Xiwen Zhang describes herself as an “academic fan.” Tracing her love of transnational and intercultural media all the way back to seeing The Lion King in theaters in China as a young girl, Zhang now studies popular culture fan communities, or “fandoms,” as a fourth-year doctoral student at Klein College of Media and Communication.
Having studied fandoms for years and considering herself an avid fan of superhero movies and comics, Zhang’s most recent publication goes in-depth on this subject. The article,“Why most Chinese fans of American superhero movies are girls: A gendered local fandom of a global Hollywood icon,” was published in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication in January 2021. The paper sets out to explore the intersection of gender and media, explaining that “American superhero movies are generally perceived as primarily targeted at a male audience. In China, however, females far outnumber males in the genre’s fan community. This phenomenon suggests that a popular text’s local negotiation can take on different paths when the text is consumed transnationally.”
As previously mentioned, Zhang is no stranger to consuming transcultural media. As a master’s student at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Zhang experienced not only culture shock, but a certain lukewarmness from her advisors and peers toward her topic of study.
Zhang explained that before relocating from China to study in the Netherlands and eventually the US, she was expecting to find a Western culture that was monolithic, and was pleasantly surprised by the cultural differences between Europe and North America. Additionally, she mentioned that while her former Dutch colleagues and professors, many of whom were not involved in fan communities themselves, were not as informed or welcoming toward her studies, her current cohort at Klein has much more in common with her.
This is particularly true of her mentor, Fabienne Darling-Wolf. A communication for development and social change professor as well as the chair of Zhang’s dissertation committee, Darling-Wolf shares many similarities with Zhang as a scholar. Both study transcultural media consumption, and they have encouraged and informed one another where their interests overlap.
“My own work explores how consumption of global media shapes individuals' identities, and while it focuses more on Japan and Europe, there certainly are many parallels with Xiwen's work,” says Darling-Wolf. “I have really enjoyed watching Xiwen develop into an independent scholar over the course of her time in the doctoral program.”
Zhang says that she shares a lot of aspects of her work in common with other members of her cohort as well, particularly on topics surrounding women and femininity. “I’m inspired by my advisors as well as my cohort, so I feel I’m quite lucky,” Zhang says.
While she still feels that both her research and the fan communities themselves are still in the early stages of development, she knows they are particularly valuable to study because of the role they play in challenging the status quo.
“I used to read fan scholars who said ‘You should introduce the fan status into your classroom, because fan status is always about challenging the norm, because fandom is about the people and not about the social norm,’” she says.
As these ideas and communities continue to develop and change, Zhang believes that these enormous communities are so important because of what they are about to become. “It’s always about something about to form,” she says.