Title page for ETD etd-08072007-170133
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Type of Document Dissertation
Author Parrish, Juli J.
URN etd-08072007-170133
Title Inventing a Universe: Reading and Writing Internet Fan Fiction
Degree Doctor of Philosophy
Program English
School School of Arts and Sciences
Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title
Jean Ferguson Carr Committee Chair
Amanda J. Godley Committee Member
John Twyning Committee Member
Nicholas E. Coles Committee Member
Keywords
  • feedback
  • composition studies
  • internet writing
  • textual poaching
  • fan fiction
  • amateur writers
Date of Defense 2007-08-26
Availability unrestricted
Abstract
Inventing a Universe examines the creative and critical writing of an internet fan fiction archive. First, I suggest that persistent theories of fan writing, including the influential notion of fans as “textual poachers,” have not adequately made visible the work of reading and writing that goes in at such sites. I reframe internet fan fiction as the work of amateur writers drawing on composition studies work on discourse communities and student writing to offer new ways of reading these texts and textual practices. Second, analyzing the discourse conventions and texts of a particular fan fiction archive, Different Colored Pens, I argue that members of this site share an explicit collaborative project of using fan fiction to help one another improve as readers and writers. This dissertation, which is among the first academic efforts to focus on and analyze fan fiction feedback practices specifically, will contribute to the rich and growing literature on the ways that online communities of amateur writers, including fan fiction writers, collaboratively develop their writing skills.
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