The main objective of this class is to bring students' attention to their position as consumers of popular culture, as fans of popular culture, and how they can use this experience to inform their own work. The idea is that while one can easily be a passive consumer of commercial mass-produced culture, many are not. Powerful and established movements are readily available to aid the fan to produce their own work as a comment on, a critique of and often a subversive theft of intellectual product. A recent example of this would be the excitement surrounding DJ Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album," of 2003. In what the Boston Globe called the most intriguing hip-hop album in recent memory, Danger Mouse, a DJ and producer, has married a cappella tracks from rapper Jay-Z's 2003 CD, "The Black Album," to musical beats and phrases found on the Beatles' 1968 offering, commonly known as "The White Album" -- hence the title, "The Grey Album." All this resulted in a rain of injunctions from EMI Records, all while the album is reputedly reached platinum levels in download terms.

This class, open to all disciplines, will outline the main arteries of fan culture: the movements based on pop music, cult TV, cult cinema and, to some extent, sports. The students will be exposed to an extensive catalog of productions that have already garnered fervent and creative followings, and then presented with examples of how the fans involved in the various groups have created their own creative practice in response to their objects of adoration. Special attention will be shown to artists that have created extensive works while placing themselves in the position of a fan: the critical and creative consumer as well as producer of culture. Some examples of artists' works that would be interesting to use are Jeremy Deller's Uses of Literacy and The Search for Bez, Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho, and Elizabeth Peyton's paintings of Curt Cobain and Liam Gallager.

Beyond the obvious fertile ground that fandom provides for the creative individual I also aim to bring students' attention to the ability of fandom to place the participant in history. A pop cultural event takes place in a short time span and never returns in the same guise; recognizing and participating in the event as it happens requires vigilance and often extensive research. By alerting students to the mechanisms of how a fan base emerges I believe they will acquire useful tools on how to develop their own events, as well as becoming more skilled participants in movements created by others.

As a basic outline I see the class taking the following shape:

Early fandom:

Sarah Bernhard, the 40's and fascism, Leni Reifenstahl, Hollywood Golden era (Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust comes to mind), The 50's and the emergence of the teenager (excerpts from Colin MacInnes' Absolute Beginners may be a good read here) Beatlemania, (the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night), Woodstock, the riots of Altamont (The Stones' Gimme Shelter) and up to Punk Rock with DIY (The Sex Pistols' The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle and Penelope Spheeris' The Decline of Western Civilization).

Contemporary Fandom:

Cult TV: Star Trek, X-files, Buffy The Vampire Slayer are all important examples. I think students should be exposed to a lot of the online content and some of the more mainstream offerings such as Roger Nygard's Trekkies. The phenomenon of slash fiction will be a significant part of this section and Constance Penley's Nasa/Trek can provide the perfect read for this.

Cult Cinema: closely related to cult TV but with an obvious change in venue. The cultures surrounding Rocky Horror Picture Show, Star Wars, and more recently the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter trilogies will all be discussed and examined.

Pop music: some topics for this section could be outdoors festivals as seen in Glastonbury, Roskilde and during Lollapalooza; Rave Culture (Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hr Party People and Jon Reiss' Better Living Through Circuitry), Goth Culture (here I think a field trip to a local club would be in order), and hip-hop with it's recent fascination for figures such as Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.

Sports: Susan Faludi has outlined the fandom surrounding sports as important venues for predominantly male subcultures. I want to pay some attention to the more extreme examples of sports fandom as it leaves the sports arena and turns into an independent, often violent phenomenon. Here I think a good read would be sections from Writer Bill Buford’s book Among the Thugs.

What's next:

Here I'd like to spend some time discussing the phenomenon of web cams, flash mobs and reality TV, making the argument that these can be seen as a next generation of fan culture where a similar spontaneous community is formed but where the object of adoration has been made redundant, and the fans simply adore themselves.

In addition to being exposed to pre-existing cultures I think an important aspect of the class will be to aid students in locating current cultures, and to develop skills in using their own sense of fandom to inform their own practice. Students will be given assignments specifically in locating and penetrating existing contemporary fandoms. They will also be given at least one small assignment in using their fandom in creating a project. At least two voluntary fieldtrips will be offered (voluntary because of their likely late-night hours), one to an interesting dance club of a subcultural nature, and one to a different event, perhaps a sports event of a fan convention of some sort. Excerpts of the texts and music I've mentioned will be offered on a CD and in a reader, and short sections of the films will be shown and discussed in class.