MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This panel will explore the relationship between various young adult texts featuring girl characters and their larger cultural contexts. Although society tends to view childhood as divorced from sexuality, discourses of sexuality abound in cultural texts and popular media featuring girl characters, while constructions of femininity may buttress or sometimes challenge dominant ideologies of gender. Texts considered include The Fault in Our Stars, the Twilight series, Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series, the Song of Ice and Fire series, Little Women, “The Sandman,” and Tomorrow’s Eve