ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a survey of the burgeoning work on Latinx 1 fandom. Although not always labeled as fan studies, there is a growing literature on how Latinx fans and audiences interact in pleasurable ways with various forms of media and popular culture. Contemporary mainstream and Spanish-language media industries invest billions of dollars to woo the Latinx market, and yet, we still know little about Latinx audiences (Dávila 2012, Báez 2018). Latina/os are the largest minority population in the US and are a growing demographic, especially amongst youth (US Census Bureau 2016). More specifically, apart from the work of Eion Devereux and Melissa Mora Hidalgo (2015), myself (Báez 2015), and Michelle Rivera (2011), Latinx scholarship is seldom in direct dialogue with the fan studies literature. In this chapter, I call for more studies of Latinx fan communities not only to remedy erasure in the field, but also because they can offer us theoretical frameworks to more deeply understand how fans might experience transnationalism, hybridity, and intersectionality in their consumption and creative practices.
