Amy L. Montz – författare

Responding to the increasingly powerful presence of dystopian literature for young adults, this volume focuses on novels featuring a female protagonist who contends with societal and governmental threats at the same time that she is navigating the treacherous waters of young adulthood. The contributors relate the liminal nature of the female protagonist to liminality as a unifying feature of dystopian literature, literature for and about young women, and cultural expectations of adolescent womanhood. Divided into three sections, the collection investigates cultural assumptions and expectations of adolescent women, considers the various means of resistance and rebellion made available to and explored by female protagonists, and examines how the adolescent female protagonist is situated with respect to the groups and environments that surround her. In a series of thought-provoking essays on a wide range of writers that includes Libba Bray, Scott Westerfeld, Tahereh Mafi, Veronica Roth, Marissa Meyer, Ally Condie, and Suzanne Collins, the collection makes a convincing case for how this rebellious figure interrogates the competing constructions of adolescent womanhood in late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century culture.

Responding to the increasingly powerful presence of dystopian literature for young adults, this volume focuses on novels featuring a female protagonist who contends with societal and governmental threats at the same time that she is navigating the treacherous waters of young adulthood. The contributors relate the liminal nature of the female protagonist to liminality as a unifying feature of dystopian literature, literature for and about young women, and cultural expectations of adolescent womanhood. Divided into three sections, the collection investigates cultural assumptions and expectations of adolescent women, considers the various means of resistance and rebellion made available to and explored by female protagonists, and examines how the adolescent female protagonist is situated with respect to the groups and environments that surround her. In a series of thought-provoking essays on a wide range of writers that includes Libba Bray, Scott Westerfeld, Tahereh Mafi, Veronica Roth, Marissa Meyer, Ally Condie, and Suzanne Collins, the collection makes a convincing case for how this rebellious figure interrogates the competing constructions of adolescent womanhood in late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century culture.

Adaptation in Young Adult Novels argues that adapting classic and canonical literature and historical places engages young adult readers with their cultural past and encourages them to see how that past can be rewritten. The textual afterlives of classic texts raise questions for new readers: What can be changed? What benefits from change? How can you, too, be agents of change?The contributors to this volume draw on a wide range of contemporary novels – from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series and Megan Shepherd's Madman's Daughter trilogy to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones – adapted from mythology, fairy tales, historical places, and the literary classics of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. Unpacking the new perspectives and critiques of gender, sexuality, and the cultural values of adolescents inherent to each adaptation, the essays in this volume make the case that literary adaptations are just as valuable as original works and demonstrate how the texts studied empower young readers to become more culturally, historically, and socially aware through the lens of literary diversity.

Adaptation in Young Adult Novels argues that adapting classic and canonical literature and historical places engages young adult readers with their cultural past and encourages them to see how that past can be rewritten. The textual afterlives of classic texts raise questions for new readers: What can be changed? What benefits from change? How can you, too, be agents of change?The contributors to this volume draw on a wide range of contemporary novels – from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series and Megan Shepherd's Madman's Daughter trilogy to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones – adapted from mythology, fairy tales, historical places, and the literary classics of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. Unpacking the new perspectives and critiques of gender, sexuality, and the cultural values of adolescents inherent to each adaptation, the essays in this volume make the case that literary adaptations are just as valuable as original works and demonstrate how the texts studied empower young readers to become more culturally, historically, and socially aware through the lens of literary diversity.

Illuminates the interplay of gender, fashion, and nationalism in Victorian literature and culture.Dressing for England argues that women's interest in fashionable clothing—in dress that appealed to a sophisticated, cultured, and continental society—was viewed in two ways in nineteenth-century England: as a superficial feminine habit, on the one hand, and, on the other, as a dangerous tool women used to control how they were perceived. Dress could be a means of not only conveying extravagance or beauty but also influencing society at home and expressing Englishness aboard. Victorian women turned the world of fashion into an arena of feminine power. Reading well-known novels by Gaskell, Thackeray, and Eliot alongside clothing and cultural ephemera, Dressing for England shows how evolving fashions—shawls, crinolines, turbans, corsets, hats—reflected shifting notions of class, gender, and Empire and enabled women to shape both their own identities and national consciousness.