Topic Proposal -- Lindsey Dawkins

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I plan to do my research paper on the depiction of romance in YA lit, and why teens love to read it. I know that sex sells, but I would like to delve deeper into what that means when applied to young adult literature. I think there is an opportunity to include the issue of censorship with this topic, as romantic relationships can be somewhat controversial to some. I would also like to explore the idea of fan-fiction. I know teens are into writing their own "canons" and "shipping" their favorite characters, and oftentimes those fan fictions become a way to express certain types of relationships that aren't necessarily depicted in the literature. Some questions to explore this topic are:

1. What are the implications of young love in literature?
2. In terms of adolescent development, where does "love" fit in? Does this depend at all on gender?
3. What kind of effect does it have that adults are writing about two young people in a romantic relationship? Does that change the way the relationship is depicted and make it less (or more) realistic?
4. Why do some teens like to write fan-fiction?
5. Is there a need for more diversity in young adult literature?
6. Should love even be in YA lit at all? Is it "too mature" or "too heavy"?

Some texts that I think are very representative of young adult relationships are the Divergent series, The Mortal Instrument series, and Harry Potter. Harry Potter is one of those series that includes a romantic relationship that comes out of nowhere, and it also has tons of other fan-fiction stories that have been written that feature many different characters together. My initial claim is that young adults are looking for a model of love, and are just beginning to explore topics related to love, which is why they are drawn to novels that depict it. I'm not so much interested in the influence of novels on how teenagers view love, because I think it's certainly not just novels that influence adolescents (Tv, movies, music, social media, all play a HUGE role in that, too). I'm more interested in why adolescents are drawn to these relationships, and why they sometimes feel the need to create other relationships based on those characters. My hunch is that it has a lot to do with development and identity exploration.

I plan to use the MLA International Bibliography to begin research on the relationships in the individual book series. I will use Psychological Databases in the library database to look up things about development and love and adolescence, just to establish a background and framework for my argument. I suspect I will have trouble finding anything on fan-fiction, but it's possible some research or report has been done on the fan created art.

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 27, 2017 at 8:16 AM

    Lindsey I absolutely LOVE your topic and would honestly even love to read your paper once finished! I think it's so important how romance is depicted in young adult literature in today's society. Now more than ever, we have to be extremely careful in what we feed the next generation within books and movies. I believe teens have this perfect idea of love that is expressed through media that builds their expectations and leaves them empty and broken in the end. I think the books you chose are great and will really help you discuss your topic with examples of romance in literature!

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