A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University!
This project confronts the term "convergence," which crystallizes a matrix of current cultural phenomena, from corporate consolidation to technical integration to user participation, that are transforming the relationship between media producers and consumers. The author analyzes the tensions emerging at the crossroads of television and the internet by taking queer female labor in the guise of online fan discussion, fiction, music videos, and community-building as an artifact that is exemplary of this formation. Her research is oriented to queer fan practices for both theoretical and historical reasons: convergence is concerned with queer dynamics like managing categories and transgressing boundaries; and more concretely her approach to such social, economic, legal, and ideological negotiations through the lens of fandom comes at a time when the media industry is itself reorienting to privilege fan engagement. Thus, along with broadening the scope of fan studies, this work intervenes in the disciplines of television and internet studies more generally through a unique critical theoretical perspective, constructing a framework drawn from media theory, queer theory, Marxist theory, and cultural studies. The core of the dissertation consists of three case studies of lesbian fan activity around the television programs Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Battlestar Galactica, and The L Word, with particular attention to three intertwined registers: the screen texts still defined as television episodes; the transmedia texts that include online tie-ins, promotions, and gossip; and the fan texts produced by interpretive communities. These evaluations allow the author to explore disputes over politics of representation (figured by the closet), technologies of reproduction (figured by the hybrid), and commodification of identity (figured by the worker), positioning fan economies as a contested axis of immaterial labor in late capitalism. Mapping the queer interventions generated by a predominantly female fan subculture, this project argues that the technologies, discourses, and subjectivities of convergence pose structural challenges to systems of ownership, circulation, and value that corporate media are struggling to reincorporate. Scrutinizing the increasingly intermediated configuration of television and the internet is essential to understanding these and other antagonisms shaping media evolution today.
Drafts of the three central chapters, which were posted as I wrote them, remain here. Only Chapter III (on Battlestar Galactica) subsequently underwent substantial revisions. The manuscript comprises the final versions, plus an introduction and conclusion. I would welcome feedback on the project as I work toward the book manuscript!
