Maria Rutkowska is a PhD Candidate at the Jagiellonian University (Poland). She received her BA in Theory of Literature at the JU (Faculty of Polish Studies) and earned her MA degree in Cultural Studies with the thesis “Imagined romances, unfulfilled fantasies. Introduction to fans’ shipping culture.” Her current research has an interdisciplinary focus on fan studies, new media, and popular culture studies. She teaches a course called “Designing New Media,” which focuses on modes and frameworks of interpretation of cultural texts native to an online environment. She’s interested in participatory and transformative cultures as well as in the meaning-making practices and negotiations of discourse within online communities.
She discovered BTS by accident on YouTube™ and has been an ARMY ever since September, 2018. She never thought a group of strangers from the other side of the world could have such a significant and positive impact on her life. She found a happy home within their music and the community of ARMY.