ABSTRACT
Fans will welcome someone they can identify as a fellow fan, but we must then weigh our relationships with those research subjects against an appropriately critical scholarly approach. It is more crucial that scholars have a respectful relationship to the human research subjects with whom they interact, and a progressive aim in mind for their research. Fan scholarship that engages in the aesthetics or forms of fan production definitely ought to be promoted. Scholars may have to move new venues to disseminate their work, which carries with it all kinds of scary things, like inability of the document so created to be used for tenure and promotion, and inability for blinded peer review. If aca-fans in particular carry out ethnographic research, then there are particular issues—pros and cons—in terms of gaining and not betraying trust. A class about fan fiction at the University of California—Berkeley—required students to leave feedback on pieces of fiction.
