This book argues that fans' creative works form a cognitive system; fanfic, fanvids, and gifs are not simply evidence of thinking, but acts of thinking. Drawing on work in cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive philosophy, and psychology-particularly focused on 4-E cognition and its rejection of Cartesian dualism-this project demonstrates that cognition is an embodied, emotional, and distributed act that emerges from fans' interactions with media texts, technological interfaces, and fan collectives. This mode of textual engagement is an approach to thinking, reading, and composing that is deeply physical, emotional, and social and is demonstrated in and enacted through fan works, like gif sets, fanvids, and fanfiction. By developing a theory of critical closeness, this project breaks new ground by proposing a methodology by which cognitive science might be fruitfully put in conversation with fan studies.

Jessica Hautsch is an assistant professor in the Humanities Department at New York Institute of Technology. She earned her PhD from Stony Brook University, where she also taught as a lecturer with the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. Her work offers a phenomenological interrogation of fan communities, exploring intersections of the cognitive humanities, performance studies, and fandom. She is an avid fan of Buffy, Game of Thrones, D&D, and early 2000s emo.

1 Introduction: Body, Feeling, Community, and Cognition.

Rewriting Stories and Bad Readers.

4 -E Cognition.

Cognitive Linguistics.

Emotions.

Embodied Cognition.

Extended and Distributed Cognition.

Critical Closeness.

A Note on Methodology.

Chapter Overview.

References.

2 Catching Feels: Fan Feelings, Bodies, and Communities.

Fan Feelings.

Conceptualizing Feels.

Metaphors We Feel By.

Conclusion: You, Me, Fandom, and Feels.

References.

3 Living through Gifs: Embodied Cognition and Emotion.

An Embodied Understanding of Gifs.

A Feeling of Community.

The Bodies that Launched a Thousand Ships.

Conclusion: Casting Bodies.

References.

4 Actors, Characters, and Blending.

Conceptual Blending Theory and Compression.

Bodies That Matter.

Haunting Bodies across AUs.

Conclusion: Communal Contexts.

References.

5 Reframing Vids.

Communal Ways of Thinking.

Blending Stories.

Embodied and Embedded Rehearsal.

Cutting Together Crossovers.

Conclusion: Performing Community.

References.

6 Casting, Counterfactuals, and the Communal Construction of Characters.

Knowing Characters through Conceptual Blending.

Casting AU Fics.

Thinking through Stories.

Conclusion: Cognitive Flexibility.

References.

7 Epilogue.

References.