To My Betas, Endless Chocolate Frogs! : Exploring the Intersections of Emotion, the Body, and Literacy in Online Fanfiction
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2016 To my betas, endless chocolate frogs! : exploring the intersections of emotion, the body, and literacy in online fanfiction. Brittany Kelley University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Recommended Citation Kelley, Brittany, "To my betas, endless chocolate frogs! : exploring the intersections of emotion, the body, and literacy in online fanfiction." (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2474. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2474 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The nivU ersity of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The nivU ersity of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TO MY BETAS, ENDLESS CHOCOLATE FROGS!: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONS OF EMOTION, THE BODY, AND LITERACY IN ONLINE FANFICTION By Brittany Kelley B.A., Boston University, 2008 M.A., University of New Mexico, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English/Rhetoric and Composition Department of English University of Louisville Louisville, KY May 2016 TO MY BETAS, ENDLESS CHOCOLATE FROGS!: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONS OF EMOTION, THE BODY, AND LITERACY IN ONLINE FANFICTION By Brittany Kelley B.A., Boston University, 2008 M.A., University of New Mexico, 2011 A Dissertation Approved on December 11, 2015 by the following Dissertation Committee: ____________________________________ Bronwyn T. Williams, Director ____________________________________ Mary P. Sheridan _____________________________________ Karen Kopelson _____________________________________ Susan Ryan _____________________________________ Dawn Heinecken ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated first to my parents Pamela and Murray Kelley because of their fierce belief in the importance of education, and their unflagging confidence in my abilities and to my sister Emma Kelley because she never fails to remind me of the kind of world I want to live in—where women are always proud of who they are and what they can do. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my director, advisor, and friend, Bronwyn T. Williams, for so generously welcoming me into the program at the University of Louisville, and for all of the guidance, comments, and patience throughout my five years here, and certainly during my dissertation. I would also like to thank Mary P. Sheridan for her unflagging enthusiasm in my project, as well as her astute comments on my theories and methods. I thank my committee members Karen Kopelson and Susan Ryan for their thoughtful and astute comments on my ideas and my writing over these past couple of years. And I would like to thank my committee member, Dawn Heinecken, not only for introducing me to fan studies and Slayage, but for her support as I first began a version of this project in her Gender and Sci Fi course. Finally, I’d like to thank my colleagues, comrades, and friends, Stephanie Weaver, Benjamin Wetherbee, Kathryn Perry, and Jessica Winck for their years of positive feedback, intellectual stimulation, and constant support. iv ABSTRACT TO MY BETAS, ENDLESS CHOCOLATE FROGS!: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONS OF EMOTION, THE BODY, AND LITERACY IN ONLINE FANFICTION Brittany Kelley May 14, 2016 My dissertation, To My Betas, Endless Chocolate Frogs!: Exploring the Intersections of Emotion, the Body, and Literacy in Online Fanfiction, examines the complex intersections of identity, including gender, sexuality, and social class, in the literacy practices of online fanfiction. Previous scholarship has focused solely on the gender and/or pedagogical implications of fanfiction communities, and my project engages and extends these conversations by analyzing how fanfiction practices provide a distinctive space to explore how we understand identity, digital technologies, and fannish participation. I conducted textual analysis of stories, authors' notes, "how-to" guides, and questionnaires and interviews. A close inspection of fanfiction practices provide insight into how digital technologies and literacy practices interact within exchange economies. My dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 include a review of the literature as well as a theoretical approach to the project and its methods. Chapters 3 and 4 address the functions of online fanfiction by looking at fan websites, fan stories, and how-to fan documents, as well as questionnaires and interviews. Finally, Chapter 5 develops a theory of online fanfiction literacy practices, and the ways in which these v practices are shaped by power structures, identity construction, community norms, and material circumstances. I focus, in particular, on developing a theory of emotion in terms of literacy practices—what I come to call “emotioned literacy” (borrowing from Micciche). The investigation of online fanfiction spaces is especially valuable for rhetoric and composition because it highlights how writing is a deeply embodied and emotional, life-long (learning) process. In addition, this project highlights the importance of a network of dedicated participants with knowledge(s) in different areas. Finally, this project highlights the importance of paying closer attention to the ethics of our online research methodologies. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………..iv ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….v INTRODUCTION: Coming to Fandom and Why Fanfiction Really Matters……………1 CHAPTER1: Intersectionality in Fanfiction Practices: A Review of the Literature…….12 CHAPTER 2: Never “Power sans Risk”: Towards a Goodwill Ethics of Online Research Methods…………………………………………………………………………..60 CHAPTER 3: The Emotion Economies of Online Fanfiction………………………….101 CHAPTER 4: Response, Originality, and Expression: Three Case Studies of Fanwriter Realities…………………………………………………………………………162 CHAPTER 5: Towards Emotioned Literacy Practices…………………………………212 CONCLUSION: Let’s Bring Emotion Back…………………………………………...248 REFERENCES..………………………………………………………………………..258 APPENDICES………………………………………………………………………….276 Appendix I: The Participants and Methods of Gathering Data…………………276 Appendix II: The Questionnaire………………………………………………..280 Appendix III: The Interview……………………………………………………285 CURRICULUM VITA…………………………………………………………………286 vii INTRODUCTION COMING TO FANDOM AND WHY FANFICTION REALLY MATTERS It was the fall of 2007. The seventh and last Harry Potter installment had come out that summer, along with the fifth film, and I was a senior in college. I was feeling bored, bereft, and underwhelmed by my choice of major (Linguistics). I really needed a moment to re-evaluate. So, of course, I lay on my little college cot in my closet-sized room in my Easy-Live apartment [TM], and I searched the internet for anything and everything Harry Potter-related. It was then that I discovered my first fanfic. In it, Ron and Harry share an undying (and undeniably steamy) romance, while Hermione ever so magnanimously does everything she can to protect their love. I remember neither the title nor the author’s penname—only that four months, hundreds of “shipper” fics, and countless hours later, I started my own fanfic—a romance featuring Severus Snape, a young woman fighting a revolution, and a Time Turner. My colleague in the mail room— we’ll call her D—was gracious enough to be enthusiastic about my story. It’s still incomplete, and I doubt I’ll ever return to it. Flash forward 3.5 years. I’ve just moved to Louisville, Kentucky and started a PhD program. My grandmother had recently loaned me a “fabulous book!” that turned out to be a romance novel—Sara Donati’s Into the Wilderness. In it, a textual version of Daniel Day Lewis (from Last of the Mohicans) seduces a school teacher almost turned old maid. Sexual explicitness and intrigue ensue. I am embarrassed to say that I read the entire 876-page tome in one week. My grandmother had pointed me, especially, to the 1 author information page: "Sara Donati lives with her husband and daughter in the Pacific Northwest, where she teaches creative writing and linguistics at the university level." That’s me someday, apparently. But, what does any of this have to do with anything? When I stumbled upon that online novella celebrating Ron and Harry’s deep affection for each other, I entered into a different kind of space than I had experienced before. Something different from but similar to Into the Wilderness (even if Daniel Day Lewis does seem eerily present in the text). Something different from but similar to that report I wrote on Japanese Phonetics my junior year (after completing my own primary research—transcribing even four hours of audio is a truly unique experience) and to that other report I wrote the same year on college-age, English-speaking learners of French (a particularly ineffective pilot study I stumbled my way through). Something entirely different from but similar to asking students to do group work on Tuesday afternoon is definitely happening. Maybe. There is text, yes. This text is based in a shared body of