[Commlist] CFP - Symposium - "Fandom After #MeToo"

*Call for Papers
*

*Fandom After #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc
//Bilingual French/English symposium*

*1 July 2022, The University of Chicago, Paris*

* Keynote speakers:*
*Kristina Busse (University of South Alabama)
Alexis Lothian (University of Maryland)*

In late 2017, in the wake of the widespread scandals surrounding 
American film producer Harvey Weinstein, the hashtag #MeToo started 
trending on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Using 
this hashtag, primarily (though not exclusively) female victims of 
sexual harassment and sexual assault shared their experiences and 
decried the ubiquity of these experiences even in a supposedly modern 
and egalitarian world.

Although the #MeToo hashtag has since been used to decry experiences of 
sexual violence in any context, the origins of the movement in the 
Weinstein scandal, and the subsequent sharing of the hashtag by various 
well-known actors, has ensured a continued focus of the movement on the 
entertainment industry. In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, 
actors/comedians such as Louis CK and Jeffrey Tambor also found 
themselves under public scrutiny in this context, with Tambor, for 
example, being fired from the Amazon Prime Video series/Transparent/ in 
February 2018.

Similar movements also developed in other national contexts, such as 
France, where the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal in 2011 prompted 
increased public discourse on sexual harassment and assault, and where 
the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc started trending at the time of the 
Weinstein scandal, explicitly inviting women to name and shame their 
harassers and abusers. The movement quickly gathered steam in France, 
but also received criticism, for example in a public letter in January 
2018, which was signed by over 100 French women in entertainment and 
which denounced the movement as going too far and punishing core French 
values such as chivalry. The letter itself was heavily criticised, as 
well, with particular signatories issuing apologies a week later.

Given this particular focus on the entertainment industry, it is not 
surprising that the global #MeToo movement has affected audiences and 
fans of media forms, including film, TV, music, video games, and more. 
Since fans often develop affective, parasocial relationships with the 
objects of their fandom--including the producers of particular content, 
actors, characters, etc--the accusations and scandals emerging in the 
wake of #MeToo have necessarily provoked discussion and even conflict 
within fan communities, have affected the ways in which fans relate to 
their fandoms, and have impacted even the “forms of cultural production” 
(Jenkins 2013, 1) these fans have proceeded to produce.

In recent years, these effects have not been limited to accusations of 
sexual violence within the context of #MeToo movement; indeed, this 
movement has become part of a wider trend toward holding popular 
entertainment figures accountable for particular views considered 
morally unacceptable or damaging. An example of this is, for 
example,/Harry Potter/ author J. K. Rowling, who has come under scrutiny 
since late 2019 for her purported views on civil rights for transgender 
people; these views have impacted the/Harry Potter/ fandom in various 
ways, with particularly LGBTQ fans vowing to cease purchasing licensed 
Harry Potter products, alongside other reactions of a similar nature 
(Yehl 2021).

While fan studies as an academic discipline has existed since the early 
1990s and has since both proliferated and become increasingly mainstream 
in the anglophone world (Scott and Click 2018, 1) and in France (Bourdaa 
2015), no academic work or event has yet confronted the important 
question of the impact of #MeToo, #BalanceTonPorc and their offshoots on 
fan communities and practices. This conference, then, aims to bring 
together international scholars interested in this issue. Potential 
topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:

  * Social media discussions and arguments between fans concerning
    revelations or accusations of celebrity sexual/sexist violence.
  * Empirical research on fans' reactions to such revelations/accusations.
  * Accusations of sexual/sexist violence within fan communities.
  * Representations of, or reactions to, #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc in fan
    works (fan art, fanfiction, fan vids...).
  * Representations of the #MeToo movement in media works (e.g./The
    Morning Show/,/Promising Young Woman/,/Bombshell/,/The Loudest
    Voice/) and fan reactions to them.
  * Attempts by celebrities accused of sexual or gender-based violence
    to appease their fans.
  * Posthumous reconsiderations of specific celebrities in the
    #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era.
  * Reconsiderations of past works (including characters, themes,
    stories...) in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era.
  * The position of the "acafan" (Jenkins 2011) when the object of their
    research is accused of sexual or gender-based violence.
  * Writing and rewriting film and media history in the
    #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era.
  * Teaching film and media studies in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era.

We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers, to 
be sent to (eve.bennett /at/ sorbonne-nouvelle.fr) and (l.lanckman /at/ herts.ac.uk) 
by 18 March 2022.

*Please also indicate if you would like to present your paper 
face-to-face (in Paris) or remotely. We hope that the Covid-19 situation 
will enable us to offer both options.*

Symposium attendance will be free of charge.



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