American Identities and the Consumption of Japanese Homoerotica

My thesis is a cross-cultural comparison of the consumption habits of Japanese and American yaoi or boy’s love (BL) fans, with a particular focus on how the motivations for consuming this type of media may differ between each group. Within my literature review, I start with the history of Japanese homoerotica, from Heian era writings and shunga artwork, to how this has evolved into the modern BL industry in Japan. Additionally, I examine where BL media fits into the landscape of both Japanese and global LGBT+ identity politics. Using identity construction and queer feminist theory, I explore how this type of homoerotica is utilized to help marginalized people construct and validate their sexual and gender expressions. This information will be compared to the data I collect within my own empirical research, to demonstrate what cultural values and consumption habits are similar or differ between my American respondents and the Japanese BL community

Dichotomy of Fan: A Snapshot of Interaction, Participation, and Belonging in Modern Fandom Culture

Welcome to the summary of my M.A. thesis website, DichotomyofFan.com, whose full title is, as you saw on the previous page, Dichotomy of Fan: A Snapshot of Interaction, Participation, and Belonging in Modern Fandom Culture. As I believe it would be a bit much to dump everything on the site—there are 15 interviews and that’s only one section—into this summary, I’ll be including a preview of each main section of the project. Speaking of, there are a lot of ways I can (and have) introduced this project to people. Instead of the default Surprised-Pikachu-meme-How-Do-I-Even-Explain-This awkward pause, allow me to use past mini-projects requiring me to explain it in succinct terms that make sense... in order to make it make sense. Everyone is a fan of something. Everyone has their thing—music, shows, books—that influences them, drives them, or simply puts a smile on their face throughout the day. My thesis project started as a result of fan experience—a creative piece after years of influence, interaction, and participation—but soon moved to an exploration of fandom itself. It has become a snapshot of fan communities today as both my peers—through interviews—and I—through autoethnographic accounts—have experienced them, analyzed through the theoretical discussions of researchers like Henry Jenkins and compiled in a series of vignettes (read: rants) on fandom trends, ethics, memes, and lingo