[1] "All fans are broken." Katherine Anderson Howell interprets this statement from Lynn Zurbenis and Katherine Larsen's 2007 interview with Supernatural fan Sharon Vernon in two ways in the first chapter of Disability and Fandom: "First, that fandom itself exists as a kind of brokenness, a pathology that requires fixing; [and] second, that fans are, like all people, coming from broken places and see their brokenness reflected in the objects of their fandom" (1). Anderson Howell rejects the notion that fans are themselves powerless or marginalized specifically for being fans alone. The author instead shifts the conversation toward disabled fans existing at and beyond the margins of both digital and physical fannish spaces, including conventions, social media platforms like Tumblr and Instagram, and even Archive of Our Own. Anderson Howell's work is centered around three goals: adding disability as an identity that fan studies scholars study in analysis, exploring the actual (rather than purported) accessibility of both material and digital fannish spaces, and examining disability's function in fan practices. The monograph is broken into eight chapters in an ambitious and comprehensive endeavor that discusses topics including Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) and the hypervisibility of racialized multimarginalized disability, pain and embodiment in hurt/comfort fan fiction, and disability antifans who claim that disability influencers are faking their conditions for attention.
[2] Disability and Fandom is available from the University of Iowa Press in both paperback and ebook formats and is 232 pages long. The cover features the red, gold, white, blue, and green lines over the faded black background of the disability pride flag originally attributed to writer Ann Magill ("History of the Disability Pride Flag," https://www.weinberg.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/history-disability-pride-flag) but revised through collaborative efforts across the community (https://capri0mni.dreamwidth.org/792638.html).
[3] Anderson Howell begins by weaving a scholarly genealogy of the waves of fan studies and disability studies, noting that both fields have become more intersectional and inherently interdisciplinary. Contemporary fan studies perspectives raised as examples of inclusive scholarship include Pande and Morimoto's work on racialized experiences of fandom and non-Western and non-English-speaking fandoms, which have historically been underrepresented in the field. E. J. Nielsen, Kristina Busse, and Karen Hellekson's work in establishing research ethics in the field to better protect fans and fannish activities from exploitation and legal challenges is also highlighted. The discussion of disability remains less about particular modes of understanding disability (social versus medical model) and more about how some identities have been pathologized while others have been blatantly ignored in even disability studies scholarship. The analyses in the text fittingly include a wide berth of disabled identities and experiences, both temporary and permanent, including but not limited to embodied physical disability, neurodivergence, and conditions of mental and emotional health and well-being. There is a keen understanding that disability identity can be complicated and interrogated through intersectional theoretical lenses. While the text never argues that race and disability operate in precisely the same manner, the author understands that these experiences can share some meaningful overlap and that the associated theoretical frameworks can serve to enrich discourse surrounding the complexities of both. There is a rejection, further, of restricting disabled experiences into a binary of high versus low functioning, and a broader discussion of how these binaries function as by-products of capitalism that are representative of contemporary disability studies praxis.
[4] Disability is further contextualized within the reality that disabled people are the norm, not the exception, serving to answer Anderson Howell's examination of the accessibility versus reality of fannish spaces, both physical and digital. "We exist in a community of over one billion—16 percent of the living population. One out of every six people on the planet is disabled, approximately the same number of people who speak English…Through injury, illness, or age, disability is one of very few identities individuals may acquire during their lifetimes" (148). Indeed, this reinforces the need to interrogate disability as a palpable reality within fan studies. While fannish proclivities themselves need no pathology, disabled fans exist in every sphere. All fans further interact with disability in some way, whether this manifests as diagnostic headcanons for neurodivergent-coded characters or the lack of an "adaptive beauty container" movement to make product packaging more accessible for people with physical disabilities.
[5] The analysis of Ye's fans is particularly compelling as an example of interdisciplinary fan studies research that examines the artist through the public performance of disability, economic power, race, and masculinity, in addition to how Ye's fans operate in both physical and digital fannish spaces. The chapter includes analysis of black fans as consumers of black art, fan consumption as an act of resistance, and Ye's own public openness about his experiences with mental health treatment, diagnosis, and misdiagnosis in addition to a whole host of other personal problems serving to create deeper ethos with his fans. Attention is given to the cyclical nature of identification. It's not simply Ye's blackness that fans connect with but rather both blackness and disabledness; the two cannot be untangled. Of curious note in this chapter are fan responses to Ye's behaviors. Anderson Howell asserts that it wasn't until Ye made repeated anti-Semitic remarks that fans began to call for his cancellation, citing a cross section of Instagram and Reddit posts as well as interviews conducted by Bethan Kapur for Vice regarding the regret and removal of Ye tattoos. Anderson Howell closes the chapter by suggesting that Ye's right-wing views undermined fan perception of Ye as authentically black by reinforcing white supremacy, although many fans still also envision him as a disabled genius. In this chapter, therefore, Anderson Howell manages to explore Ye's fans as fans of an incredibly wealthy and multimarginalized disabled black celebrity, the construction and performance of disability and blackness by Ye himself, and the manner in which Ye's fans reacted to his use of anti-Semitic rhetoric. While disability certainly does not cause or equate anti-Semitism, Ye's anti-Semitic behavior seems to be mistakenly understood as a function of disability by some fans.
[6] Anderson Howell's argument further extends to how disability functions in hurt/comfort fan works, how fans themselves gatekeep autistic identity in social media conversations, disability and embodiment in beauty culture and makeup fans on visual platforms, and disability antifans, before ultimately culminating in a discussion of the potential for future work in examining not only how fans discuss disability but also how disabled fans function in fannish spaces that are not always the "neutral, accessible, and welcoming spaces" that we often envision and hope them to be (54). In her conclusion, Anderson Howell notes that she does not consider herself a theorist, instead curating this work "to offer a connected way of thinking about disability and fandom for those who are theorists and for those who wish to continue this work" (149). For a book that ends in what is effectively an apology on behalf of the author for not doing more, not taking additional chapters past the conceptual stage, Disability and Fandom offers both a comprehensive plethora of beginnings and a solid foundation for those who might continue the work across a wide variety of research methods, platforms, and fandoms through an impressive scope of intersectional frameworks, including feminism, disability studies, and critical race theory.
[7] Early in the book, the author notes that she "reject[s] academic rigor" (4), which may give the false impression that the work could be construed as lacking theoretical basis. Anderson Howell, however, does something both quite remarkable and unfortunately ordinary, writing about disability from the perspective of a disabled scholar seeking to "[crip] fan studies" (5) and doing so in a way that manages to appease and exceed the standards of inherently ableist academic institutions. As a disabled scholar and fan myself, I understand this inherent contradiction and the pressure to perform within and for a community and set of standards that inherently reject every fiber of my existence. Yet, somehow, we persist. As Anderson Howell reminds us, one out of every six people on the planet is disabled, and disability remains one of the few transient identities that one can acquire (or sometimes even lose) throughout one's lifetime. So often, however, this work remains relegated to those multiply marginalized within our community, lacking interest to those scholars more able, more white, more masculine, it seems, until they are somehow forced to envision themselves within our ranks. The wide breadth of disability contexts discussed in this volume, however, may serve to remind many fan studies scholars who don't already associate themselves within the wider disability community that they already are in some manner disabled or may become disabled even if they do not choose to identify with that term.