Fandom-Based Narrative Writing in an High School English Classroom

• In Event: Disrupting Top-Down Curricular Hierarchies Through Fandom and Media Engagement

Abstract

This paper documents the results of a fandom-based narrative writing project conducted by two 11th grade English teachers in a large public high school in the rural south. In these projects, these teachers redesigned two narrative writing tasks to invite students to innovate upon both the texts they read as a class and other textual worlds they knew and loved. After experiencing fatigue in their students' narrative writing, these veteran teachers (who identify as fandom members themselves) restructured these assignments so that a) students had the opportunity to (re)use plot events, characters types and themes from the texts they had read together and b) work collaboratively to write their stories. Extending research that examines fan-based literacy practices of youth (Peterman, 2019; Coleman & Hall, 2019; Session Author & Colleagues, 2013; Garcia & Haddix, 2014; Session Authors, 2022; Session Authors, in press) this paper examines how these fandom-based writing tasks encouraged students in this classroom to treat texts not something to be consumed and critiqued but rather taken up and modulated, in “participatory” (Jenkins, 2006) ways.

To conduct this examination, this paper draws from an ethnographic data set (Blommaert & Jie, 2010) which includes audio recordings of 10 class sessions of collaborative storytelling, the text of each student’s story, their written reflections on this story, exit interviews, and ethnographic fieldnotes taken each day of the project. In total, the data set consists of 81 separate fan fiction narratives. Analysis began with students' own reflections on their story in exit interviews and in their writing. We qualitatively coded (Miles, Huberman & Saldana, 2014) these reflections to identify three primary patterns in how students were re-reading texts and worlds in their storytelling. Although these patterns extended across both of the two fan fiction writing experiences, this paper describes one story from the “American Dream”/ Great Gatsby fanfiction writing experience that illustrates each pattern. We analyze Chloe’s queer vampire themed story to demonstrate how students used this writing as a chance to revise problematic societal norms present in Gatsby. We analyze CJ’s video game inspired story to demonstrate how students used these tasks to enter and revise other textual universes they loved. And we analyze Sarah-Grace, Alyssa and Emily’s shared trio of stories to consider how students used this composing task to rewrite a local story that circulated socially amongst their peer group.

Many might not consider fanfiction writing to be connected to critical literacy work in schools but, by unraveling the many different textual layers of restorying (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016) contained in students’ fan fictional Gatsby-inspired universes, this paper seeks to expand and complicate how we see this relationship. Rich literary reading and writing, this study suggests, involves (re)reading and reinterpreting not only classroom literature but also pop cultural, social and societal texts, often intertextually and simultaneously. It also suggests that imaginative world building through fan fiction provides a rich starting point for such work.

Authors

• Beth Krone, Kennesaw State University

• Nathan Lawrence, Commerce High School

• Peter Reitz, Commerce High School