1. Introduction
[1.1] While there is generally a high demand for fairy tale courses at the university level, student motivation and ways to engage learners more deeply are perpetual considerations for course design. Though often relegated to the realm of popular culture or viewed as children's literature, fairy tales have always been "stories to think with" and used as a part of critical discourses which invite readers, listeners, and viewers to reflect on their themes, characterizations, and morals. The fairy tale has likewise been described as a "self-consciously fictitious" genre (Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère 2011, ii) which can allow introspection and analysis. Fairy tales might frequently follow schematic plotlines and have easily identifiable character types and morals, but despite—or even because of—this predictability, they can serve as rich material to defamiliarize spaces which are imbued with rich symbolism (Timlin et al. 2021) and act as a springboard for in-depth analysis of social phenomena. Yet, no matter how engaging course material might be, transmission models of education which feature an instructor lecturing and providing their interpretations of the material at hand can breed student apathy by reducing active engagement (Austen 2005). This model can also lead students, especially in lower-level literature courses, to simply parrot lecture material or attempt to produce what they think the instructor's interpretation of the work is (especially if they have had previous instructors who suggest one, true interpretation of a text) rather than understanding and producing personal, critical engagement with the works for themselves (Austen 2005). This passive level of engagement with course materials may still be helpful to students, but a more in-depth understanding of the processes required in critical analysis can be obtained through a fandom approach.
[1.2] I show that introducing a fandom approach—specifically the creative writing of internet fan fiction—can increase student subject and critical engagement with course materials. Both fan fiction and the fairy tale are derivative genres, continually being altered as they are retold, rewritten, and reexamined by authors and storytellers. The use of fan fiction harnesses the continual change and adaptation already inherent in the folktale and fairy tale to give students a hands-on experience with a transformative storytelling process.
[1.3] To integrate and scaffold the use of fan fiction to critically examine fairy tales and folktales, the framing of the final project in the literature course "Fairy Tales Through Pop Culture: Grimm, Disney, and Fan Fiction" was influenced by the New London Group's "multiliteracies" pedagogy. This pedagogy proposes that conditions in the classroom should aim to support the personal beliefs and lived experiences of students, which encourages the growth of people "flexible enough to collaborate and negotiate with others who are different from themselves in order to forge a common interest" (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, 174) and considers instruction with the pillars of overt instruction, situated practice, critical framing, and transformed practice. When designing the course, I saw an approach which positions learners as designers of meaning and asks both instructors and students to consider how particular ways of using and playing with language can bring insight into social meanings, roles, and identities (Timlin et al. 2021) as impactful for my literature classroom.
[1.4] Important to the integration of internet fan fiction in the literature classroom, a multiliteracies approach embraces the influence of new media (such as the internet) in students' lives. New media profoundly challenges "old logics of literacy and teaching" (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, 173) and has created a space for new learning possibilities. Students who have grown up as dutiful users of new media prefer to be actors, players, agents, and users of media rather than mere audiences, spectators, or voyeurs (Cope and Kalantzis 2009). By authorizing students to play with the materials they are studying, they are invited to actively participate in meaning-making and the production of knowledge in the classroom. Chelsea Timlin et al. (2021) note that "literacy is lived experience" (6); the fan fiction project in this course encouraged students to engage with the materials on a personal level, bringing their own background, opinions, and experiences with them into an academic setting.
[1.5] To understand how students perceived and engaged with the fan fiction project, I collected (with electronic consent) student opinions and impressions. This anonymous feedback on the project was entirely voluntary and had no attachment to the students' grades. Creative writing can allow "students [to] feel empowered knowing that there is no one right answer that the instructor expects" (Austen 2005, 145). The process encourages critical analysis, as well as personal exploration of the topic. A final project which is meaningfully integrated and not simply an "add-on" at the completion of a course is an essential part of a multiliteracies approach to education (Jacobs 2013, 626). My goal is to describe how a multiliteracies pedagogical approach to fan fiction can be employed in the final project of a course and engage students more deeply in course content. After briefly describing the project, I discuss it in terms of the pillars of a multiliteracies approach to teaching: overt instruction, situated practice, critical framing, and transformed practice. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the benefits of a project such as this in a literature classroom.
