Welcome to FMMC 358, Theories of Spectatorship, Audience, and Fandom. In this course we’ll consider the following:
- How do we engage with media?
- Is our experience of media in this digital modern day radically different than it was when film was itself a new medium?
- What does it mean to be a fan? Have our notions of fans and fandom changed over the past decades?
- How do gender, class, and race inform cultural notions of media audiences?
We’ll consider key theoretical readings and approaches to studying spectators, viewers, audiences, fans, and anti-fans across the history of the moving image. We will also interrogate our own position as spectators, viewers, consumers, and fans in media culture.
