“Unconditionally and Irrevocably in Love”: The Sociological Implications of Romance and Sex in the Twilight Saga and Its Fanfictions
Independent research project supervised by Dr. Janine Chi and presented to Muhlenberg College’s sociology and anthropology departments. Received highest honors and Lucille Afros award for Excellence in Sociology.
The research questions this study seeks to answer are: how do fanfiction writers interpret elements of romance, sex, and sexuality in young adult books and their screen adaptations? What are the implications of any alignments with or deviations from the source material? To answer these questions, the popular young adult series Twilight and its most popular romance fanfictions (from Fanfiction.net) were studied. Analysis was conducted using coding as a means to perform qualitative data analysis of the romantic and sexual themes in the texts (four Twilight books and six popular romance fanfictions). I found that the fanfictions were more likely to mimic the romance of the source material, while actively defying the sexual expectations of the series. The fanfictions both upheld and deconstructed the romantic and sexual values of the Twilight books and movies. The fanfictions took on feminist perspectives of women’s agency and sex lives, but still aligned with existing power structures by leaving whiteness and queerness unexamined.
Creative Writing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Nepal and United States Perspectives
Independent research project supervised by Suman Pant and Peter Gill through the School for International Training (SIT). Selected for presentation at the Notre Dame Human Development Conference.
This study seeks to understand different ways creative writers in Nepal and the United States wrote about their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, this project identifies common themes and ideas present in three Nepali and three American creative writers’ writings during the pandemic, the ways in which writing is informed by cultural context, and how writers’ writing processes looked during the COVID-19 outbreak. The research was compiled by asking Nepali and American writers to write a creative piece about their experiences during COVID-19, as well as a paragraph about their writing processes during the pandemic. The study finds that similar ideas and thoughts were presented in the Nepali and American writers’ creative writing, but there were elements of cultural difference within those similarities. The study also finds that creative writers faced a variety of struggles with their writing processes during the lockdown period, with most of the writers finding it harder to write than before.
Alison Cummins 