Course Description
This course explores fandom, particularly media fandom. In a world suffused in popular culture, fans are those who have invested themselves most heavily in enjoying and making meaning from popular culture. Why do they? Are they just weird, just different than us? Or is it simply a more intense expression of how we all make meaning from culture? Drawing on some of the seminal theorists of fan studies (including Michel de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu, Camille Bacon-Smith, John Fiske, Henry Jenkins, Matt Hills, and D. W. Winnicott), this course seeks to understand fans as meaning-makers as they watch, play, write, create, blog, form communities and hierarchies, even quasi-religions, to understand the object of their fan-desire.

Course Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:
–Demonstrate a good grasp of the theoretical concepts associated with the study of media fan subcultures;
–Articulate his or her own ideas about what drives fandom;
–Demonstrate an ability to reflect on his or her own fandom.

*Course content subject to change