scholarly journals Women's fan writing and transformative works in eleventh-century Japan

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellis Khachidze
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Tale Of Genji ◽  
Murasaki Shikibu ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Fan Identity ◽  
Early Reader

This exploration of the literary cultures of eleventh-century Japan analyzes the ways in which the writing and reading practices of the period resemble those of modern transformative fan communities. Studying the defining fictional text of this era, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 1021), within the framework of fan studies demonstrates how existing so-called canonical material was transformed into a vehicle for female-centric reimaginings of dominant narratives. The circumstances of the work's authorship and its initial reception are examined via the author's own diary and The Sarashina Diary (ca. 1059), a memoir written by an early reader of the Genji, providing insight into both individual fan identity and the extensive female-led fan communities of the period.

scholarly journals Eating Murasaki Shikibu

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Chozick
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Mass Market ◽  
Tale Of Genji ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Murasaki Shikibu ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Cultural Cannibalism

The fifth-century transmission of China’s sophisticated writing system to Japan prompted a cascade of textual and literary developments on the archipelago. Retrofit to support Japanese phonetics and syntax, a hybrid script and literature evolved; from this negotiation of texts emerged Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji in eleventh century Kyoto. While Genji is celebrated today as Japan’s enduring national classic, it fell out of print for much of two centuries preceding its first translation into Victorian era English. This paper examines how interregional exchanges of translations and scripts have amplified the critical and popular success of Genji. It will be argued that English translations of Genji helped to provide a stylistic and typographic model for reintroducing the text to modern Japanese readers as a mass-market novel. In theorizing about such matters, the Japanese concept of reverse-importation will be introduced and intercultural transferences are contextualized within Oswald de Andrade’s notion of cultural cannibalism.

Muslim Girlhood, Skam Fandom, and DIY Citizenship

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-62
Author(s):  
Briony Hannell
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Minority Youth ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Girlhood Studies ◽  
Popular Representations ◽  
Poststructural Analysis ◽  
Muslim Girls

While fandom is a dominant girlhood trope, few accounts examine faith in the context of girls’ fandom. Addressing this gap, using a feminist poststructural analysis, I draw on interviews and participant observation to locate fan communities as a space in which Muslim girls can enact citizenship. Combining youth cultural studies, girlhood studies, and fan studies, I explore how Muslim fangirls of the Norwegian teen web-drama Skam (2015–2017) draw on their desire for recognition and their creativity as cultural producers to engage in participatory storytelling that challenges popular representations of Muslim girls. This process enables the production of communities rooted in shared interests, experiences, and identities. I suggest that fandom should be recognized for its capacity to generate new meanings of citizenship for minority youth.

The Epistemology of Space in The Tale of Genji

2019 ◽  
pp. 68-100
Author(s):  
Wiebke Denecke
Keyword(s):  
Human Experience ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Temporal Difference ◽  
Tale Of Genji ◽  
Narrative Art ◽  
Murasaki Shikibu ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Questions

Although The Tale of Genji is today the quintessentially Japanese national classic, its engagement with China shapes the tale on virtually every page. This essay argues that Murasaki Shikibu was keenly interested in philosophical questions of how humans experience space and that China played a pivotal role in formulating and engaging these questions. As a Heian woman she had no access to the world of Chinese-style poetry composition or the Confucian Academy, but she deploys China as a marker of spatial or temporal difference that inspires her probing of fundamental questions: How can spaces convey moods and structure human experience? How can a woman narrate inaccessible male spaces? This essay shows how philosophical questions about the experience and description of space drive the tale’s plot and character portrayal and how this “epistemology of space” is predicated on the manifold presences of China at the heart of the Genji’s brilliant narrative art and psychological depth.

