Fandom Research Paper

Fandom-as-religion is a subset of literature within the study of fandom, otherwise known as fan studies. The study of fandom encompasses areas such as media fandom, sports fandom, celebrity fandom, “high culture” (e.g., literature) fandom, and “furry” fandom, to name a few, although any niche area within popular culture has its own legions of fans. The largest body of academic work remains devoted to film and television fandom, also called media fandom, with celebrity fandom being a much smaller collection. As such, certain scholars both stimulate and remain active within the debate over the particular lens of both the definition of religion and whether fandom constitutes a religion, movement of private religion in America, or as a good metaphor for fandom. Given the reality of scholars active within this subset of fan studies,
Erika Doss, for example, was one scholar who stimulated much discussion of the comparison between fandom and religion, published in an era when scholarship on Elvis Presley fandom, and its similarity to religion, flourished. Doss, however, received backlash from scholars such as Duffett (originally in 2003) and later Sandvoss (2005), for her truncated definition of religion, and, as they claim, classist argument and problematic method. Alongside this contention is the reality that Elvis Culture, by Doss, became a standard in the Fandom-as-Religion argument, primarily because it is one of the few extended studies, along with Daniel Cavicchi (1998), to focus on fans of celebrity, in this case, celebrity musicians, that contain ethnographic