Consuming the Readerly Imagination: Youth Engagement With Transmediated and Branded Young Adult Literature

• In Event: Roundtable Session 48
  In Roundtable Session: Writing and Literacies SIG Roundtable 6. Game On: Youth Participation and Identity in Video Games, Popular Literature, and Self-Expression

Abstract

The past two decades have borne a dramatic upsurge in young adult literature that is transmediated and commercially “branded” – that is, a novel is only one product of many (including print, media and material texts) sold under a single brand name (Sekeres, 2009). Using intersectional feminist analysis, this paper examines how adolescents who read branded young adult literature and purchase its associated products read between and across these texts, exploring the possibilities of individual and communal agency that may be involved in their readerly transactions. Findings suggest that as adolescents navigate the multiple and diverse texts that are part of their lived worlds, they are negotiating and (re)constructing identities, taking critical positions, and reimagining their possibilities for the future.

Author

• Nora Peterman, University of Pennsylvania