Expressing Identity, Experiencing Belonging, and Everyday Life in Heavy Metal Music

When heavy metal fans traverse through their everyday life, they are faced with countless opportunities to engage in social interactions with others. Such interactions question, establish, and strengthen fans’ heavy metal identities whilst providing them with a sense of community and belonging through engaging with others who also share a preference for heavy metal music. This thesis is built on a qualitative research approach, complimented by an insider and ethnographic orientation in order to explore identity expression, the feeling of belonging and community, everyday life processes, and the role of heavy metal music in the everyday life of heavy metal fans. Through social interactions based on shared musical preference, heavy metal fans are able to meaningfully engage with others through which communal affiliations are strengthened and reinforced. Despite mainstream, and largely negative attitudes towards heavy metal, the music provides a safety net for listeners and is a driving force in their experience of the reciprocal relationship between personal identity and group membership and community. Due to the deep connection listeners have with heavy metal, the music becomes something which fans are able to call theirs alone

Spectrums of investment in Doctor Who fandom

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Drawing upon a significant weight of empirical data, collected in the field, this thesis proposes a set of four spectrums of investment engaged in by cult media fans: the spectrum of financial investment; the spectrum of what is here termed 'participatory investment'; the spectrum of investment in the idea of textual authenticity; and the spectrum of multiple investments. The spectrum model allows the individual members of the research sample to be located within specific regions of each spectrum and correlations to be drawn between the distinct spectrums, in order for any patterns which emerge to be examined. The thesis also reviews a number of relevant theoretical concerns such as fan studies, ethnography and social psychology

Negotiating sectarian imagery : race and nationalism in Glasgow Celtic fandom

This is a study of the history and culture of Celtic Football Club and its imagery. It examines particularly the negotiation of Celtic fandom with its stereotyped sectarian representations of races and nations. My aim is to reconceptualise the way sectarianism in football is understood and then to develop an understanding of the tension between continuity and change in Celtic fandom as a particular cultural community. For this purpose, I rely for research resources on archival sources of biographies, fanzines and newspapers, and ethnographic interviews with the fans and participant observation. The observation through those materials is combined with theorisation of the cultural mechanism through which sectarianism is articulated or dis-articulated with the football rivalry with Rangers. This mechanism is elaborated in two halves. The first half explores the ways in which the fans' emotional investment constitutes the fandom as an affective community. The fandom is conceived by the dialectic relationship between affective agency and the social and cultural space of the affective investment. This relationality is understood from the angle of performativity of the incorporating collective rituals rather than from the foundational point of view. The second half is concerned with races and nations at the intersecting point of football fandom and sectarianism. My approach sees racialisation not as a unitary, simple differentiation but as a process of the complex inter-play between racism, sectarianism and club belonging. In conclusion, the thesis seeks to evaluate the way that the cosmopolitan style and meaning of belonging emerges in football public spheres even in a deeply localised environment

To my betas, endless chocolate frogs! : exploring the intersections of emotion, the body, and literacy in online fanfiction.

This project examines the complex intersections of identity, including gender, sexuality, and social class, in the literacy practices of online fanfiction. Previous scholarship has focused solely on the gender and/or pedagogical implications of fanfiction communities, and my project engages and extends these conversations by analyzing how fanfiction practices provide a distinctive space to explore how we understand identity, digital technologies, and fannish participation. I conducted textual analysis of stories, authors\u27 notes, how-to guides, and questionnaires and interviews. A close inspection of fanfiction practices provide insight into how digital technologies and literacy practices interact within exchange economies. My dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 include a review of the literature as well as a theoretical approach to the project and its methods. Chapters 3 and 4 address the functions of online fanfiction by looking at fan websites, fan stories, and how-to fan documents, as well as questionnaires and interviews. Finally, Chapter 5 develops a theory of online fanfiction literacy practices, and the ways in which these practices are shaped by power structures, identity construction, community norms, and material circumstances. I focus, in particular, on developing a theory of emotion in terms of literacy practices—what I come to call “emotioned literacy” (borrowing from Micciche).The investigation of online fanfiction spaces is especially valuable for rhetoric and composition because it highlights how writing is a deeply embodied and emotional, life-long (learning) process. In addition, this project highlights the importance of a network of dedicated participants with knowledge(s) in different areas. Finally, this project highlights the importance of paying closer attention to the ethics of our online research methodologies

The Ithacan, 2003-10-30

https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/ithacan_2003-4/1009/thumbnail.jp

Spectrums of investment in Doctor Who fandom

Drawing upon a significant weight of empirical data, collected in the field, this thesis proposes a set of four spectrums of investment engaged in by cult media fans: the spectrum of financial investment; the spectrum of what is here termed 'participatory investment'; the spectrum of investment in the idea of textual authenticity; and the spectrum of multiple investments. The spectrum model allows the individual members of the research sample to be located within specific regions of each spectrum and correlations to be drawn between the distinct spectrums, in order for any patterns which emerge to be examined. The thesis also reviews a number of relevant theoretical concerns such as fan studies, ethnography and social psychology.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Game Time is My Time. I Get to Define That: Gender, Identity, and the National Football League\u27s Female Fans

Based on existing literature relatively little is known about the female football fan in America. Previous research has acknowledged that these women exist, often in startling proportions. It has also identified some of the reasons why they attend the game and some of the perceived benefits of their participation as fans (Clark, Apostolopoulou, & Gladden, 2009; Dietz-Uhler, Harrick, End, & Jacquemotte, 2000). Yet we do not know the value they place on their fan identities, nor how they manage to negotiate being both women and fans in a sport environment that both subtly and not-so-subtly continues to reinforce the model of hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to explore how the identities of female fans of the National Football League (NFL) were constructed and negotiated through the language used to describe their experiences. To that end, 35 blog posts from OnHerGame a website dedicated to female sports fans, during the 2012-2013 NFL season were collected and five women who self-identify as National Football League (NFL) fans and currently write for the site were interviewed for this study; in addition, my own bracketing interview (Pollio, Henley, & Thompson, 1997) was also included. The resulting data were analyzed using feminist poststructural discourse analysis (FPDA), revealing three major patterns of discourse: a) reproduction, b) resistance, and c) reinscription. Reproductive discourse included language that reinforced hegemonic ideas about football as male space (e.g., women as less knowledgeable and primarily heterosexually interested in the men who play), while resistant discourse was often employed in an effort to defy these stereotyped subject positions (e.g., portraying female fans as competent, knowledgeable and authentic). Though women largely produced these two forms in their online posts, interviews with participants revealed a third pattern whereby female fans reinscribed reproductive discourse practices in an effort to differentiate themselves from other women (e.g., assuming other women do not know, are not interested)

Independent, No.5, October 8, 1992

The Reflector was a student-run newspaper created in 1922 at the State Teachers Normal School at Newark, now Kean University. It began as a monthly newsletter with the same name, some were printed by Lackawanna Press, Newark. In 1960, the newspaper changed its name to the Independent. The editor of this issue was Todd F. Brugmans.https://digitalcommons.kean.edu/independent_1990-1994/1052/thumbnail.jp

Independent, No.5, October 8, 1992

The Reflector was a student-run newspaper created in 1922 at the State Teachers Normal School at Newark, now Kean University. It began as a monthly newsletter with the same name, some were printed by Lackawanna Press, Newark. In 1960, the newspaper changed its name to the Independent. The editor of this issue was Todd F. Brugmans.https://digitalcommons.kean.edu/independent_1990-1994/1056/thumbnail.jp