1. Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures
  2. School of Languages, Cultures and Societies
  3. Masters
  4. East Asian Studies
  5. MA by Research case studies

MA by Research case studies

Rebecca Iszatt. Thesis: Paratextuality in Thai literature

Woman's hands holding smartphone in lap

MA by Research (2015)

Upon completing my BA English & Thai & Southeast Asian Studies in 2014, I worked at a school in London for a year before starting my MA by Research degree in 2015. The ESCR’s ‘1+3 Studentship Award’ enabled my return to Leeds for the MA (1) and will support my PhD here too (+3), which I will complete in 2019.

Thesis title: 'Facebook is the Frame: Effects of Social Media on Contemporary Thai Literature and Authorship'

Abstract: Since its 1987 inception, Gérard Genette’s theory of paratextuality has seen no dramatic structural updates – until the advent of digital culture. Paratextuality, a typology of the framing elements that bring literary texts to life, is being completely redefined by social media, specifically Facebook.

Introducing an emerging paratextual field, which I label the ‘Social Media Epitext’, my MA by Research thesis considers Facebook to be the frame by/through which contemporary Thai authors are making their work known to the public. It explores the ways that three contemporary Thai authors and their associated publishing houses are delivering their work – metaphorically and literally – to their readerships online. It asks: how do authors make meaning when they use Facebook, and how is the meaning they make paratextual in nature? The specific affordances of social media, such as multimodal communication and interactivity, imbues paratextuality with a new dynamism.

Given paratextuality’s duty to bring texts to life in the public sphere, my thesis traces the existential conflict stirred up in authors as they must navigate the public/private dichotomy online. Drawing upon the concept of traditional Thai collectivist (non-)privacy alongside contemporary Western theories of the public-private hybrids that social media platforms construct, I explore a multitude of theoretical and ideological avenues. The data drawn upon is from interviews taking place in 2016 with three contemporary Thai authors – Chart Korbjitti, Uthis Haemamool, and Jirat Prasertsup – and a publishing house at the forefront of Thai literary culture, Salmon Books. Facebook data is also analysed.