Abstract: This essay describes a method of using folk culture to understand mass culture, in an attempt to reconcile mass media and folklore studies and to show the applications of both in current, North American society. Concentrating on the phenomenon of fanfiction, this essay focuses on issues such as the culture industry, authorship, legitimacy, transience, the current copyright culture, and the folk process in a modern context. As a specific example, the essay follows the history of a human-interest folklore article, "Myths Over Miami," as it travels through and is changed by the modern folk process. This essay argues that the changes made to the article, and the methods by which those changes are made, are universal, can be described using a folk studies rubric, and are legitimate and fundamental to the development of North American culture as a whole.

Katherine Macdonald is a 2005 graduate of Bryn Mawr College. This essay is a web- published version of her thesis, written for the Bryn Mawr English Department; her advisor and first reader was Professor Jonathan Kahana -- her second reader was Professor Joseph Kramer.