2. Description of the project
[2.1] For this course, I designed a final project in which students were tasked with writing their own piece of creative fan fiction using their knowledge of fairy tales, characteristics of the genre, and modern scholarly critiques. This aimed to help students see the fairy tale (and, by extension, fan fiction) as a space for cultural critique. While great and productive work happened throughout the term with group presentations and discussions (among other assignments), I focus primarily on the final project. The two parts of the final project were defined in the syllabus (full instructions for the final can be found in the appendix):
[2.2] As part of your final project, you will write a creative fan fiction adaptation of your own based on readings of primary and secondary literature which will serve as social commentary critically analyzing or highlighting the importance of a current social issue of your own choosing. As the second part of your final project, you will also write an academic paper analyzing your choices in writing a fairy tale adaptation; analyzing your own writing as social commentary while utilizing terminology and methods discussed throughout the term with support from secondary literature.
[2.3 ] To include communal fandom practices in this project, each student also served as a beta reader for three different students, providing feedback on drafts of their projects. The final project was posted to a website designed by each individual student. All students in the course had access to these websites and could post commentary, which was essential for peer review. Learning is a social activity, and this aspect of the project was included to allow a student-centered approach where students edited and critiqued their peers' projects. Serving as a beta reader also allowed students to reflect on each other's work individually and as part of a whole, rather than viewing their fan fiction in isolation. Serving as beta readers throughout the project can also emphasize foundational literacy practices, such as reader feedback and peer review (Leigh 2020). The instructions for this beta-reading requirement emphasized that it was intended to be student-student engagement. Students were informed that I would not be grading the quality of their feedback; rather, they would fill out a short survey-style assignment which detailed how helpful and informative they found their beta readers' comments. This was a low-stakes assignment with the same grading value as a homework assignment, but was designed to let students know that their feedback was truly meant for their peers and not for my assessment.
3. Overt instruction
[3.1] While a multiliteracies approach emphasizes student engagement and exploration of materials, it also necessitates overt instruction for foundational knowledge. Two of the course goals, as outlined in the syllabus, were (1) to "focus on the evolving nature of the fairy tale and [its] audiences by investigating links between the 'classic' Western tales and their pop culture adaptations" and (2) "how those adaptations and evolutions highlight changing historical, cultural, and sociopolitical contexts in which the adaptations emerge." While the course focused on defining tropes of traditional Western canonical tales from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen, they were compared and contrasted with tales from European women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (as a point of contrast to the male-dominated collections of canonical European tales); tales from China, Japan, India, and across Africa; tales from One Thousand and One Nights; and various Native American tales.
[3.2] Throughout the term, students also analyzed modern fairy tale adaptations, beginning with the early animated versions of Lotte Reiniger and Walt Disney before moving on to more modern film adaptations from the 2010s. Finally, we focused on the impacts of digitization and the internet before studying internet fan fiction more in depth.
[3.3] Internet fan fiction was an ideal way to end the term and allowed me to highlight how students could engage in literary adaptation by participation. Henry Jenkins (1992) writes that fan fiction "is born of a balance between fascination and frustration: If media content didn't fascinate us, there would be no desire to engage with it; but if it didn't frustrate us on some level, there would be no drive to rewrite or remake it" (247). With frustration, Jenkins refers to aspects of media content which did not live up to the expectations of fans. Whether these be plot holes, unsatisfactory relationships, untimely deaths, or perhaps fringe elements of stories which were not given enough attention in the canon, fans are left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. Rather than simply reaffirming the canon, fan fiction is written by transformational fans who change, adapt, or expand the canon material in important ways. Taking on the role of the transformational fan, students in this course were asked to make changes to expand a fairy tale or folktale, delve into character motivations, alter the settings, or resolve what they saw as inconsistencies. Using this form of creative writing within boundaries, fan fiction can create circumstances for students to "deliberately move through the exercises of reinvention and repurposing to explore self and find community" (Mcclantoc 2021, ¶ 1.2).
