ENG 348 - Fandom and Fan Fiction (1)

This course offers a theoretical and literary approach to fandom and fan fiction. Although fan fiction is typically defined by its oppositional relationship to copyright and its rootedness in a post-print literary sphere, the adaptive tendencies in Western literary history from Classical Rome onwards have inspired contemporary fandom studies. As part of the theoretical grounding of the course, we will also discuss the nature of post copyright literary creation and its contrast to premodern fandoms, the shift from an exclusively print culture of fan fiction to an exclusively digital one, the complicated valorization of fan fiction writers as embodying an anti-capitalistic Robin Hood-type figure, and the demographics of the current fanfiction community, which is overwhelmingly white, female, trans, non-binary, and queer. Prerequisite: FYW Course, ENG 201, ENG 202, ENG 215, or ENG 225
(Humanities) (Writing Intensive)