Associated Project D

The project focuses on the immensely productive web culture in reference to two of the most successful manifestations of pop literature in recent years: Harry Potter and the Twilight Saga. The textuality of fan fiction writing published on the internet, its mechanics, aesthetics and generic specifics will be investigated. Especially 'cross-over' and 'slash' fan fiction and the meta discussions of these genres and texts in the fan community will be examined.

The project sets out from the assumption that parameters of production and reception essentially change when readers become authors who publish their (fan) texts on the Web 2.0. It is assumed that to do justice to the practice and the material of fan texts published on the internet, the established categories of producer/author, recipient/reader/critic and genre will need to undergo a readjustment.

This project is supported by a Ph.D. scholarship from the postgraduate program “Theorie und Methodik der Textwissenschaften und ihre Geschichte” at the Universities of Göttingen and Osnabrück, as well as a followu-up stipend by the Einstein Foundation Berlin.

Research Associate: Bettina Soller, M.A., American Studies, Göttingen