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This book presents an ethnographic and discourse analytic study of a highly popular online fan fiction writing space. Its analyses highlight the range of sophisticated literacy practices that English language learning youth engage in through their fan-related activities. Discussion also centers on how opportunities for language socialization, literacy, and identity development converge and diverge between academic settings and informal learning contexts such as fan fiction sites.
About the author
The Author: Rebecca W. Black is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Her research centers on the literacy and socialization practices of adolescents from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds who are writing and participating in online, popular culture-inspired environments.
Report
«Rebecca W. Black's 'Adolescents and Online Fan Fiction' enters into an important debate about the ways that our collective participation within popular culture may enable social, intellectual, and personal growth. This book offers a vivid account of how and what young fan fiction writers learn through their activities, one which bridges between the best cultural research into fan cultures and the best pedagogical insights into informal learning. The results will be important not only to fellow researchers but to also parents, educators, policymakers, and fans themselves, as they seek to weigh competing arguments about the value of the time so many of us spend engaging in online recreation.» (Henry Jenkins, Author of 'Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collides'; Co-Director, Comparative Media Studies Program, MIT)
«I am a fan of Rebecca W. Black's scholarship. From the introduction of 'Adolescents and Online Fan Fiction' to the closing chapter, Black demonstrates an expertise in second-language acquisition, literacy studies, and fan fiction practices that is unparalleled in the field. Readers who are new to fan fiction as a genre are in for a treat; those who write fan fiction themselves will find nuanced approaches to theory, methodology, and practice that only Black could bring to a book of this kind. But what excites me most about the book is its potential to ignite an interest and enduring respect in educators' thinking about young people's serious engagement with fan fiction.» (Donna E. Alvermann, Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education, University of Georgia)
