Degree: Ph.D.
Format: HTML CD-ROM
Description:
This dissertation is a case study applying the methods of cultural studies to the on-line phenomenon called the "Xenaverse," the online spaces devoted to the cult following of the television program "Xena:Warrior Princess." The primary focus of analysis is on constructions of authority in cyberspace. I explore the constellations of social forces in cyberspace that have led to the success of a noncommercial, highly trafficked, dynamic culture, or what some would call a "community." The dissertation is a hypertextual performance in nonlinear form. It is both expressive and paradigmatic, descriptive and analytical, as it seeks to find the cultural logic of an electronically linked society in cyberspace. As such it is being prepared on the Web and on CD-ROM. Its presentation form consists of webbed nodes of hypertext rather than chapters, both reflecting and contributing to the webbed electronic environment in which the Xenaverse exists. Within and between nodes, boundaries overlap and blur while associative and intertextual connections orchestrate a different form of rhetorical persuasion, an argument built through reiteration and gestalt, reinforced through multimedia, challenged as multiple voices in dialogue undermine the traditionally monologic, linear argument in order to create a scholarly opening for new kinds of contingent truths and knowledge-making.
URL: http://www.rpi.edu/~boesec/diss