(2004-02-07) Fan Fiction

Henry Jenkins on Fan Fiction as Stimulating Learning Projects, leveraging Peer Mentor-ing. Teachers sometimes complain that popular culture competes for the attention of their students, a claim that starts from the assumption that what kids learn from media is less valuable than what schools teach... University Of Wisconsin-MadisonWi education professor James Gee calls such informal learning cultures "affinity spaces," asking why kids learn more, participate more actively, and engage more deeply with popular culture than they do with the contents of their textbooks. As one 16-year-old Harry Potter fan told me, "It's one thing to be discussing the theme of a short story you've never heard of before and couldn't care less about. It's another to be discussing the theme of your friend's 50,000-word opus about Harry and Hermione that they've spent three months writing.".. Like many of the other young writers, Agonistes says that Rowling's books provide her with a helpful creative scaffolding: "It's easier to develop a good sense of plot and characterization and other literary techniques if your reader already knows something of the world where the story takes place," she says. By poaching off Rowling, the writers are able to start with a well-established world and a set of familiar characters and thus are able to focus on other aspects of their craft. Often, unresolved issues in the books stimulate them to think through their own plots or to develop new insights into the characters... Not surprisingly, someone who has just published her first online novel and received dozens of comment-filled letters finds it disappointing to return to the classroom where her work will be read only by the teacher-whose feedback may dwell more on comma splices than character development. Some teens have confessed to smuggling drafts of stories to school in their textbooks and editing them during class; others sit around the lunch table talking plot and character issues with their classmates or try to work on the stories on the school computers until the librarians accuse them of wasting time. They can't wait for the school bell to ring so they can focus on their Writing.