[3.4] A considerable amount of time spent in class was devoted to discussing and analyzing the link between the fairy tale and fan fiction. The fairy tale has been described as multifaceted and characterized by "diversity and dissonance" (Haase 1993, 12); the fairy tale "resists a definitive reconstruction of 'original' meaning and even invites contradictory responses" (16). Both fairy tale and fan fiction cultures can be said to offer "key critical alternatives to mass-mediated storytelling in their ability to undermine the coercive inevitability of any one ending" (Kustritz 2016, 6). Bringing fan fiction and fan studies together with fairy tale studies allows for the merger of two volatile and fluid genres: fan fiction and the fairy tale. In fan fiction, the "diversity and dissonance" already inherent in the fairy tale can be actively exploited. In this way, as students creatively wrote their own fan fiction versions, they could see firsthand the adaptability of fairy tales and how they can be shaped and molded to address contemporary concerns.
[3.5] I chose to pursue fandom as a way to further engage students in a fairy tale course for two main reasons. First, fan fiction is a type of creative writing which can both be used as a scaffolding project to help students learn traditional writing strategies and techniques, as well as show students the process of literary adaptation. For students to fully understand the complex alterations that fairy tales undergo when they are changed and modified through transmission and interpretation, I felt that analysis of various adaptations with a traditional academic analytical essay was insufficient. Students needed to truly participate in the meaning-making process to understand the complexities of the course materials more fully.
[3.6] Second, the study of fandom within the university classroom is certainly increasing, though negative stereotypes about its role in the classroom abound—for instructors and students alike. Works based on pop culture, such as many forms of fan fiction, are often positioned outside the realm of the university classroom (Bekerman 2008). One goal of my course, however, was to show students that serious investigation of pop culture is necessary. Rebecca W. Black (2009) writes that "uncritical engagement with popular culture materials and media messages can have deleterious effects" (422). This can lead to individuals uncritically adopting stereotypical representations of gender identity, gender roles, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and ability, among others. Having students focus on and critique popular culture could allow them to view it through a more critical lens and investigate the role of this media in their lives.
[3.7] In her study about teaching with fandom in the classroom, Linda Zygutis (2021) notes the pervading stereotype of the "affirmational fan" (¶ 2.2). Affirmational fans are those who reaffirm the source material and center on teasing out, collecting, and having lengthy discussions on the details of the canon. Zygutis writes that in her own study, despite growing research on fandom as well as the growing popularity of fan culture in general, her students still focused on the cliché of the affirmational fan and "perceive[d] fans as obsessed and excessive" (¶ 2.3). Many of my students likewise followed this trend in comments they wrote before we began studying fan fiction. Some students commented that they saw fan fiction as "crazy obsessed fan writing" or that those who write fan fiction "have an almost obsessive" feeling toward the media. These attitudes certainly harken back to the term fanatic, from which fan derives. One student noted that there is a sense of "laziness" associated with derivative works such as fan fiction which shows a clear bias toward what is generally considered to be canon material. Others noted that they tended to associate fan fiction with "poorly written smut" or as "childish" and a "lower form of entertainment." These comments show a hierarchical division between what students perceive as "high" and "low" artforms, with amateur writing positioned as unworthy of academic critique.
[3.8] Fan fiction, like the fairy tale, is a derivative genre which remains in constant conversation with the canon. The relationship with the source material—in this case, the folktales and fairy tales discussed throughout the term—can allow a nuanced commentary on and critique of course materials. Many scholars also note a link between writing fan fiction outside the classroom and learning about the writing process. Research shows a common focus on the role of fan fiction writing in language acquisition—especially for learners of English. Scholars such as Steven L. Thorne and Rebecca W. Black (2011), Stevie Leigh (2020), and Stefan Lundström and Christina Olin-Scheller (2014) found that students who wrote fan fiction as a means of practicing and further developing their English writing skills received significant feedback and support outside of the classroom. This in turn helped promote their writing, reading, and confidence in English. Fan studies has expanded as an academic field, and its growing visibility has led to more instructors incorporating fandom and fandom practices into their teaching and classrooms (Booth and Lee 2021). The link between fan fiction and learning writing conventions has provided scholars with the opportunity to explore how fan fiction may be used as a tool within the classroom to better prepare writers (Rouse 2021).
