Mechademia Guest-Edited by Andrea Horbinski Published
Alum Andrea Horbinski guest-edited an issue on “Transnational Fandom" for Mechademia: Second Arc! You can purchase a copy from the University of Minnesota Press, and through the end of 2020, you can also access the entirety of the Second Arc run thus far online, via the academic database JSTOR.
Andrea's article “What You Watch Is What You Are? Early Anime and Manga Fandom in the United States” is published in this issue, four years after she first wrote it for a different issue of Mechademia.
From the introduction:
"Bringing two fields into conversation with one another is no easy task. This issue of Mechademia Second Arc, "Transnational Fandom," seeks to bridge the young, interdisciplinary field of fan studies with the established, institutionalized field of Asian studies. In the current era, in which the humanities are under siege across the globe even as the interconnectivity of the internet is threatened by political and regulatory constraints in the so-called advanced industrial countries, these conversations are more urgent than ever: if we do not hang together, assuredly we shall all hang separately. Moreover, using the strengths and weaknesses of one field to highlight the potentials and biases in the other should enable scholars working in the zones where they intersect, such as the authors in this volume, to wield both as necessary in forging a path in both disciplines. Where we go from here will be decided by all of us."