Risk or Resistance? Troubling Representations of Sexuality in Young Adult Literature

• In Event: Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Conversations in Children’s Literature: Multimodal Texts, Representations of Identity, and Culturally Responsive Teacher Education

Abstract

This paper examines how representations of adolescent sexuality function within the genre of young adult literature (YAL) in order to expand educators’ critical understanding of YAL, and complicate how YAL positions young people with regards to a particular aspect of their lives. Drawing upon Kehily’s (2012) characterizations of “risk” and “resistance” formulations of sexuality within youth studies, this paper posits that portrayals of adolescent sexuality within YAL either message to young readers that sexual thoughts and actions primarily result in dire consequences, or that sexuality can act as a tool for disruption of traditional, and adult, norms. This paper explicates these formulations through several analyses of YAL, and explores implications for critiquing and teaching this genre in secondary classrooms.

Authors

• Mark A. Lewis, Loyola University Maryland

• E. Sybil Durand, Arizona State University