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Inventing a Universe: Reading and Writing Internet Fan Fiction

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08072007-170133
Date26 September 2007
CreatorsParrish, Juli J.
ContributorsJohn Twyning, Nicholas E. Coles, Jean Ferguson Carr, Amanda J. Godley
PublisherUniversity of Pittsburgh
Source SetsUniversity of Pittsburgh
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08072007-170133/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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