CFP: Options for Teaching Young Adult Literature

Options for Teaching Young Adult Literature 

(MLA Options for Teaching Series)
Edited by Mike Cadden, Karen Coats, and Roberta Seelinger Trites

Proposal due: February 15, 2014

 

With this collection of essays, we seek to explore how successful instructors are incorporating Young Adult Literature into their pedagogy, not only in courses wholly dedicated to YA lit, but also in courses that include one or two texts as part of the broader ideological focus. We are especially interested in essays that seek to theorize and problematize themes, issues, and conventions prevalent in the literature.  

Young Adult Literature has gained an unprecedented readership in recent years. While the literary quality of the literature is certainly variable, its range of social issues and aesthetic forms makes it not only pleasurable reading, but also culturally significant. Professors of literary and cultural studies are including young adult literature in their syllabi, and state legislatures, responding to accrediting agencies, are mandating courses in young adult literature for their education candidates. While the scholarship on Young Adult Literature has gained in gravitas and sophistication, there has been no extended exploration of its pedagogy at the college level.

For this volume, then, we seek short essays (10-15 ms pages) that address the pedagogy of young adult literature in the college classroom. Essays may focus on theory, including which theoretical perspectives seem most important for illuminating the concerns of young adult literature and culture and how they can be introduced and explored to best effect; particular approaches, applications, and assignments that you have found successful in your classroom practice at the undergraduate and graduate levels; and/or special issues that arise in the discussion and/or inclusion of young adult texts in the college curriculum, such as multimodality, interdisciplinary crossover, censorship and selection, relevance to the emerging adult, and publishing concerns. The volume is being proposed for the MLA Options for Teaching Series; TOCs of volumes similar in conception to ours can be found at http://www.mla.org/store/CID44/PID332 (Teaching Life Writing Texts, ed. by Fuchs and Howes) and http://www.mla.org/store/CID44/PID438 (Teaching Film, ed. by Fischer and Petro).

350-500 word chapter proposals are due by February 15, 2014. Proposals should be for original works not previously published (including in conference proceedings) and that are not currently under consideration for another edited collection or journal.

Proposals should be submitted to:
Mike Cadden, cadden@missouriwestern.edu
Karen Coats, kscoat2@ilstu.edu
Roberta Seelinger Trites, seeling@ilstu.edu