Acafan

An acafan (sometimes aca-fan) is an academic who identifies as a fan.
Though we don't have an exact date for the coinage of the word, the practice clearly happened between the time the first academics, Patricia Lamb, Diana Veith, and Joanna Russ, started writing about fandom in the mid-to-late 80s, and in 1994 (or possibly late 1993), and when Patricia Gillikin started ACAFEN-L, the Academic Study of Fandom.
The term "aca-fan" was popularized by Matt Hills in his 2002 monograph, Fan Cultures.Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures London: Routledge, 2002. A review of Hills' book can be found at: Scope: An Online Journal of Film & TV Studies. Hills ascribed different meanings to the terms aca-fan and fan scholar and based the different use on primary interest. If the primary identity was academic, they were acafans; if it was fannish, they were fan scholars. After Hills, the term acafan has taken on a use of its own, both with Jenkins's blog titleHis blog is titled Confessions of an Aca-Fan. and the use among acafans themselves, who've used the term to indicate that there is no primary identity whatsoever.
The next generation of academics who published scholarship on fan cultures and productions only sometimes defined themselves as fans in their scholarship. Henry Jenkins was an example of someone who identifies as a fan in Textual Poachers, 1992.
Now, many current academics self-identify as acafans.
==The Beginnings of Academic Interest in Fandom and Tensions with Fans==
From the start, there were tensions between the fannish community and academics who studied fandom.
In 1968, Joanna Russ, who was a teacher at Cornell University at the time, gave a speech that addressed academic's rising interest in science fiction and its fans. In it she described "an invasion of outside people," of "goggle-eyed, clump-footed types" who would treat science fiction as a "literary California gold rush": 
Though she doesn't specifically use the term, "acafan," in 1982, a fan writes of academic interest she has been seeing: 
Another fan wrote in about acafandom in late 1990: 
In 1991, a fan commented on the recent academic interest in fandom: 
Another fan in 1991 was also not accepting of this academic interest: 
Depends on the acafan's motives—a Blake's 7 fan in 1998 wrote: 
A fan in 1993 warned about the Observer Effect: 
===Enterprising Women and Textual Poachers===
Camille Bacon-Smith's 1992 book, Enterprising Women, created a strong negative reaction among many of the female fans who were the subjects of the book. Among the areas of contention were what many perceived as shallow, or incorrect, gender assumptions: 
In 1992, Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture was published. It was a book that was massively influential in the development of fan studies and coincidentally introduced many new fans to media fandom. The book was unusual in that it celebrated fandom instead of pathologizing it. The book made Jenkins the go-to man for many things, one of which was a reliable quote. When mainstream interest in fanfic, specifically slash, became a staple of journalists in the mid-to-late 1990s,see :Category:News Media something that coincided with the availability and popularity of the internet, Jenkins was quoted and interviewed in just about every newspaper and magazine article on the subject of fanfic, something to the amusement of some fans.A letterzine editor jokes after reading one of these articles about the "ubiquitous Dr Jenkins" in Discovered In A Letterbox #23 (2002). She also jokes about the ever-present Jenkins as she comments on an Australian article about fanfic: "OK, now the Aussies are getting in on the act. And they still manage to track down Henry Jenkins for a quote. The day man lands on Mars, the good Dr J will be there with a quote for the bemused Martians, no doubt!" in Discovered In A Letterbox #24 (2002). As she was shutting down her long-running letterzine, she bemusedly writes: "Heavens, how I shall miss my quarterly fix of Henry Jenkins' views on fanfic!" from Discovered In A Letterbox #24 (2002)
One fan's reaction to both Jenkin's and Bacon-Smith's books: 
Who gets it right, and wrong, and in between regarding K/S? One fan writes: 
===Acafans Among the Natives===
In some instances, having aca-fen attend fan run conventions helped bridge the gap in the 1990s. Henry Jenkins attended several Escapade slash conventions in the 1990s and was generally well received.The Escapade convention organizer described Henry as: a very good person to have at a slash con; he's been attending ESCAPADE for the last couple of years, and it's my hope that he and Cynthia will continue to do so. He's a great attendee, for that matter; he's generally helpful, polite, and friendly. (posted to the Virgule-L mailing list in 1994. In comparison, Camille-Bacon Smith did not fare well at conventions with one fan describing her interactions with fans as "patronizing." In a 1993 Worldcon report to the Virgule-L mailing list one fan related:
:"I found Camile Bacon-Smith's public persona patronizing. At her solo panel in which she informed us blithely that we were all being recorded and if we didn't want our words of wisdom to show up in her latest book...an AP reporter sitting next to me was heard to mutter "That's hardly fair."And: Putting all recording issues aside, I found it disturbing that whenever a fan related a story (their favorite convention moment or how fandom changed their life) she always put a "spin" on their comments. For example, one convention organizer agonized over having to call the police when a young fan was spotted waving a realistic looking gun around only to find out later that it wasn't real. She felt that she had betrayed the unwritten rule of acceptance in order to save the other 999 fen from harm. CBS smiled and pronounced "That must have been a *very difficult decision* for you to make." A few minutes later, in response to a fan comment about problematic social interactions in fandom she asked the room: "How many of you would describe yourself as socially inept?"
The differences regarding in person reception may have been that Jenkins openly identified himself as a fan, whereas Bacon-Smith felt it important to stress that she was not a fan and that her interest in fandom was academic. In 1992, Sandy Herrold offered the following assessment of both Jenkins and Bacon-Smith to the Virgule-L mailing list:
Henry Jenkins said this at a 1993 panel at Escapade:
===Further Early Fan Comments===
====1992====
====1993====
 