4. Situated practice
[4.1] Situated practice promotes interaction, collaboration, and the discussion and sharing of ideas among students. The use of fan fiction, which requires these communal elements, can be an effective way to encourage the skills needed to effectively collaborate. A collaborative and interactive environment leads students to negotiate common interests with others who may hold different views. This is essential to the situated practice focus of a multiliteracies approach. The pedagogical potential of introducing fan practices to the classroom allows students to learn, in a participatory way, exactly how stories can be adapted, how characters are developed, and about the creative writing process itself. Studies such as those by Rebecca W. Black (2008) and Leigh (2020) demonstrate that fan fiction writing can be a valuable literary practice because it "encourages creativity and literary appreciation, promotes socialization, offers a platform for self-exploration, and motivates students to advance their writing skills" (Leigh 2020, ¶ 1).
[4.2] Fan fiction is a communal genre which thrives on peer revisions, commentary, and engagement. The common practices vital to the creation of fan fiction writing—analysis, reinterpretation, and peer review—are all commonly used within writing and literature classrooms. Writing is a highly analytical activity which requires writers—whether consciously or not—to access knowledge gained from the works of others as well as their own to draw further insight into their own writing. By emphasizing the beta reader assignments, I sought to illustrate the importance of peer feedback and review rather than any interpretations I had presented throughout the course. Likewise, the student-centered focus on critical response to peer works of fan fiction worked to highlight the "social sharing [which] is essential" to considering the historical and cultural relevance of literature (Heljakka 2022, ¶ 9.2). Students can come to view not just themselves but also their fellow students as important collaborators in learning that takes place within the classroom rather than only looking to their instructor.
[4.3] Peer collaboration provides student-student engagement, which presents a social context for their learning (Anderson 2021). Peer participation situates students and their knowledge as an essential component of the project. As Katherine Anderson Howell (2018) notes, the academic world is one which is "saturated with gatekeeping, jargon, and required curricula" (2). Fan fiction provides a model as well as the opportunity for students to engage with canonical material and to criticize this canonical knowledge in a productive and self-reflective way (Wright 2021). Such a creative writing task can help validate students' own knowledge and encourage them to value their own contributions as meaning-makers within the classroom.
5. Critical framing
[5.1] Critical framing allows students the space to apply their learning through comprehension of the topic, reflection, and analysis. For students to succeed in a fan fiction writing assignment, they must be familiar with the norms and expectations of the target genre—in this case, fairy tale—to make their creative changes and alterations. This work requires high-level information literacy and critical thinking, along with the creativity required to compose a derivative work. By experimenting with writing genres creatively, students can see firsthand different conventions and modes of expression. They can also more deeply understand why these conventions exist. Rather than simply learning about the adaptability of the fairy tale across genres, cultures, and time periods, students go through the reflective and analytic process of determining how and why they would alter a tale.
[5.2] A more nuanced understanding can make students more inclined and better able to use and recognize, when necessary, the conventions they learned during periods of overt instruction in the course (Black 2008). Participating in the adaptation process can likewise help increase student awareness of values portrayed in the canonical tales and how they are reliant on the social expectations and norms of the time and society in which they were written. Students can in turn investigate the canonical texts and anthologies (such as the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales [1812] or Charles Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose [1697]) as products and representatives of their time and the cultures or communities they came from.
[5.3] Indeed, why should students study fairy tale adaptations only as observers when they can personally take part in the process of adaptation itself? As instructors, we should not only aim for students to be able to read and understand texts or others' critiques, but to question, critique, and contextualize for themselves (Zygutis 2021). Students noted after the completion of the project that they felt the project had allowed them to be "able to truly understand how fairy tales can adapt and be transformed" and that "active participation definitely informed [their] understanding." Multiple students also noted that they enjoyed the "hands-on" approach.
