From Harry Potter to Twilight – University of Northampton event to examine young adult fiction

The University of Northampton is hosting an event which will put young adult fiction under the spotlight.

From JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series of vampire novels, young adult (YA) narratives have grown exponentially during the past 20 years.

The one-day symposium, to be held on Saturday 16 December, will investigate the representation of identity constructions within young adult narratives.

The organisers are inviting papers from academics, early career researchers and postgraduate research students for the event, with suggested topics including, but not limited to:

• Representations of racial/ethnic identity in YA narratives
• Representations of gender and/or sexual identity in YA narratives
• The representation of identity in YA narratives in relation to the notion of class
• Interrogations of YA narrative’s treatment of LGBTQIA+ identities
• The effect of trauma on identity in YA narratives
• YA narratives and the notion of the outsider or other
• The relationship between genre and the notion of identity in YA narratives
• The representation of non-binary identities in YA narratives
• The transition from childhood to adulthood in classic (children’s) literature
• The representation of disability in relation to the notion of identity in YA narratives
• The use and function of supernatural identities in YA narratives.

Being an interdisciplinary symposium focused on narrative, papers from across the subject areas of literature, screen studies, history, popular culture and education studies are invited. The symposium welcomes papers on both YA literature and screen adaptations, and from scholars working on earlier periods as well as contemporary culture.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to both sonya.andermahr@northampton.ac.uk and anthony.stepniak2@northampton.ac.uk by 8 October 2017.