The Podcast
“It’s a Thing!” is a podcast that introduces new and historically significant work in the field of fan studies to all comers. It features accessible interviews with established and up-and-coming fan studies scholars, as well as fan studies-adjacent journalists, critics, writers and fans, in hope of demonstrating that fan studies is indeed a thing.
The Host
Lori (Hitchcock) Morimoto is an independent researcher specializing in transnational and transcultural media and fandoms. Her work can be found in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, Second Edition, A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, Transatlantic Television Drama, and Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal, among others. She has also published in Participations, Transformative Works and Cultures, East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, and she has an essay forthcoming in Mechademia: Second Arc.
Since 2014, Lori has been active in trying to bridge the gaps between fan studies, fans, and the wider world through such projects as The Fan Meta Reader, Fan Studies for Fans, and now, “It’s a Thing!” She is also a member of the planning committee and runs the Twitter account for the annual fan studies conference, Fan Studies Network North America, as well as Symposium editor of the journal Transformative Works and Cultures. Lori is currently a lecturer in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia.
Lori lived in Hong Kong for a total of seven years, Japan for nine years, and today lives in Northern Virginia. In addition to writing, she is a lapsed vidder/videographic critic, mother of two, wife of one, and an annoyingly evangelical fan of the TV series Hannibal. Brooklyn Nine Nine is her Happy Place and What We Do in the Shadows is her pandemic salvation.
You can find Lori on Twitter at @acafanmom
Credits
The “It’s a Thing!” theme is “Neck Pillow,” by Silent Partner on 1HMNC – No Copyright Music
“It’s a Thing!” is released under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license
It's a Thing! 