Fanfic Forensics

Next month I'm going to Sweden for the symposium 'Textual Echoes: Fan Fiction and Sexualities' (program and abstracts), where I'll be making a case for 'The 'open work' as a framework for the interpretation of fan fiction'. For those who are interested in seeing a coherent argument emerge slowly from a morass of disconnected gibberish, I'm constructing the presentation here. Abstract:

Since the 1960s, semiotician Umberto Eco has written at length about 'open work', a largely theoretical kind of artwork characterized by open-endedness and a need for audience participation. By combining this concept with other semiotic methods of data extraction and analysis, it would seem possible to construct an alternative method of fan fiction interpretation that permits objectively verifiable data to be examined within the established theoretical framework of the 'open work' -a framework whose precepts make it uniquely suited to analysis of online amateur media such as fanfic.

    A preliminary test of this method seems to confirm its potential for opening new perspectives on fanfic narratives and using public debate about the findings as a part of the research itself, not something that occurs only after final publication of the results. I will illustrate the method's advantages and disadvantages by detailing its use in a broader study currently underway. This study contrasts English-language fanfics published online with Japanese amateur comics (dojinshi) based on the same source material (the 'Harry Potter' series). The data sets  examined contain a wide variety of narrative elements, including but not limited to characters, pairings, narrators, handling of canon elements, sexual activity, events, and locations.