"Don't We Deserve Our Own Stories?" Examining Queer-Reader/Queer-Response Connections to LGBTQ+ Young Adult Literature

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Four
  In Roundtable Session: Queering K–12 Curricula and Spaces (Table 5)

Abstract

Through a post-secondary course that challenged students to "read difference differently," participants examined depictions of queer adolescence and childhood in young adult literature and media. Findings examine how, through the responses of queer-identifying students enrolled in the course, themes of collective inheritance and a responsibility to a queer community emerged. Additionally, through affective reader-response, participants engaged in continuous discussions that sough to explore notions of radical queerness and how that radicality functions in texts with youth as their target audiences.

Author

• Kyle P. Smith, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author