Cyberspaces of Their Own interrogates the social and spatial relations of the rapidly expanding virtual terrain of media fandom. For the first time, issues of identity, community and space are brought together in this in-depth ethnographic study of two female internet communities. Members are fans of the American television series The X-Files and the Canadian series Due South. Forging links between media, cultural and internet studies, this book examines negotiations of gender, class, sexuality and nationality in making meaning out of a television show, producing fiction based on television characters, creating and maintaining online communal relations, and organizing cyberspace in a way that marks it out as alternative to that which surrounds it.

The Author: Rhiannon Bury is Assistant Professor and Acting Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She received her Ph.D. in education from the University of Toronto. Her articles on female fan internet communities have appeared in American, British and Canadian journals and edited collections.