[5.4] A multiliteracies approach serves as a valuable learning process, and this final assessment project was an integral part of the pedagogical approach to the course. The project emphasized that a true understanding of a text (as well as other forms of media) can only be achieved through "open discussion and negotiations of meanings" (Kramsch 1985, 357) and that students should see themselves as valued contributors in that discussion. This can likewise show students that theory and practice are interactive rather than mutually exclusive (Weber 2010) and that they can be active participants in designing meaning.
[5.5] Students commented that aside from feeling more knowledgeable about the course topic, they enjoyed the fan fiction writing as a final project. One student who noted that they had initially struggled with the creative aspect of the project said that "writing this fairy tale furthered my understanding of the genre as a whole. Creatively, this was a great outlet and made me understand what I like in fairy tales, and what I think is great." This suggests that despite struggling initially, this student was still able to make connections with the course content and that the final project helped them turn a critical eye on their own perceptions of the fairy tale genre.
6. Transformative practice
[6.1] Finally, enacting an important pillar in a multiliteracies approach, students were able to demonstrate their knowledge in transformative practice. Transformative practice allows students to transform their knowledge into other contexts and, in the process, add "something of themselves" (Kalantzis and Cope 2001, 13). One student used the project as a way to connect with their grandfather who had passed away. The student based their fan fiction tale on a fairy tale their grandfather had told them many times as a child. They noted that this was a deeply personal experience that "provided a window into my own life through the vector of a story." One way to improve not only student subject engagement in the material but also their comprehension of the source material is to increase student emotional capital in the course (Wright 2021), and this certainly appeared to be true based on student feedback.
[6.2] Another student wrote that they made purposeful changes to their fairy tale to include a "narrative of female empowerment and diversity to challenge the lack of these elements in current fairy tale canon." This student also noted that they included precolonial names for their story set in Africa, which allowed this student to bring their own expertise to the discussion. The recontextualization of course materials as fan objects which can be manipulated and changed can "motivate students to engage with them in meaningful ways" (Anderson 2021, ¶ 2.1). The fan fiction component of the project allowed students to bring their identities, experiences, and expertise into the classroom. This positioned students as designers of meaning and emphasized that playing with and changing language can bring new insight into social meanings and identities.
[6.3] The project allowed students to reflect inwardly, but also promoted society-oriented critical reflection since students were required to add an aspect of social commentary to their fairy tale adaptation. "Literacy is lived experience" (Timlin et al. 2021, 6), and this project allowed students to more critically analyze literature in this way. In their reflective essays, students noted changes that they had made to imbue their fairy tales with social and political commentary. One student made changes to a canonical fairy tale that they felt "worked against societal improvement" since it was framed as a "feel-good story" and focused on the luck and good fortune of a singular character rather than the betterment of many.
[6.4] In a study on the use of creative fiction in the classroom, Catarina Economou (2015) notes that "far too often students...have to leave their experiences and cultural baggage, that is to say their identities, at home because in school...the norms and values of the majority are in focus" (100). Bringing fandom studies into the classroom can offer new ways for students to engage with course materials and transform it. Fan fiction has been proven to encourage self-exploration and encourage writers to reflect on and ask questions about their own personal experiences (Leigh 2020).
[6.5] The project allowed students to enter a meaningful dialogue rather than attempt to produce what they thought the instructor would see as right and wrong answers. Themes for student adaptations ranged widely, including feminist versions providing women with more agency; gender norms; diversity issues within the canonical texts; poverty within the United States; greed; animal rights; class divisions; environmental concerns; and the capitalistic, market-driven focus of US society. Students noted that they felt the final project "wrapped up" the course well, helped to "synthesize the semester's work," and "emphasized all lessons and readings done throughout the course," which seems to indicate that they viewed the project as an integral aspect of the course rather than a mere add-on.
