scholarly journals Exhibiting fandom: A museological perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorus Hoebink ◽  
Stijn Reijnders ◽  
Abby Waysdorf
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Fan Culture

Fandom and the collecting of objects are interwoven phenomena. The insights of museum studies may be brought to bear on the study of fan objects to provide a better understanding of fan collections and fan collecting. A museum studies focus assesses the meanings and interpretations of material objects as well as the workings and dynamics of collections, collectors, and collecting. With science fiction fan collections used as examples, we highlight object and museum theory, demonstrating how this theory and its conceptual tools can be used to analyze fan culture. We then apply these tools to a case study: the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington, a museum in the United States largely dedicated to the genre of science fiction. When fan collections enter the realm of museums, fandom becomes a world that involves touching, smelling, collecting, and controlling objects.

scholarly journals "May the journey continue": Earth 2 fan fiction, or Filling in gaps to revive a canceled series

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Musiani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Web

This essay explores writing practices in a fan community having to give life to a story deprived of an "official" version: the television series Earth 2. I argue that fan fiction writing for this prematurely canceled series exhibits peculiar features in comparison to fan writing for established series: for example, temporality, choice of protagonists, character pairings, and challenges to the original conception(s) of the series. Writing fan fiction for a canceled series is not about creating alternatives to an existing story, but about filling in gaps; it brings to light the ways in which fan fiction deals with closure. I take as a case study Earth 2, a series aired by NBC in the United States in 1994–95, whose first and only season ended in a cliffhanger episode hinting that a mysterious ailment had struck the main and most popular character. Shortly afterward, a significant number of Earth 2 Web sites, online conventions, and especially fan stories started developing; they explored what could have happened next and bore nostalgic but combative mottoes and titles such as "May the Journey Continue." I explore the specific features of Earth 2 fan fiction production and sharing by analyzing the main Earth 2 fan fiction archives on the Web and the responses to my email interviews of fan writers. Exemplars of the Earth 2 case are compared to those of other science fiction TV series, both prematurely canceled (Firefly, Space: Above and Beyond) and long-lived (Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space 9).

Gendered differences in emigration and mobility perspectives among European researchers working abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Highly Skilled

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.

‘A Routh O’ Auld Nick-Nackets’ – the antiquarian collection of John Rae

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.

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