Abstract
While young adult (YA) novels have always incorporated political themes, a new surge of YA novels published since 2017 depict young characters engaging in explicit political participation within the United States. These novels offer an image of young girls’ political engagement that addresses compelling questions about youth political involvement from within the political science discipline, as well as comprise a new, developing subgenre of YA fiction, which I define as contemporary political YA fiction. My study seeks to investigate representations of young girls’ political participation in contemporary political YA novels, as well as how these novels reflect what political science scholars know about youth political participation in the United States. I develop a set of expectations for the representations of girls as political activists in these YA novels, then conduct a literary analysis of five novels belonging to the contemporary political YA subgenre. My analysis combines close-reading and distant-reading techniques to examine the individual novels alongside the subgenre of contemporary political YA as its own entity. I find that my expectations were mostly affirmed in all five YA novels, suggesting that contemporary political YA tends to reflect young girls’ political participatory styles. However, where my expectations were not affirmed, the novels offered new explanations or contributing factors that enhance our understanding of young girls’ political actions. I conclude this study with suggestions for future research in both the YA fiction genre and young girls’ political participation based on my observations.
Advisor
Bos, Angela
Second Advisor
Cowing, Jessica
Department
English; Political Science
Recommended Citation
McWilliams, Carly, "What Girls Do: Girls' Political Participation Reflected In Contemporary Young Adult Literature" (2022). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 10048.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/10048
Disciplines
American Politics | Children's and Young Adult Literature | English Language and Literature | Political Science
Keywords
political participation, youth political participation, young adult literature, literary analysis, activism, women in politics, role models, gender gap, representation, women and politics, intersectionality
Publication Date
2022
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis
© Copyright 2022 Carly McWilliams