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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Young Adult Literature: The Reality On The Page, Chelsea Elmore Nov 2017

Young Adult Literature: The Reality On The Page, Chelsea Elmore

Selected Honors Theses

The genre of young adult literature has grown from a didactic category made of problem novels and taboo themes into a mimetic vision of modern life by way of dystopian fiction. In my thesis, I will discuss the ways in which young adult literature has changed over time and what those changes will mean for its readers and its future as a genre. The first section will analyze three groundbreaking novels that have disrupted the previously established didactic mindset of young adult literature. The publication of such novels (The Catcher in the Rye, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret …


Posthuman Maturation In Amie Kaufman And Jay Kristoff's Illuminae: Re-Conceptualizing The Human For Adolescence And Artificial Intelligence, Gregory Alaric Williams Jun 2017

Posthuman Maturation In Amie Kaufman And Jay Kristoff's Illuminae: Re-Conceptualizing The Human For Adolescence And Artificial Intelligence, Gregory Alaric Williams

Theses and Dissertations

In order to empower adolescents, this thesis examines how the adult conception of the human in humanism disempowers adolescents. This thesis examines this process in Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff's Illuminae, a work of young adult science fiction with non-traditional text structures. In consequence of their disempowerment, the adolescent Kady and artificially intelligent AIDAN impersonate human authorities in order to gain control over their lives. When these attempts fail, Kady and AIDAN transition from a humanist conception of the human, as an isolated self that balances rationality and emotionality, to a posthuman conception of the human, a distributed self …


Race, Place And Young Adulting In Southern And Adolescent Literature, Karly Eaton May 2017

Race, Place And Young Adulting In Southern And Adolescent Literature, Karly Eaton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis applies southern literary theory to contemporary young adult literature (YAL) in order to analyze constructions and representations of the South and adolescence(ts) in the texts discussed. Arguing that Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird acts a master narrative for popular conceptions of southern adolescent identity, this project proposes that Lee’s 2015 novel Go Set a Watchman along with contemporary publications in YAL disrupts the master narrative Mockingbird and Scout Finch present readers. Though analyzing how representations of adolescence(ts) act as a construct used to establish a white-normative narrative about childhood, the second and third chapters discuss how this …


I Hate It, But I Can't Stop: The Romanticization Of Intimate Partner Abuse In Young Adult Retellings Of Wuthering Heights, Brianna R. Zgodinski Jan 2017

I Hate It, But I Can't Stop: The Romanticization Of Intimate Partner Abuse In Young Adult Retellings Of Wuthering Heights, Brianna R. Zgodinski

ETD Archive

In recent years, there has been a trend in young adult adaptations of Wuthering Heights to amend the plot so that Catherine Earnshaw chooses to have a romantic relationship with Heathcliff, when in Bronte’s novel she decides against it. In the following study, I trace the factors that contribute to Catherine’s rejection of Heathcliff as a romantic partner in the original text. Many critics have argued that her motives are primarily Machiavellian since she chooses a suitor with more wealth and familial connections than Heathcliff. These are indeed factors; however, by engaging with contemporary research on adolescent development, I show …


(Re)Mediating The Spirit: Evangelical Christian Young Adult Media, Tamara Watkins Jan 2017

(Re)Mediating The Spirit: Evangelical Christian Young Adult Media, Tamara Watkins

Theses and Dissertations

"We are in the world, but not of the world," a maxim frequently spoken in evangelical Christian culture, provides insight into how these individuals view their relationship with secular culture. They presume to share the same temporal plane with secular culture, but do not participate in it. In this dissertation, I explore whether the division between evangelical Christian culture and secular culture is as clear as this aphorism implies. To facilitate this investigation, I examine media Christian content creators created for an American evangelical Christian young adult audience in the early twenty-first century, specifically focusing on novel-length fiction, comics and …


Relevant And Represented: The Presence Of Special Populations In Trade Books, Jessica Krahnke Jan 2017

Relevant And Represented: The Presence Of Special Populations In Trade Books, Jessica Krahnke

Masters Theses

This study provides insight into the presence of special populations in trade books. Special populations are defined as a population that has been assigned a label for the sake of educational interventions; in this case, special populations refer to thirteen categories of disability as well as English Language Learners. Past winners of the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award were analyzed for the presence of special populations, how special populations were portrayed, and any significant patterns over time regarding the presence of special populations. Results indicated a lack of characters belonging to special populations, characters in a special population most …