HASTAC Scholars Stella Fritzell and Hannah Mendro engage in a conversation that weaves threads from the ancient landscapes of Greek mythology to the dynamic world of fan studies.
Their conversation delves into the myriad ways in which narratives from the past and present converge, diverge, and influence our collective and individual understanding of stories. At the heart of their discussion is the recognition of storytelling’s profound capacity to connect us across time, space, and culture. Stella, with her deep roots in Classics, and Hannah, whose expertise lies in fan studies, uncover the liberatory potential of narratives as they discuss the communal aspects of storytelling, and the transformative power of reinterpretation.
Due to the length of Stella and Hannah’s discussion, this dialogue is shared in three parts:
Part I: Myth & Narrative Media
Part II: Narrative Potentials & Positions
Part III: Liberatory Potentials of Storytelling
Stella Fritzell: “Greek myth is interesting because it uses real-world locations… They’re imagined to be engaging with the same places that we interact with on a daily basis, and that bridges the two. It creates a gray area or fuzzy space between the imagined and the real in terms of experience.”
Hannah Mendro: “Fanfiction is writing that emerges out of both a love for a source text and a discourse formed in community with others who share that love… It occurs in subcultural spaces outside of officially sanctioned engagement with media texts, which gives it transgressive potential.”
Their conversation touches upon the intricate dance between myth and landscape, the narrative potential of fanfiction as a genre, and the importance of storytelling as an act of liberation and resistance. The discussion moves fluidly from the specifics of their academic work to broader philosophical reflections on the nature of narrative media, ultimately suggesting that the act of storytelling—whether through the lens of classical myth or fan-created works—holds a powerfully liberatory potential.