Revolutionary America from Concord and Lexington to Ferguson: Folk Transmediation of Historical Storytelling

F andom and fans' cultural production may bring to mind heartthrob singers, blockbuster films, or even homoerotic stories and art about pop culture icons of the past and present. Yet what if the hot new trend in fandom was neither a pouty teenage crooner nor a commercial fictional world built from multimillion-dollar special efffects, but a source as dry as an 800-page history book, and characters with such sexy accoutrements as powdered wigs and wooden teeth? Alexander Hamilton's unlikely ascent as the subject of numerous fan discussions and remix works marks an important and seldom discussed trend not only within fan culture but also in scholarly discussions of transmedia storytelling structures. In his landmark 2006 text Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins argued that transmedia is primarily organized with a corporate, mass-media property at the center and amateur fan works accumulating at the periphery. Although Jenkins persuasively documented the powerful civic and social possibilities of remixing mass culture using this formulation, his work does not fully explore transmedia storyworlds organized around noncorporate centers, including works that reinterpret and remix the lives of historical figures like Alexander Hamilton (Jenkins, Textual Poachers, Convergence Culture, and "Fan Activism"). 1