Fandom for Us, by Us Author Event - Detroit

We are delighted to celebrate the release of Fandom for Us, by Us with author Alfred L. Martin Jr. in conversation with Wayne State Professor Jessica D. Moorman on April 30th. The event will includes a rich conversation about the book, time for Q & A and a book signing session.

Join this event with a Free or Book Ticket at this event. A free ticket saves you a seat. The book tickets help you join with a book secured. There will be books on sale on site. If you miss the event and have a book ticket, a signed book can be picked up at the bookstore. We will hold the book for two weeks.

About the Book:

The convergence of the politics of representation and Black fan cultures
Boldly going where few fandom scholars have gone before, Fandom for Us, by Us breaks from our focus on white fandom to center Black fandoms. Alfred L. Martin, Jr., engages these fandoms through what he calls the “four C’s”: class, clout, canon, and comfort.
Class is a key component of how Black fandom is contingent on distinctions between white, nationally recognized cultural productions and multicultural and/or regional cultural productions, as demonstrated by Misty Copeland’s ascension in American Ballet Theatre. Clout refers to Black fans’ realization of their own consumer spending power as an agent for industrial change, reducing the precarity of Blackness within historically white cultural apparatuses and facilitating the production of Black blockbusters like 2018’s Black Panther. Canon entails a communal fannish practice of sharing media objects, like the 1978 film The Wiz, which lead them to take on meanings outside of their original context. Comfort describes the nostalgic and sentimental affects associated with beloved fan objects such as the television show, Golden Girls, connected to notions of Black joy and signaling moments wherein Black people can just be themselves.

About the Author: Alfred L. Martin, Jr., is Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Cinematic Arts at University of Miami. He is author of The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, editor of Rolling: Blackness and Mediated Comedy, and co-editor of The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai.

In conversation with Jessica D. Moorman is a fourth generation Detroiter and Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University. Her research explores Black women's meaning of making single status. She is currently writing her first book, Living Singlehood: the Values and Strategies Sustaining Black women in Unmarried Life.

"Fandom For Us, By Us will undoubtedly be seen as an essential building block of fan studies. Martin’s reception studies do the important work of helping us understand how African Americans use media as a tool in everyday life and make pleasure a political necessity." Rebecca Wanzo, author of The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging

"Fandom for Us, By Us is such a welcome addition to audience research, fandom studies, and, of course the field of film and media studies in general. Alfred L. Martin's accessible and hilariously engaging writing in addition to the specific case studies that assist in explaining his concept of the four C's of Black fandom make this text a valued contribution for training up students to become more critically literate consumers and creators and for insisting that scholarship engage harder with Black audiences not traditionally imagined as part of fandom." -Kristen Warner, author of The Cultural Politics of Colorblind TV Casting

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Source Booksellers, 4240 Cass Avenue, Detroit, United States