Popular Fictions: Young Adult Literature

“It is now my favourite book of all time, but then again, I always think that, until I read another book.”

– Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Course Description: This course considers the creation, marketing, and consumption of popular film and fiction with a particular focus on the category of Young Adult (YA) fiction. By considering a collection of YA narratives in a variety of genres and media, students will develop an understanding of the category of YA while also delving into the ways in which these popular narratives are marketed to and received by their main audience. Students will engage directly with six key YA narratives as well as related transmedia, marketing, and fan content with a goal of identifying and engaging with a range of genres conventions, tropes, and themes particular to YA. By the end of the course, students will be able to evaluate and identify YA narratives and recognize their relation to larger social, political, cultural., and literary discourses.

Course Evaluation:

  • Participation                                                 20%                
  • Critical Reviews                                            30%             
  • BookTok Post                                    20%                        
  • Final Argument                                             30%    

Weekly Schedule & Readings:

WEEK 1 – Introduction: What is Young Adult Fiction?

  •  Cadden, Mike, “The Irony of Narration in the Young Adult Novel,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3, 2000.

WEEK 2 – Transmedia Narratives

Online Video Fiction:

Secondary Resource: Jandl, Silke, “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Adapting Jane Austen in the Internet Age,” AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 40, no 1/2, 2015, pp. 167-196. 

WEEK 3 – Coming-of-Age and the YA Narrator

Novel:

  • Chbosky, Stephen, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Pocket Books, 1999.

Secondary Resource: McClung, Paula, “Shedding Some Light on the Darkness of Teen Lit,” School Library Monthly, vol. 29, no. 3, 2012, pp. 35-36.  

WEEK 4 – Apocalyptic Futures

Film:

  • Ross, Gary, dir., The Hunger Games, 2012 (approx.. 140mins)

Secondary Resource: Angelo, Megan, “RIP, YA: Why Women Are Over Movie Franchises Like Divergent and Hunger Games,” Glamour, 18 March 2016, https://www.glamour.com/story/female-driven-action-franchise

WEEK 5 – Marketing and Fan Engagement

  • Garcia, Antero and Marcelle Haddix. “The Revolution Starts with Rue,” In The Politics of Panem: Challenging Genres, edited by Sean P Connors, Sense Publishers, 2014, pp. 203-217.  

Various Marketing & Fan Materials:

WEEK 6 – #OwnVoices

Short Story Collection:

Secondary Resource:

WEEK 7 – #WeNeedDiverseVoices

Short Story Collection:

Secondary Resource: Grochowski, Sara, “YA Anthologies Bring Diverse Voices Together,” Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 18, 2021, pp. 21

WEEK 8 – Mystery

TV Series:

  • CBS, Nancy Drew, 2019-2023 (watch the first 3 episodes; approx.. 120mins) [NOTE: this narrative can be switched with the Nancy Drew movie (2007) for accessibility reasons]

Secondary Resource: Baugher, Lacy, “How Nancy Drew’s Embrace of Horror Makes This Adaptation Stand Out,” SyFy, 1 October 2020, https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/how-nancy-drews-embrace-of-horror-makes-this-adaptation-stand-out NOTE: Watch the episodes before reading this article.  

WEEK 9 – Reconciling the Girl Sleuth

Various Games and Other Paratext:

WEEK 10 – Romance

Graphic Novel:

Secondary Resource:

WEEK 11 – YA and the Queer Gaze

  •  Allen, Amanda K, “Young Adult Romance,” in The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction edited by Jayashree Kamblé, Eric Murphy Selinger, and Hsu-Ming Teo, Routledge, 2021, pp. 168-190. 

Various Paratext:

Netflix, “Heartstopper | Official Trailer | Netflix,” YouTube, 13 April 2022, https://youtu.be/FrK4xPy4ahg?si=QQkpqLiuZ2GBxE6C

WEEK 12 – Wrap-Up: What is YA?

Assignment Descriptions:

Participation                                                 20%                 Ongoing (due in class)

            To Submit:

  • Weekly participation in group discussions
  • Complete group Whiteboard templates (one per narrative content per group)

General Assignment Description:

Every class we will break off into smaller groups to discuss the streaming series together. Students are responsible for watching the required episodes (see schedule above) and coming to class prepared to discuss the shows with their colleagues. 

To capture some of the elements of these discussions, each group will be provided with a Whiteboard template at the beginning of a new series/section. The template will include room to answer specific questions as well as add your own discussions that will go above and beyond these general questions intended to get you started. 

