Authors Note: While writing this blog series, I kept running into a personal dilemma about how best to label some things, and what to call people. Should I focus on fanfiction, meaning only writing? I would ask myself, but disagreed because my own personal experience with fandom stretched across genres, from fanart, to fanmusic, to fanvids - you name it. So if I throw terms around and it confuses you, I apologize in advance. Just know everything in fandom is interrelated, and chances are, those who read fanfiction most likely look at fanart, and fanvids, and listen to fanmusic, so one thing is clearly linked to the others.
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Fandom is a community of fans of a person, team, series, movement, etc. There are fandoms for everything, from TV shows to art movements. While fandoms definitely existed prior to the rise of personal computers, the internet has played a pivotal role by providing an outlet where fans can meet like minded folks and create things in a supportive community. Fandom is just that - a community!
Fandom as a subculture is so important to students, specifically adolescents who naturally search for groups to align themselves with as they explore possible identities. Fandom can be the enriching environment that motivates students to tap into budding skills and gain confidence, a vital part of motivation (1).
Writing, drawing, creating for a fandom is writing for a peer group – possibly the first peer group that “gets” you, a golden beacon especially during the turbulent social time that school can be. The support a child could get from that peer group could do wonders for developing a student’s self confidence and motivate them to write or explore other talents (2). While I didn't write much fanfiction myself as a child, a lack of action that stemmed mainly from comments made about my writing by my parents and teachers at a young age (be careful what you say, folks! Who knows what damage it will cause), I felt totally welcomed into the creative Harry Potter world, and in turn was the supportive voice responding to other's creative outpourings.
Before launching into why fandom is a wonderful tool to motivate multiple forms of literacy with your students, I want to first provide a brief history of fan fiction/fandom and define a few terms. Fan fiction is essentially unpaid, unofficial writing or other work that uses a cannon of characters, settings and plots made by another, paid, official author (3). Cannon, a term that spans many fields of study, refers to the officially published material that sparked the fandom. It's like a modern day bible or set of cultural folklore: everyone in the fandom knows it like the back of their hand, and it, as a result, binds people together like members of a tribe (4).
Fandom is totally natural. It's what happens when readers are engaged and inspired by what they read and see. They take what they've loved, or hated, and interpret it in such a way as to make it their own. This is true literary engagement(5)! And through the personal enjoyment of creatively engaging with a text, a student is more likely to pick up another book and read again! Is that not what any teacher dreams of?
sources
(1) Ford’s (1992) Motivational Systems Theory (MTS)
(2) Graves, 2004, p. 89
(3) Abrahamson, 2013
(4) Pugh, as cited in Abramson, 2013
(5)Blasingame p. 29 as cited in Mathew and Adams, 2009, p. 36
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Fandom is a community of fans of a person, team, series, movement, etc. There are fandoms for everything, from TV shows to art movements. While fandoms definitely existed prior to the rise of personal computers, the internet has played a pivotal role by providing an outlet where fans can meet like minded folks and create things in a supportive community. Fandom is just that - a community!
Fandom as a subculture is so important to students, specifically adolescents who naturally search for groups to align themselves with as they explore possible identities. Fandom can be the enriching environment that motivates students to tap into budding skills and gain confidence, a vital part of motivation (1).
Writing, drawing, creating for a fandom is writing for a peer group – possibly the first peer group that “gets” you, a golden beacon especially during the turbulent social time that school can be. The support a child could get from that peer group could do wonders for developing a student’s self confidence and motivate them to write or explore other talents (2). While I didn't write much fanfiction myself as a child, a lack of action that stemmed mainly from comments made about my writing by my parents and teachers at a young age (be careful what you say, folks! Who knows what damage it will cause), I felt totally welcomed into the creative Harry Potter world, and in turn was the supportive voice responding to other's creative outpourings.
Before launching into why fandom is a wonderful tool to motivate multiple forms of literacy with your students, I want to first provide a brief history of fan fiction/fandom and define a few terms. Fan fiction is essentially unpaid, unofficial writing or other work that uses a cannon of characters, settings and plots made by another, paid, official author (3). Cannon, a term that spans many fields of study, refers to the officially published material that sparked the fandom. It's like a modern day bible or set of cultural folklore: everyone in the fandom knows it like the back of their hand, and it, as a result, binds people together like members of a tribe (4).
Fandom is totally natural. It's what happens when readers are engaged and inspired by what they read and see. They take what they've loved, or hated, and interpret it in such a way as to make it their own. This is true literary engagement(5)! And through the personal enjoyment of creatively engaging with a text, a student is more likely to pick up another book and read again! Is that not what any teacher dreams of?
sources
(1) Ford’s (1992) Motivational Systems Theory (MTS)
(2) Graves, 2004, p. 89
(3) Abrahamson, 2013
(4) Pugh, as cited in Abramson, 2013
(5)Blasingame p. 29 as cited in Mathew and Adams, 2009, p. 36
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