Contemporary Adolescent Literature and Culture: The Emergent Adult (Ashgate Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present)

Annotation Offering a wide range of critical perspectives, this volume explores the moral, ideological and literary landscapes in fiction and other cultural productions aimed at young adults. Topics examined are adolescence and the natural world, nationhood and identity, the mapping of sexual awakening onto postcolonial awareness, hybridity and trans-racial romance, transgressive sexuality, the sexually abused adolescent body, music as a code for identity formation, representations of adolescent emotion, and what neuroscience research tells us about young adult readers, writers, and young artists. Throughout, the volume explores the ways writers configure their adolescent protagonists as awkward, alienated, rebellious and unhappy, so that the figure of the young adult becomes a symbol of wider political and societal concerns. Examining in depth significant contemporary novels, including those by Julia Alvarez, Stephenie Meyer, Tamora Pierce, Malorie Blackman and Meg Rosoff, among others, Contemporary Adolescent Literature and Culture illuminates the ways in which the cultural constructions 'adolescent' and 'young adult fiction' share some of society's most painful anxieties and contradictions Offering a range of critical perspectives, this volume explores the moral, ideological & literary landscapes in fiction & other cultural productions aimed at young adults. The contributors illuminate how the cultural constructions 'adolescent' & 'young adult fiction' share some of society's painful anxieties & contradictions. Offering a wide range of critical perspectives, this volume explores the moral, ideological and literary landscapes in fiction and other cultural productions aimed at young adults. Topics examined are adolescence and the natural world, nationhood and identity, the mapping of sexual awakening onto postcolonial awareness, hybridity and trans-racial romance, transgressive sexuality, the sexually abused adolescent body, music as a code for identity formation, representations of adolescent emotion, and what neuroscience research tells us about young adult readers, writers, and young artists Cover 1 Contents 6 Notes on Contributors 8 Introduction: Time of Turmoil 12 1 Adolescence and the Natural World in Young Adult Fiction 28 2 Nationhood, Struggle, and Identity 44 3 Transgression and Transition 58 4 Romance, Dystopia, and the Hybrid Child 72 5 Cross-Dressing and Performativity 88 6 Monstrous Bodies: Writing the Incestuously Abused Adolescent Body 104 7 “The Beat of your Heart”: Music in Young Adult Literature and Culture 122 8 Emotional Connection: Representation of Emotions in Young Adult Literature 138 9 Brain and Behaviour: The Coherence of Teenage Responses to Young Adult Literature 150 Selected Bibliography 166 Index 178 The Emergent Adult edited by Mary Hilton and Maria Nikolajeva. Includes bibliographical references and index.