In this last spotlight post of our March Membership Drive we want to talk about the importance of international diversity, and how central that diversity is to the organizational vitality and inclusive mission of the OTW. Chances are, if you're reading this, you're in a fandom that uses English as its lingua franca. With many EFL (English as a foreign language) fans "passing" as native speakers, there's often the default assumption that everyone is US-American. But as anyone who was surprised to discover that their favourite author is actually from Israel, or Argentina, or Malaysia knows: that assumption is only true on the surface.

The OTW would like to congratulate Transformative Works and Cultures on the publication of their fourth issue -- their first to focus on a single fandom: Supernatural. Get more information about this exciting issue at the Issue 4 announcement post, or read the interview with guest editor Catherine Tosenberger.

TWC is something really special -- it's the only peer-reviewed journal to focus exclusively on fan studies; it's open access; its contents are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License; and it's created and distributed using open source journal software.

But that's not all! Consider this: our amazing editors are doing the equivalent of producing two books of fan studies a year, full of content written by and for fans.

To sum up: like all of OTW's projects, TWC is collaboratively made, it's high-quality, and it's free.

Support the OTW, and support Transformative Works and Cultures!

Transformative Works and Cultures, the academic journal project of the OTW, has just released its fourth issue, a special issue on Supernatural guest edited by Catherine Tosenberger. The special issue contains academic articles, shorter academic- and fan-written Symposium pieces, interviews with Supernatural fans, and book reviews all on the topic of Supernatural. We're incredibly excited to release this special issue because there is so much interest in this topic—and in this fandom.

Guest editor Catherine Tosenberger is an acafan who works as an assistant professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. Her PhD is in English from the University of Florida. She specializes in folklore and children's lit, and she is active in the Harry Potter, Glee, and Supernatural fandoms. She's interested in slash, incest, seriality, and the issues surrounding young people on the Internet.

Catherine published an article about Supernatural in TWC No. 1 in 2008 entitled "'The epic love story of Sam and Dean': Supernatural, Queer Readings, and the Romance of Incestuous Fan Fiction." It is the TWC article with the largest number of hits: 22,786 as I write this. She has also published several articles on Harry Potter fan fic, which is the topic of her dissertation.

We asked Catherine five questions—read her answers, just below the cut!

The academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures, a project of OTW, released its latest issue on March 15, 2010: an issue on Supernatural guest-edited by acafan Catherine Tosenberger. Rush over here to read and comment on the essays! This is the first issue of TWC to focus on a single text.

In addition to academic essays, the issue contains shorter Symposium articles. There are close readings of specific SPN eps and the show as a whole as well as essays that discuss fan-created artworks and fandom itself. We also interviewed SPN profic writer Keith R. A. DeCandido, members of the Super-wiki team, and Wincon organizer Ethrosdemon.

The full press release appears below the cut. Feel free to disseminate widely!