“Highly recommended.”
—Choice

One of the best aspects of the text is the way that the contributors do not merely typecast fans as those interested in modern and popular culture, but also examine fans of mediums typically considered high culture. This makes the book much friendlier to pop-culture fans, whose practices are typically considered low-brow and fanatical when compared to someone who holds season tickets to the opera or visits an art gallery every weekend. As a fan, its nice to see that the behavior is not reduced to unnecessary fanaticism and is examined on a more subjective level.
—M/C Reviews

Fandom pushes the boundaries of fan studies in bold directions, incorporating high culture fandoms, global fan cultures, fan technologies, and antagonistic anti-fandom, while rethinking the core tenets of fan studies concerning aesthetics, place, intellectual property, and interpretive communities — all presented with a lively, accessible, and engaging writing style.
—Jason Mittell, Middlebury College

If you're an avid news reader, a holder of season's tickets to the symphony, a frequenter of used bookstores, or even if you've been known to scream at referees during televised games, you're a fan. In this exciting collection, we learn about why it is that certain media narratives, images, sounds, and events engage us emotionally, and what that engagement means for us personally and in our relationships with others in the increasingly global marketplace in which we live.
—Lynn Schofield Clark, author of From Angels to Aliens

A rich compendium of theory, argument, and observation of a wide variety of types of fandomfrom fans of cultural theory to fans of the Sopranos and of Chekhov, from presidents who are fans of country music to fans of the news. As the active prosumers of the digital medias niche markets come to be increasingly central to their operation, fan studies shows us the emerging dynamics of how the cultural industries are going to work in the future.
—David Morley, Goldsmiths College, University of London

We are all fans. Whether we log on to Web sites to scrutinize the latest plot turns in Lost, stalk our favorite celebrities on Gawker, attend gaming conventions, or simply wait with bated breath for the newest Harry Potter novel-each of us is a fan. Fandom extends beyond television and film to literature, opera, sports, and pop music, and encompasses both high and low culture.

Fandom brings together leading scholars to examine fans, their practices, and their favorite texts. This unparalleled selection of original essays examines instances across the spectrum of modern cultural consumption from Karl Marx to Paris Hilton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer to backyard wrestling, Bach fugues to Bollywood cinema and nineteenth-century concert halls to computer gaming. Contributors examine fans of high cultural texts and genres, the spaces of fandom, fandom around the globe, the impact of new technologies on fandom, and the legal and historical contexts of fan activity. Fandom is key to understanding modern life in our increasingly mediated and globalized world.

Jonathan Gray is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University and author of Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality.

Cornel Sandvoss is Subject Leader in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Surrey and author of Fans: The Mirror of Consumption.

C. Lee Harrington is Professor of Sociology at Miami University and co-author of Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life.