Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone
  • Android

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.

  • List Price: $19.95
  • Save: $4.90 (25%)
FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books.
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Fangasm: Supernatural Fan... has been added to your Cart
Want it Saturday, Aug. 20? Order within and choose this date at checkout.

Ship to:
To see addresses, please
or
Please enter a valid US zip code.
or
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: Ships 24/7 Direct from Amazon good Normal to heavy wear might have bent/creased pages, dog eared corners, yellowed or aged, some writing underlining & or highlighting or library sticker. 100% Satisfaction when you order from 321 Books.

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See all 2 images

Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls Paperback – October 1, 2013

4.7 out of 5 stars 83 customer reviews

See all 2 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Price
New from Used from
Kindle
"Please retry"
Paperback
"Please retry"
$15.05
$9.00 $1.94

Ace the ACT.
Wiley Architecture, Construction, & Design Sale
Save up to 40% on select architecture, construction, and design guides during August. Learn more.
$15.05 FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books. In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
click to open popover

Frequently Bought Together

  • Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls
  • +
  • Fan Phenomena: Supernatural
  • +
  • The Essential Supernatural [Revised and Updated Edition]: On the Road with Sam and Dean Winchester
Total price: $66.58
Buy the selected items together

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE
The latest book club pick from Oprah
"The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead is a magnificent novel chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. See more

Product Details

  • Paperback: 246 pages
  • Publisher: University Of Iowa Press (October 1, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 160938198X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1609381981
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #598,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
This book doesn’t cover fandom or any theories about it that would satisfy general or academic readers. In fact, the whole book seems to be a pretext for the authors to meet Jensen Ackles and get his blessing for slash fiction. The best they get, in an interview late in the book, is his awareness that slash exists and his bemusement that anyone would want to read his off-set friendship with Jared Padalecki as gay, but that doesn’t stop the authors from spinning his comment into off-base academese about “male intimacy” because their stated goal is to “de-shame” the practice of slash fiction. Throughout the whole book, they skimp on explanations of slash fiction in favor of insisting that it’s “empowering” and reading explicit approval in to the actors’ good-natured resignation to its existence.

After a superficial theory piece, most of the book narrates a series of conventions attended and road trips undertaken in pursuit of interviews with people involved in the making of Supernatural. Very few fans are interviewed about their participation in the fandom, though you’d think that would be key to understanding the phenomenon. It’s thus not surprising when regular convention-going fans come to resent the authors for having green-room access to conduct interviews just on the strength of their PhDs and the claim that they’re writing a book. The authors could have taken that as a springboard for musings on fandom, but it’s one of several missed opportunities and blind spots that plague their process. After their crowning glory as interviewers -- a set visit and interviews with the stars in Vancouver -- they are shocked to find a potential book deal with Warner Brothers yanked out from under them, to be replaced with a cease and desist letter.
Read more ›
3 Comments 60 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
Format: Kindle Edition
I have mixed feelings about this book and its topic. I read 67% percent in one sitting and then had to force myself to get back to it. Something about it all felt…dirty? I guess dirty fits. This is why I had to separate this out. It was my feelings around hardcore fandom itself that led to this feeling for the most part, though I did take some issue with the tactics the authors took.

The ups and downs, the positives and the negatives of being a fangirl in a hardcore fandom are covered in Fangasm. From the unspoken rules of fandom to the fandom turning their collective back on fans that don’t “do” fandom right, the pages cover less of the psychological side and reasoning behind obsessive fandoms and more of the personal journey of the two writers. For the academic review of the authors’ antics, check out Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/Producer Relationships by the same authors.

Fangasm is the story of two middle aged college professors – one university professor with a PhD in eighteenth century literature and one psychologist and researcher with a PhD in clinical psychology – that find themselves becoming certified fangirls over Supernatural and try to document their journey “inside” the fandom while attempting to discover what lies behind and beneath the crazy culture of fandom. They write fanfiction. You should know this. You will know. If you forget, they’ll tell you about 9,000 times.

Here’s where I’m torn: I was never really sure if the authors were trying to justify their fangirl ways -to the readers and themselves- or if they used their professional researcher status as a way to gain access to the cast, crew and creatives under the guise of writing this book. Those PhDs they mention several times?
Read more ›
Comment 36 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
By Marablaise on December 20, 2014
Format: Paperback
First I will just say that I love Supernatural. It’s a great show and if I could I would love to visit Comic Con, but…I think there is a limit to how far one takes one's obsession with a show/movie/singer/group/whatever…it’s one thing to like something, but to let it take over one’s life totally? It’s not that I don’t enjoy fandom’s, but I just don’t have the need to ruin my economy, drive away my friends or family for it.

The ladies in this book, middle age women, suddenly start to obsess over Supernatural although it seems mostly Jensen Ackles, they fly to see him in play, watch everything he is in from movies to tv shows. Nothing wrong with that, I have favorite actors also. But it bothered me reading how for example Lynn hid the fact from her family that she ordered passes to a convention. Like what she did was something shameful. And here we have the BIG problem with the book. Everything they did was so shameful, liking Supernatural and writing fanfiction. It’s shameful to like something; it’s shameful to write slash fanfiction. It’s shame, shame, shame. And I tried to remember if I have ever been ashamed for liking something (Hell I liked David Hasselhoff in Baywatch when I was a teenager and not even that makes me ashamed nowadays).

This book felt like an excuse to be able to get up and close with Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, a middle life crisis now that the children are almost grown up.

"As we pondered and plotted and looked for opportunities to get up close and personal with actors, our road trip through fandom continued"

But there are moments I feel for them because in a part they manage to find a life outside being a wife, mother, ​and professor.
Read more ›
1 Comment 7 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway
This item: Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls