Theorizing Acquisition and Lifestyle within Fan Studies

תקציר ההרצאה:

Fan scholarship has often sought to disentangle the connection between fandom and consumer culture by focusing on fan creative and counterhegemonic practices. Without dismissing these interventions, there has been a corresponding reluctance to take fan participation in consumer culture seriously as a meaningful site of identity formation, capital accrual, politics and pleasure. Building on recent efforts to put fan studies scholarship into conversation with critical media industries research, this presentation conceptualizes fandom through the prisms of ‘lifestyle’ and ‘acquisition,’ and seeks to interrogate how lifestyle politics and acquisition practices inform how and why (many) fans participate in fandoms. This reframing of fandom is the focus of a new collected anthology, Acquiring Fan Lifestyles, co-edited with Dr. Elizabeth Affuso, available for purchase - and free online - in March 2027 from University of Michigan Press. 

על המרצה:

Avi Santo is a professor of media studies in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on the intersections of consumer culture, material culture, and brand culture. He is the author of Selling the Silver Bullet: The Lone Ranger and Transmedia Brand Licensing (University of Texas Press, 2015) and Configuring the Field of Character and Entertainment Licensing (Routledge University, 2023) as well as co-editor of Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries (NYU Press, 2014, with Derek Johnson and Derek Kompare). His work has appeared in dozens of journals and collected essays. Santo is the co-creator of the digital platforms FlowTV.org, MediaCommons, and In Media Res. 
 

 26.10.2026 | 18:15-19:45 | בניין מקסיקו, חדר 213