====1994====
===Autoethnography and Acafans===
In his 2002 book Fan Cultures, Matt Hills uses the term autoethnography to call for a process that allows acafans to reflect upon their personal investments and roles in both fandom and academia. He describes how "the tastes, values, attachments, and investments of the fan and the academic-fan are placed under the microscope of cultural analysis" (72). Accordingly, Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse use this method as a framework in their 2006 Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet
::[W]e hope to shift the concerns from a dichotomy of academic and fannish identity to subject positions that are multiple and permit us to treat the academic and fannish parts as equally important. Our identities are neither separate nor separable. We rarely speak as fan or scholar; we rarely differentiate between an academic and fannish audience, except perhaps in formality of tone. We return again to the theme of this introduction: the act of performing fandom parallels the act of performing academia. Both rely on dialogue, community, and intertextuality. All of us are academics who have spent years training in the particular discourses established by our disciplines. All of us have learned modes of interaction and mediation and specific forms of analysis in fandom. We’ll continue to exist on the intersection of the two, trying not to aca-colonize fandom or lose our academic allegiance through our fannish one. But we also want to profit from this intersection and to use our academic and fannish tools and insights to give a more complex and multifaceted image of fandom and its communities. In fact, we contend that our self-definition as participants and observers does not hinder us from seeing but rather helps us to see a more comprehensive picture of fandom. (24-5)
==An Explosion of Acafandom==
[so many acafans now!]
==Fan Discussion==
==Thank You to Acafans and Academic Fan Studies!==
A fan in 1993 wrote: 
===Fan Commentary: 2000===
 
=== Fan Commentary: A 2014 Discussion===
Some excerpts from a disscussion at Fail Fandomanon (see the entire discussion here; archive link:
=== Fan Commentary: A 2023 Discussion===
From a fan discussion in 2023: 
==Further Reading/Meta==
===1968===
* Joanna Russ: A 1968 Speech
===1982===
* The Romantic Myth and Transcendence: A Feminist Interpretation of the Kirk/Spock Bond by Patricia Frazer Lamb and Diana L. Veith
===1986===
* Romantic Myth, Transcendence, and Star Trek Zines by Patricia Frazer Lamb and Diana L. Veith
===2005===
* Academia and Fandom: What is the Role of the Ivory Tower? (2005)
===2008===
* archive link page 2 ("What seems not to be understood is that academics don't study and write articles in order to Validate the object of their study. Academics study and write articles in order to Validate themselves. As more and more people become academics, they must look further and further afield for subjects, and lo! suddenly Science Fiction isn't genre trash anymore; it's a way to secure tenure.") (2008)
* ("Funny thing I've found-- when you cut the living dog into pieces, it never acts the same afterwards, even if you put the pieces back where you found them." -- "Hate to break it to you, but reading is "studying"—unless you forget each word as you read the next. Your comparison to butchering a dog is a false analogy—you're comparing apples and oranges." -- "Funny thing I've found--after I've studied a book, it's still all in one piece, the same as before.") (2008)
===2010===
* Fandom: The Academic Kiss of Death, OR My Ongoing Meta on OTW (2010)
===2012===
* On (Not) Hosting the Session that Killed the Term “Acafan” by Louisa Stein, posted March 18, 2011, accessed November 19, 2012
* Against Aca-Fandom: On Jason Mittell on Mad Men by Ian Bogost, posted July 29, 2010, July 29, 2010, accessed November 19, 2012
===Not Dated===
* Syllabi: List of fandom study class syllabi with additional reading resources
* Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins
* In 2002, Vehemently compiled an Annotated Bibliography of Academic Resources on Fandom and Fan Fiction.
* Transformative Works and Cultures editors Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse maintain an excellent bibliography here: Fan fiction: A bibliography of critical works, which has been adapted and is currently edited by Nele Noppe as a Zotero Index
== References ==
Category:Glossary
Category:Academia