Fandom Alert: Fanfic and its Writers as Subjects of Study

[browngirl]

A professor at George Washington University is teaching a course called 'Get a Life!: ‘Shippers, Slashers, and Other Media Fans'. As part of this course, students "will also become a participant-observer of an internet fan fiction community (e.g., Full Metal Alchemist or Lord of the Rings)"

While it sounds as if this course is addressing some issues I personally find fascinating, I don't know if I think this is such a great idea, an influx of people joining fandoms just to study them without having any love for them. Especially because of the attitude reflected in the course description:

"And what about those troublesome fans who use some preexisting story as the springboard for their own stories or art: are they authors in their own right, or thieves, or pathetic parasites? How do we compare a fan novella drawing on characters from the Harry Potter universe to such a work as Jean Rhys's critically-acclaimed Wide Sargasso Sea, which rewords the characters of Jane Eyre? These questions will lead us to larger philosophical mysteries, such as the line between knock-off and clever adaptation, or between copyright violation, plagiarism, and scholarly citation. "

So I find this a little alarming. What do you all think?

Comments

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's alarming at all, actually. For one thing, the professor is deliberately making the students look past "fanfic" to the way that literature has always eaten its own young and reworked stories, and for another I'm willing to bet that it will be a rare student who picks that course without already being a fan. Expect a passel of youngsters looking for easy As, here, not geeks out to bite off heads.

And besides, she's run the course before and nobody even noticed...

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

You know, going back and reading some of the other course descriptions, I can see why this one has the kind of tone it does. It's like the professors have had to write ads in order to attract students and thrown in all kinds of phrases meant to push buttons of one kind or another. Look at the course on child culture, for example.