Participation is graded on contributing to these small group discussions, Whiteboard/brainstorm documents, and general participation in class. Please remember to respect all members of the group – you don’t have to agree, but I do ask that you respect each other and bring issues to me. 

Critical Reviews                    30%                 Due 1 week after each narrative content is discussed

            To Submit:

  • One written reflection per narrative content (for a total of 6).
  • A reflection on the content as a whole and in relation to the topic(s) under discussion.

General Assignment Description:

This is your opportunity to tell me what you think of each narrative! Each critical reflection should include evidence from the content to support your argument rather than being solely an opinion-based response with no clear footing for your opinion. 

Students will submit a critical reflection one week after the class has started our discussion of the content. The reflection should be no more than 500 words. We will discuss these assignments throughout the semester.

BookTok Post                                    20%                 Due July 17, 2025

            To Submit:

  • One video reflection on a YA book of your choice.
  • A reflection on the content as a whole in the style of a BookTok/Bookstagram video for an audience interested in YA novels (young readers, teachers, librarians, etc.)..

General Assignment Description:

Select a YA book of your own preference to review. Provide a video review in the style of BookTok for an appropriate audience that reviews the book and provides relevant information. You don’t have to post this video to social media.  

Students will submit a video (or link to the video from OneDrive) on Quercus. The BookTok review should be between 1 and 6 minutes long. We will discuss this assignment more thoroughly, including examples, before the submission date.

Final Argument                                            30%                 Due August 10, 2025  

May be written, audio-visual, narrated slide deck, etc.    

To Submit:

  • Argumentative Essay in the form of your choosing (video essay, slide deck with voice over, written, podcast, etc) — submit a link to your content if the file is too large to upload
  • Citations for any content you reference

To Do:

  1. Consider a general idea related to young adult narratives. Begin brainstorming arguments around this general idea that interest you.
  2. Review the course content and review other related materials around your general idea. The extra course content listed for each week is a great place to start looking for relevant sources of information. Extra content mentioned in lecture will also be useful to you here. You may want to consider searching the library and various library databases to help you support and narrow your general idea into a cohesive argument.
    1. This is when the concept of a “case study” will help you develop your thesis. 
    2. Choose your case study — often a particular YA novel/film/other story, but it could also be an author, series, fan adaptation, or something else.
    3. Develop a main argument related to that case study — consider some of the topics we’ve discussed in class. Perhaps the YA narrative breaks genre conventions in some unexpected way, for example.
  3. Develop a thesis for your argument. What is the main idea that you want to get across? How can you prove your argument?
    1. If you are arguing that a particular YA narrative breaks genre conventions, for example, then your “proof” of this argument will come in the form of moments in the narrative when the genre conventions are fluid or different from what would be expected. 
    2. Think about the course topics we’ve covered as ways to categorize your argument and proofs: knowing that something breaks genre conventions, means understanding those conventions in the first place.
  4. Prepare your argument! You can present your argument however you wish: video essay, website, slide deck with voice over, manga/comic-form, written essay, etc.
    1. Be sure to include citations for any content you referenced in your argument, including any novels, films, or shows you mention. This can be provided as a separate document, in the descriptions of a video, in a final slide, etc. 
  5. Upload the Assignment. For content that is too large to upload or that is hosted elsewhere (YouTube, Prezi, etc.), please provide a link that I can access (check the permissions before submitting). 

General Assignment Description:

            This is an argumentative “essay” that critically engages with current issues related to YA narratives and the concepts discussed in this course. For this argument I’m asking you to develop a case study that will help you illustrate a specific topic and argument. Your case study could be a specific novel, series or film, fandom, etc. Your essay will draw on at least one of the concepts from one of the weeks of this course such as:

Apocalyptic YA; coming-of-age narratives; masculinities; YA and adaptation; gender and YA; #OwnVoices and YA; the queer gaze; romance and YA; YA and marketing; fan engagement and YA.

            More specific information regarding this assignment will be discussed in lecture and provided as we get closer to the due date. 

Ways to think about a case study argument:

Consider your overall argument first, then your case study as a way to explore that argument. 

In the example below, you can see the overall argument; the case study; and the theoretical/important concepts. 

If you wanted to talk about adaptations of Pride and Prejudice in Young Adult content, for example, you could use a film and book pair like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and then you could discuss it in terms of YA and adaptation and probably bring in the marketing to discuss the ways the studio really played with the reputation of the main actress as a popular star of YA film, in combination with Bookstagram and various interactive online spaces, to attract a mass audience of YA fans to theatres.