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xiaq · 5 years

Text

Q&A:

Hello! Sorry for the belated question-answering. My concussion symptoms got a lot worse for a hot second, but I’m feeling better now and ready to tackle my inbox. So I have over 30 academic-related questions and they mostly fall into these groups:

Can I read your dissertation/are you going to publish it?

Yes! And hopefully. The plan is to publish it as a book once it is complete, but even if that doesn’t happen I’ll share it (maybe even on AO3) with anyone who wants to read it.

What is your dissertation about?

That is a dangerous question. The shortest possible answer: my dissertation is essentially an ethnographic study of the interconnected online platforms that facilitate transformative digital fan culture and the people that use them. I consider fic literature and fic archives repositories for both this textual literature but also the metatextual and paratextual elements of fan culture. My focus is on the AO3 as a groundbreaking archive that has changed how transformative fandom operates, is treated legally, and is viewed publicly.

How are you getting a PhD in fandom? Is that a thing? Did you take classes for it?

Fandom studies is a thing! When you get an English PhD you specialize in certain things, and fandom studies is one of my specialties. Alas, I did not take classes in it, though I did do a significant amount of directed reading on my own/in preparation for exams. PhD coursework prepares you for the broad range of English classes you may be called upon to teach as a professor. So I took multiple courses in my primary fields (see below) but only took classes for my first two subfields. I also took Victorian lit, British lit, American lit, etc.

What did you take your quals in?

Primary Fields: (these are things that make colleges want to hire you)

Book history/archival (focus movement from print-digital)

Feminist/queer theory

20/21st century lit

Subfields: (these are the things that you think are neat if not included in the things that will make colleges want to hire you)

disability studies

minority literature

comics studies

fandom studies

Where do you go to school?

SMU. In Dallas. We have great libraries and lots of white people who wear Vinyard Vines apparel.

You’re the xiaq that wrote LRPD/AHTU/Strut! Are you going to talk about your own fic in your dissertation? Yes. And yes! I’ll speak as a 3rd party academic observer in chapter 1-3 and 5, but chapter 4 will be a case study/interlude where I speak in depth about my experience writing and posting LRPD (https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304786?view_full_work=true). I’m doing this for 2 reasons: 1. The project asserts that there is nothing shameful about participating in fandom and fan works/archives ought to be shown respect and appreciation. I want both fandom folks and academic folks to know that I’m “all in” as it were. 2. When I sat down with my chair to plan my case study chapter, we decided I needed a “top-ranked” work within any moderate to large fandom with over 50,000 hits and over 5,000 comments, and I needed to ask the author detailed questions about their writing, editing, posting, sharing, and comment-answering/interactive habits. LRPD fits that criteria and I don’t have to ask anyone else invasive questions.

Who all have you interviewed?

Cesperanza/Astolat and a couple other AO3 founding folks. Several people currently volunteering for the OTW, one of the volunteer coordinators, communications staff, and a LOT of fan writers (over 50 at this point)—including BNFs like Kryptaria, Earlgreytea68, Emmagrant01 and (much) more. And then a bunch of academic folks too—Karen Hellekson, Abigail De Kosnik, Francesca Coppa, Rukmini Pande, Suzanne Scott (who is on my committee as an outside reader!) and more. Every single person I’ve spoken to was very kind and generous with their time and I love everyone in this bar.

And these were three specific questions that didn’t fall into those categories:

You look so young—is that just good genetics or did you skip a few grades?

Thank you! Well. I skipped getting my masters. Sort of. Most PhD programs require an undergraduate and a masters degree before you can apply. SMU is one of the few that does not and has an extended program that essentially gives folks straight from undergrad extra intensive coursework and a masters upon completion of 2 yrs in the program. It’s difficult to get accepted without a masters, so consider me an outlier and not the standard. I’m also on course to (hopefully) graduate a year early—which means I’ll have my doctorate before I turn 30! You too can be an overachiever with the help of OCD, anxiety, and sleep deprivation (not an endorsement, tho).

what does otw mean in your ao3 post about academics being assholes

Organization for Transformative Works! The OTW formed before the AO3 did. You can read more about it here: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Organization_for_Transformative_Works

Concerning your post on AO3 and the pettiness of academics - you mentioned the real, serious negative issues concerning AO3. Might you expand more on that? What do you find to be the negative aspects of AO3?

Ah yes. So there is one “big” thing that occasionally came up as a negative in my interviews and research. Fandom has a long and storied history of racism. It’s not isolated to the AO3, but several of the POC I spoke to said they dislike the fact that there’s no way to mark a work as racist, or warn others about it (usually, if an individual points out that, say, an author has treated Finn as a Big Black Dick and not, you know, a human being, the author isn’t particularly interested in noting that their own work is problematic. See also: slave AUs. Where Finn is a slave.Yikes.). While the majority of POC I spoke to didn’t advocate for some sort of censure of these works in the terms of use (some did), what most wanted was a way of being able to warn others, or receive a warning, that a work is racist. Implementing something like that is, obviously, complex (if not impossible) however. Personally? I doubt it will happen. Related, and perhaps more important, when POC tend to speak critically about the erasure or infantilization or animalization of non-white characters, white authors often 1. police tone rather than engage with the criticism, 2. focus more on defending themselves rather than actually examining their, maybe accidental, biases/stereotypes or 3. cry bullying or kinkshaming instead of actually listening to what POC are saying. Again, not an issue isolated to the AO3, but an issue nonetheless that we, as a community, need to recognize (for more on this history, check out, for example, https://fanlore.org/wiki/RaceFail_%2709). There’s also the whole “should illegal sexual things--like underage or pedophilia-- be allowed,” which I don’t have the energy to dissect right now, but the overwhelming majority of folks I spoke to were of the “if you don’t like it, don’t read works with that tag. If it’s not tagged correctly, close the tab” school of thought. The AO3 has always purported itself as a hosting, not a policing, organization, so I doubt that will ever change.

#q&a #answered asks #fandom studies #AO3 #x wants the (ph)d

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