ENG-30108 - Module Specification
School of Humanities
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2024/25

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2024/25

Why do young adults love Young Adult Fiction? Why do we still love those books we read at that age, even when older? Young Adult Fiction, mindful of its borderline status between children's fiction and adult fiction, often focuses on moments of crisis, its characters caught between innocence and ruin, naivety and understanding, or sometimes literally between two worlds. What is it about young adulthood that invites these creative explorations of the threshold, the liminal, or the disastrous? How can we read 'growing up', through these fictions, as not merely gradual development but as a series of shocks? This module will look at a selection of YA Fiction, from the twentieth century to the present day, through the lens of liminality and crisis. Students will suggest, and then vote on, the final text of the year: what do you want to read and discuss?

To introduce students to the ways in which we might read Young Adult Fiction as serious literary works. To contextualise the genre as a relatively new marketed phenomenon, but one with a long literary history. To introduce students to the ways in which crisis (personal, societal, developmental, mental and cultural) has been responded to in literature, as well as how young people in crisis respond to literature.

Intended Learning Outcomes

demonstrate a critical understanding of the history of Young Adult Fiction as both a genre and a marketing term, and to analyse productively how the literary industry responds to markets: 1
analyse the ways Young Adult Fiction responds to crisis (personal, societal, developmental, mental and cultural) and analyse too the effectiveness of that response: 1
demonstrate critical understanding of the changing ways in which society has conceived of 'young adults' through history: 1
demonstrate strong close reading skills and independent research: 1

Study hours

Weeks 1-11 will be a lecture of one hour, and seminar discussion of two hours. In week twelve we will have a one hour lecture to round-up the module.
Independent study hours are toward reading each week's text (57), independent research, preparing for and writing the essay (58), and choosing the final week's text (1).

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment