K-Pop fanfiction as a literary genre : a dynamic configuration of history, culture and action.

Abstract

This project investigates how to read K-Pop fanfiction texts as an example of a literary genre that emerges out of, and operates within, the contexts of history, culture, and action (fandom practice). Accordingly, I attempt to place K-pop fanfiction within the literary tradition and establish it as a legitimate literary genre. This project identifies an emerging participatory literary and artistic culture and a new form of readership and literary production that is crossing geographical and cultural boarders as well as erasing language restraints. I will set out to describe a genre of writing that is gaining momentum and inviting readers from different parts of the world. I aim to identify an emerging literary genre and raise important questions on (literary) genre theory and rhetorical theories of genre and show, in the case of K-Pop fanfiction, that it can be defined by the interrelations between writers, readers, texts, as well as contexts. I then take up a textual analysis of K-Pop fanfiction as a literary text and identify elements that define and distinguish the genre while discussing the strong appeal of slash among women readers. I also discuss how national and cultural norms shape the practices of the South Korean K-fandom and their engagement with their idols and how international (Arab and Lebanese) K-fans remix these cultural norms to establish their own relationship to K-Pop idols through fandom practice, including fanfiction reading and writing. K-Pop, like fanfiction, is continuously gaining momentum and attracting scholarly interest. The increasing growth of the Hallyu wave and its spread to many parts of the world, including the Arab region and Lebanon, highlights the relevance of this project to undertake the investigation of growing and emerging fan communities around the world with similar interactive and assimilative attitudes in interpreting, appropriating, and reconstructing forms of entertainment. I hope that the analysis presented in this thesis regarding global fan communities in genera