Based on three years of ethnographic research with Bruce Springsteen fans, and informed by the author''s own experiences as a fan, Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to Springsteen and his music and how those attachments function in people''s daily lives. An insider''s narrative about Springsteen fans--who they are, what they do, and why they do it--this book also explores the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text oscillates between fans'' stories and ideas and the author''s own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. Cavicchi challenges the stereotypes of fans as obsessive, delusional, and even mentally ill, and explores fandom as a normal cultural and social phenomenon. He argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behavior that enables people to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world.

Based on three years of ethnographic research with Bruce Springsteen fans, and informed by the author's own experiences as a fan, Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to Bruce Springsteen and his music and how those attachments function in people's daily lives to create meaning, shape identity, and create community. An insider's narrative about Springsteen fans -- who they are, what they do, and why they do it -- it is also about the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text moves back and forth between fans' stories and ideas and the author's own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. Cavicchi argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behaviour that enables people to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world.

Based on three years of ethnographic research with Bruce Springsteen fans, and informed by the author's own experiences as a fan, Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to Bruce Springsteen and his music and how those attachments function in people's daily lives to create meaning, shape identity, and create community. An insider's narrative about Springsteen fans -- who they are, what they do, and why they do it -- it is also about the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text moves back and forth between fans' stories and ideas and the author's own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. Cavicchi argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behaviour that enables people to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world.

Based on three years of ethnographic research with Bruce Springsteen fans, and informed by the author''s own experiences as a fan, Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to Springsteen and his music and how those attachments function in people''s daily lives. An insider''s narrative about Springsteen fans--who they are, what they do, and why they do it--this book also explores the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text oscillates between fans'' stories and ideas and the author''s own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. Cavicchi challenges the stereotypes of fans as obsessive, delusional, and even mentally ill, and explores fandom as a normal cultural and social phenomenon. He argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behavior that enables people to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world.

My Music is a first-hand exploration of the diverse roles music plays in people's lives. "What is music about for you?" asked members of the Music in Daily Life Project of some 150 people, and the responses they received -- from the profound to the mundane, from the deeply-felt to the flippant -- reflect highly individualistic relationships to and with music. Susan Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, and Project Director Charles Keil have collected and edited nearly forty of those interviews to document the diverse ways in which people enjoy, experience, and use music.CONTRIBUTORS: Charles Keil, George Lipsitz.

This book offers the first multidisciplinary perspective on the formation and practices of fandoms before the term 'fan' was borrowed from the world of sport to describe enthusiastic filmgoers in the 1910s. The focus is on nineteenth-century theatre, opera and literature, where fannish audiences were indispensable participants in the emerging cult of celebrity surrounding actors, opera singers and writers, although their presence was almost obscene and consequently rarely acknowledged in scholarship. Drawing on the insights of Fandom studies, the articles in this volume add the necessary dimension of fannish audiences to the history of the performing arts and literature since at least the eighteenth century, as a counterpart to the development of stage and literary celebrities.On the other hand, the contributions also broaden the perspective of the flourishing field of Fandom Studies, which has a predilection for fan cultures from the 1960s onwards (and especially for digital fan cultures). Therefore, one of the main questions will be how historical forms of fandom can actually be researched methodologically, e.g. by drawing on historical ethnography. In addition, such an extension of the 'era of the fan' to the two centuries before the 20th century requires a discussion of the semantic fields from which the terminologies for describing fannish behaviour were borrowed before the breakthrough of the term 'fan'.

Based on three years of ethnographic research with Bruce Springsteen fans, and informed by the author''s own experiences as a fan, Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to Springsteen and his music and how those attachments function in people''s daily lives. An insider''s narrative about Springsteen fans--who they are, what they do, and why they do it--this book also explores the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text oscillates between fans'' stories and ideas and the author''s own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. Cavicchi challenges the stereotypes of fans as obsessive, delusional, and even mentally ill, and explores fandom as a normal cultural and social phenomenon. He argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behavior that enables people to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world.

Based on three years of ethnographic research with Bruce Springsteen fans, and informed by the author's own experiences as a fan, Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to Bruce Springsteen and his music and how those attachments function in people's daily lives to create meaning, shape identity, and create community. An insider's narrative about Springsteen fans -- who they are, what they do, and why they do it -- it is also about the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text moves back and forth between fans' stories and ideas and the author's own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. Cavicchi argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behaviour that enables people to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world.

Based on three years of ethnographic research with Bruce Springsteen fans, and informed by the author's own experiences as a fan, Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to Bruce Springsteen and his music and how those attachments function in people's daily lives to create meaning, shape identity, and create community. An insider's narrative about Springsteen fans -- who they are, what they do, and why they do it -- it is also about the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text moves back and forth between fans' stories and ideas and the author's own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. Cavicchi argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behaviour that enables people to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world.

Based on three years of ethnographic research with Bruce Springsteen fans, and informed by the author''s own experiences as a fan, Tramps Like Us is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which ordinary people form special, sustained attachments to Springsteen and his music and how those attachments function in people''s daily lives. An insider''s narrative about Springsteen fans--who they are, what they do, and why they do it--this book also explores the phenomenon of fandom in general. The text oscillates between fans'' stories and ideas and the author''s own anecdotes, commentary, and analysis. Cavicchi challenges the stereotypes of fans as obsessive, delusional, and even mentally ill, and explores fandom as a normal cultural and social phenomenon. He argues that music fandom is a useful and meaningful behavior that enables people to shape identity, create community, and make sense of the world.

My Music is a first-hand exploration of the diverse roles music plays in people's lives. "What is music about for you?" asked members of the Music in Daily Life Project of some 150 people, and the responses they received -- from the profound to the mundane, from the deeply-felt to the flippant -- reflect highly individualistic relationships to and with music. Susan Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, and Project Director Charles Keil have collected and edited nearly forty of those interviews to document the diverse ways in which people enjoy, experience, and use music.CONTRIBUTORS: Charles Keil, George Lipsitz.

This book offers the first multidisciplinary perspective on the formation and practices of fandoms before the term 'fan' was borrowed from the world of sport to describe enthusiastic filmgoers in the 1910s. The focus is on nineteenth-century theatre, opera and literature, where fannish audiences were indispensable participants in the emerging cult of celebrity surrounding actors, opera singers and writers, although their presence was almost obscene and consequently rarely acknowledged in scholarship. Drawing on the insights of Fandom studies, the articles in this volume add the necessary dimension of fannish audiences to the history of the performing arts and literature since at least the eighteenth century, as a counterpart to the development of stage and literary celebrities.On the other hand, the contributions also broaden the perspective of the flourishing field of Fandom Studies, which has a predilection for fan cultures from the 1960s onwards (and especially for digital fan cultures). Therefore, one of the main questions will be how historical forms of fandom can actually be researched methodologically, e.g. by drawing on historical ethnography. In addition, such an extension of the 'era of the fan' to the two centuries before the 20th century requires a discussion of the semantic fields from which the terminologies for describing fannish behaviour were borrowed before the breakthrough of the term 'fan'.