via your university library. You can also
use the following discount codes to save 35% on Feminist Fandom via
Bloomsbury Academic: bloomsbury.com/9798765101803
<https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/feminist-fandom-9798765101803/>

UK and EU Customers: GLR TW2UK

USA: GLR BD8US

Canada: GLR BD8CA

I hope you read it, discuss it, and consider teaching with it. It would be
suitable for modules exploring, for example: gender, race, and sexuality;
digital identities and cultures; (digital) media and communications;
contemporary feminism; media fans, audiences, and reception; and more!
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like to discuss Feminist Fandom
and/or any other opportunities to engage with my research further.

[image: Feminist Fandom book cover. Featuring a DIY, feminine, collage
aesthetic.]

—

Reviews of Feminist Fandom

“While the pedagogical value of digitally-mediated fandoms is often
asserted, here Briony Hannell critically engages with the complexities and
contradictions of how a feminist pedagogy functions in online fan spaces.
Through its exploration of a range of practices and debates from reflexive
un/learning to “SJW fatigue” in these communities, this book complicates
exclusively celebratory claims about fandom’s links to rising feminist
consciousness. While Hannell’s arguments are deeply attuned to the
socio-technical features of Tumblr, her sophisticated theoretical,
methodological and analytic approach is an exemplar of critical and nuanced
digital feminist media analysis that makes this book a must-read in the
field.”

— Alison Harvey, author of Feminist Media Studies (2019) and Associate
Professor of Communications, York University, Canada

“Fandom as a pathway to feminism is understudied, yet after reading
Feminist Fandom, the two seem inseparable. This book offers a compelling
account of the intersection of digital cultures, feminisms and popular
culture. As such, it is recommended reading for scholars in participatory
culture, audience studies, gender studies, feminist studies and fandom
studies. This is a book about the power of stories, the importance of
Tumblr as a platform of first-person narration and the centrality of
storytelling for social movements and their reinvention.”

— Katrin Tiidenberg, co-author of tumblr (2021) and Professor of
Participatory Culture, Tallinn University, Estonia

“Feminist Fandom is a rich, qualitative study of Tumblr as a site for
social justice. It’s a deep dive into fandom and audience creativity. With
its insights on feminist user cultures and pedagogies, Feminist Fandom
explains why and how online platforms act as a space for identity
construction and activism.”

— Nicolle Lamerichs, author of Productive Fandom: Intermediality and
Affective Reception in Fan Cultures (2018) and Senior Lecturer in Creative
Business, HU University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands

—

Thank you!

Best wishes,

Briony

*Dr Briony Hannell *(she/her)
University Teacher in Sociology
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
Department of Sociological Studies
The University of Sheffield

Twitter <https://twitter.com/brionyhannell> / Staff Profile
<https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/socstudies/people/academic-staff/briony-hannell> /
Website <http://brionyhannell.com/>