[6.6] In their reflective essays, students showed clear critical reflection not just on the fairy tale genre or the change and adaptation of tales but also on society as a whole and their own personal opinions and experiences. Students generally did quite well analyzing their own creative writing. There were a few who noted that they found the analysis essay more difficult than the creative portion. One student remarked that they felt "a bit more lost in crafting a response to the reflection portion." This disconnect for some between the creative writing and analytical writing of the final project could, as others have also noted, be due to students struggling to see themselves inhabiting a role worthy of offering transformative critique and that they could feel "outside of the role of critic or artist" (Zygutis 2021, ¶ 4.3). With a multiliteracies approach, we can aim to bring an "emancipatory pedagogy" into the classroom through which students are "fully makers and remakers of signs and transformers of meaning," as Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis (2009, 175) call for. While this might not be possible to achieve in just one course, our aim should be to develop learning experiences for students in which they can develop strategies and skills for critical engagement that they may bring with them in the future.
7. Benefits of a fan fiction project in the literature classroom
[7.1] Research into fan fiction and the role it plays in community and identity formation has found that a number of individuals who write fan fiction have reported that this creative process promotes a deeper understanding of other people and new perspectives—inviting the writers to attempt to see the world through the eyes of established characters in the source material and understand their motivations. This "learner-content" interaction is one which is essential for effective learning (Anderson 2021, ¶ 2.2). By having students directly engage with the material in a creative and transformative way, my aim—which, through assessment of student comments, appears to be borne out—was for students to understand the perpetual evolution of folk and fairy tales as important cultural products that continue to be repurposed as they are retold or rewritten.
[7.2] This type of project can help students see adaptation and derivative writing in general as a form of valid, creative critique. To write a derivative text, students need to have a deep knowledge of the text they are critiquing. Their designs, decisions, and alterations are mediated through their knowledge and understanding of the source text, which requires intense critical thinking. This can allow students to grapple with their own critical reading and writing skills since derivative writing both requires a deep knowledge of the source texts and allows students to have creative interactions with the source material. One student noted that the project was "engaging because you never realize how integrated fairy tales are in our lives, even as adults." This comment and others like it demonstrate that through the project, students were able to look more critically at pop culture and examine its influence in their lives.
[7.3] Students who identified that they had begun the project with a negative view of fan fiction noted that their opinion had indeed changed throughout the course of the project. Students commented that the project helped them both feel more knowledgeable about fan fiction and helped them understand the nuances of the fairy tale genre more fully. One student noted that their opinion of fan fiction had changed slightly through participation. They wrote that before they saw it as an "unhealthy obsession, but now...see it as an effective outlet for those who need it."
[7.4] Though certainly not all stereotypes could be dispelled, some students noted that while they "still share some of [their] older opinions" of fan fiction itself, they "definitely understand more about [it] as a whole now," which seems to indicate that critical engagement with the genre provided students with a more in-depth understanding. It was instructive to see that previously negative views had begun to change. Students were able to find common understanding despite differences of opinions and experiences once they were exposed to fan fiction and the intricacies of the genre. This has the potential to invite more critical discussions about the distinctions between "high" and "low" art being largely attributed to social class (Squire 2008, 119), especially since students are able to see firsthand what goes into creating a derivative text.
8. Conclusion
[8.1] Bringing fandom and fan fiction into the classroom offers the opportunity for students to more closely connect what takes place within the classroom with their everyday experiences in the world. Similarly, it takes pop culture seriously as something which can be analyzed and critiqued. Bringing fandom into the classroom shows students that there are more forms of literacy which can be of value than traditional, canonical genres (Silberman-Keller et al. 2008). It can likewise introduce some control and power back to students as agents in their own learning. One student perfectly summed up the aims of the project, writing, "As a writer, it is also important to examine the impact that one wants to have with their fairy tale, the ways we want to reflect society, or encourage it to change, and mindfully create our stories to have that impact." A pedagogy of multiliteracies is one which emphasizes meaning-making as an active, transformative process. Such a process is one which can also "open up viable life courses for a world of change and diversity" (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, 175). Course content plays a large role in student interest and engagement, and this type of engagement with course material can contribute to long-lasting student learning.