Play moods across the life course in SKAM fandom

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Line Nybro Petersen ◽  
Vilde Schanke Sundet
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Fan Practices ◽  
The Life Course

This article considers fans’ playful digital practices and focuses on the play moods that are co-constructed in online fan communities. We analyse how these play moods are negotiated across the life course for participating fans. Play moods are closely tied to the playful modes of fan practices, and by gaining a greater understanding of the moods that fans engage in at different stages of their life course we gain new insights into fan play as it relates to issues of age-related norms in fan communities. Specifically, this article analyses the Norwegian teenage streaming drama SKAM (Shame) (NRK, 2015‐17), which was produced for a target audience of 16-year-old Norwegian girls but ended up capturing the hearts of people of all ages across Scandinavia and internationally. This study is based on interviews with 43 Scandinavian fans aged between 13 and 70. The participants were all active on social media (Facebook, Instagram, the show’s blog, etc.) while the show was on the air and the interviews offers insights into issues of age-appropriateness as it relates to fan practices. As such, fans ‘police’ both themselves and each other based on perceptions of age, while also engaging in practices that are by nature playful and may be considered subjectively and culturally ‘youthful’ or ‘childish’. The article combines theory of play and fan studies with a focus on the life course and cultural gerontology in order to highlight these tendencies in the SKAM fandom.

scholarly journals The ex-fan's place in fan studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Kies
Keyword(s):  
Fan Studies ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Fan Communities

In an examination of how fans end their relationships with the objects of their fandom and related fan communities, I use my own experiences with the television series Supernatural (WB/CW, 2005–) to demonstrate how breaking up with a fandom is emotionally and technologically complicated. Becoming an ex-fan is different from antifandom and is worthy of greater investigation in fan studies.

scholarly journals Fans of Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Ryan Rico
Keyword(s):  
Media Violence ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Columbine High School ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
School Shooters ◽  
Online Fans ◽  
Mainstream Culture

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in what was then the deadliest school shooting in American history. Despite causing a national panic and serving as a flash point for larger narratives on bullying, gun control, and media violence, both boys have gained active online fans. These fandoms dedicated to the Columbine shooters are widely referred to as dark examples of Internet communities, while the fans are also frequently denigrated as unstable and violent outcasts. Such dark online fandoms are yet to permeate mainstream culture or to challenge the preexisting perception of these communities as breeding grounds for the next wave of school shooters. While studies have covered the types of fans and their myriad interests, the field remains focused on more conventional examples of fan communities. In an effort to challenge and expand the object of focus when we study fandom, this qualitative study examines Columbine fans and their activity in order to understand the dominant motives they appear to have for engaging with and around such controversial figures and then concludes by exploring how this community might help us reflect more broadly on our concept of fandom. Redeeming these fans as part of diverse and complex communities of social relevance can demonstrate how even a dark fandom such as that of these Columbine shooters provides valuable cultural insights and benefits the field of fan studies.

scholarly journals Anxieties of Authorship, Critique of Readership: Mishima Yukio’s Modern Noh Play Genji kuyō

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 407-446
Author(s):  
Satoko Naito
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Tale Of Genji ◽  
Murasaki Shikibu ◽  
History Of

Mishima Yukio's dramatic suicide half a century ago ensured that his name would forever be associated with a certain fanatic imperialism, and largely fulfilled his own wish that he would die as a military man. And yet, he was until the end foremost a literary artist, concerned with the critical reception of his written works and preoccupied with his lasting reputation as an author. This paper examines Mishima’s portrayal of the celebrity writer, as well as the potentials and limitations of literature as presented in his oft-neglected modern noh play Genji kuyō (Devotional offering for Genji, 1962). It positions the play within the long history of prayers for Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji, ca. 1008) that began in the twelfth century in response to the perceived ambiguous morality of the author Murasaki Shikibu (d. ca. 1014). Mishima's Genji kuyō provides a pointed criticism of readers, as well as anxieties regarding a writer's life and literary recognition. Though Mishima himself famously disowned it after its initial publication, Genji kuyō offers critical insights regarding the writing and reading of literature.

scholarly journals Toward an ecology of vidding

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tisha Turk ◽  
Joshua Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
Composition Studies ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Media Texts

Despite the fan studies emphasis on participatory culture, much of the current work on vids (and in fan studies broadly) treats fans more as readers than as producers. To help us examine the relationships between fannish reading practices and fannish creative processes, we turn to composition studies and Marilyn Cooper's concept of an ecology of writing. We argue for an ecological model of vidding, an approach that enables us to explore the collaborative nature of vidding without erasing individual authorship; to investigate the relationships not only between vids and media texts but also between vidders and their audiences; and to treat fan conversations both as responses to mass media and as sites for the generation and circulation of interpretive conventions that guide both the creation and reception of vids.

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