The category of Young Adult fiction, intended for teenage or adolescent readers, has not always existed – and neither has the category of the teenager or adolescent. When did ‘adolescence’ emerge as a life-stage? Where and why was ‘the teenager’ invented? How have novels for young readers helped to produce and construct these categories? This course explores American literature for young people from the early twentieth century to the present. By the end of the semester, participants will have an understanding of the history and development of writing for young adults over the past hundred years, as well as of some of the difficulties in defining the field. Participants will be able to identify different genres of writing for young people, from the novel of ideas to the problem novel and from romance and fantasy to realism; to analyse the ways in which literature for young adults contributes to self-fashioning and world-making; and to consider Young Adult literature as both a literary and a publishing category. Primary texts will include M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002), Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (2018), and Kacen Callendar’s Felix Ever After (2020). Students are encouraged -- but not required -- to read these three novels in advance.

Kurs im HIS-LSF