Yng Adlt Lit:Yesterday-Today

Catalog description

This course will expose students to quality young adult literature by examining the appropriateness of young adult literature as an engaging genre through a thematic approach. Literature studied will address issues of particular concern to adolescents: achieving personal identity, puberty and sexual awareness, interpersonal relationships, cross-generational conflicts, answering spritiual questions, and increasing social and political awareness. Using various approvaches to reading adolescent literature, including reader response criticism, close reading strategies, and contemporary critical theories, students will investigate multiculturalism, globalism, and diverse audiences and subject matter, as well as recent history of the cultural construction fo the "teenager." Genres studied will include young adult and children's fiction, biography, graphic novel poetry, memoir, short story, and information/nonfiction books. (Cross-listed with ENGL-218). Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.