I am a high school English teacher at Hardin Valley Academy in Knoxville, Tennessee and a doctoral candidate in Literacy Studies at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
My positionality in relation to this research comes with unique privileges, insights, and biases. I have specific positions and relationships with each of the three materials involved in this study.
Being a high school English teacher allows me unique connection and access to young adults. I entered into this profession partially because of a desire to work with an age group in which I find so much inspiration and promise. My daily interactions with adolescents allow me to be a constant witness to their diversity and complexity, and I often chafe at the negative stereotypes of adolescents in the larger culture and even within my own school.
This defense of adolescents perhaps comes because I additionally relate to the adolescents in this research in age. While my participants are technically part of a new generation, adolescents are often still referred to as Millennials, my own generation. Some of the same stereotypes applied to adolescents (e.g., over-use of technology, coddled, etc.) are applied to my age group as well. For example, Prensky (2001) used the term “digital native” to describe those, like me, who have spent their entire lives surrounded with technology like computers. Prensky (2001) like many in the education field at the time and still today, claimed that “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors” (n.p.). Prensky (2001) outlines a number of stereotypes about digital natives:
Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work. (n.p.)
Prensky (2001), referring to school-aged adolescents in 2001, was directly referring to me, a middle schooler at that time. Yet these same stereotypes are the ones my colleagues use to refer to students now. Like my participants, I am not only used to the adolescent styles of literacy and communication, but also used to being stereotyped for them.
Additionally, my participants, like the majority of fanfiction writers, are mostly female like myself. This connection is germane as I identify with the marginalization of this group, especially when it comes to literacy. Women’s literacy practices are often ridiculed as frivolous, and fanfiction is no exception (Black, 2007; Korobkova & Black, 2014; Thomas, 2006). As a woman and a digital native, my connection with the participants in this study allows me to relate to the position of the participants.
However, despite all of the connections I feel I have with the people in this study, I am not entirely one of them. As a teacher and an academic, I am in a traditional position of authority over adolescents. No matter how much respect or connections I have with them, I am an outsider. Even though I do not take part in them, the ways in which adults minimize, stereotype, and misunderstand adolescents affects my ability to communicate with and therefore study this demographic. Past experiences with adults trivializing adolescent behavior may make adolescents hesitant to trust me with theirs. Additionally, while often teenagers get called millennials by older generations, adolescents are now part of a new generation of which I am not a part.
Apart from my connection with adolescents, I am also connected with young adult literature and the particular series under study here. My interest in young adult literature began during my training to become a teacher. As I grew in my career, my connection with the literature did as well, leading me to write a young adult novel, advocate for young adult literature’s use in the classroom, and begin a doctoral program to study it.
The particular series that is the focus of this study, Throne of Glass, has been an ongoing pastime for me. Since devouring the first three books in the series one summer, I have purchased and read the following four books on their release date. I have found myself excitedly chatting with students in the halls about these books, buying additional copies with special art, and reading fanfiction and gazing at fan art from this series. It is safe to say that I am a fan, and I continue to look forward to the upcoming books in the series.
I first discovered, read, and wrote fanfiction in high school, and I continue to read and participate in online fanfiction communities in both reading and writing. I have been a member of fanfiction.net since January 2013 and have published three stories on the site. I have read countless other stories in the space. I am involved in fan culture in other ways, from attending conventions to following fan sites and blogs. Jenkins (1992) talks about the advantages of being an “aca-fan,” an academic who is also a fan. While fandom can be a marginalized culture, aca-fans approach it with understanding and respect and are therefore more welcome and are able to gain more insight by being a participant with rather than an outsider to the culture (Jenkins, 1992). As a fan, I will understand fandom terminology and am already initiated in fan discourses.
Female, digital-native fanfiction writers are a marginalized group in many ways. The complexity of my positionality as an insider in this community and an outsider academic allows me to simultaneously gain in-depth insight while also stepping back for delineation and elaboration. From a New Materialist perspective, a researcher becomes part of the intra-action under study as nothing that intra-acts with the subject of study can remain separate from it. In this case, my familiarity with the community allows for a more seamless integration into the intra-action.