The graduate theses of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program are now online. CMS is taught by super academic-fan Henry Jenkins, guru of all things fan-theoretical. I once spent a mind-blowing day at his program, meeting super-smart people seriously unpicking things like pro-wrestling fandom and understanding what makes it tick. Now there's dozens of these online — I could read this stuff for weeks.
IVAN ASKWITH:
TV 2.0: Turning Television into an Engagement MediumALEC AUSTIN:
Expectations Across Entertainment MediaLISA BIDLINGMEYER:
Agent + Image: How the Television Image Destabilizes Identity in TV Spy SeriesKRISTINA DRZAIC:
Oh No I'm Toast! Mastering Videogame Secrets in Theory and PracticeAMANDA FINKELBERG:
Models and Simulations: Digital Cartography in the Networked EnvironmentSAM FORD:
As the World Turns in a Convergence EnvironmentNEAL GRIGSBY:
Ceaseless Becoming: Narratives of Adolescence Across MediaRENA HE HUANG:
Journey to the East: the (Re)Make of Chinese AnimationGEOFFREY LONG:
Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics and Production at the Jim Henson CompanyPETER RAUCH:
Playing with Good and Evil: Videogames and Moral PhilosophyDAN ROY:
Mastery and the Mobile Future of Massively Multiplayer GamesKAREN VERSCHOOREN:
.art: situating internet art in the modern museum
(Thanks, Pablo!)
See also:
How fanfic makes kids into better writers (and copyright victims)
What steampunk means
Media scholar Henry Jenkins starts blogging
Update
Kat Macdonald sez, "I thought I'd offer a link to my undergraduate thesis 'Reflections on the Modern Folk Process,' which, as the abstract suggests, talks about 'the phenomenon of fanfiction, [focusing] on issues such as the culture industry, authorship, legitimacy, transience, the current copyright culture, and the folk process in a modern context. As a specific example, the essay follows the history of a human-interest folklore article, 'Myths Over Miami,' as it travels through and is changed by the modern folk process.'"
