BOBC |
Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English BibTeX citation key: Lewis2017a Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: Children’s and young adults’ comics, Stereotypes, Themes and motives Creators: Hill, Lewis Publisher: Routledge (London, New York) Collection: Teaching Comics Through Multiple Lenses. Critical Perspectives |
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Abstract |
In this chapter, however, I am particularly concerned with the representations of adolescence and youth in comics aimed and marketed toward young people. This concern is rooted in a social construction perspective of adolescence, in that the understandings and perspectives on adolescence are as much a product of sociocultural factors and contexts as it is a normed stage of life ruled by psychological and biological changes. In other words, adolescence as constructed is not a naturalized or universal experience that happens to all people; rather, individuals enter, experience, and exit this life stage in divergent and unique ways. For example, a 15-year-old living in the northeastern United States might experience adolescence quite differently than one living in the Southwest. Similarly, an 18-year-old living in India or Russia might experience her teenage years disparately from one living in Japan or Brazil. As with other socially constructed identity markers, context matters, and essentializing characteristics of any member based upon the social or cultural group in which she claims membership is problematic, at best, and prejudicial, at worst. This perspective on adolescence/ts draws upon scholarship in youth studies, and by employing such a perspective, I will demonstrate how the artistic choices of illustrators in their depictions of adolescent characters can both promote, propagate, and disrupt certain assumptions about the beliefs, desires, and practices of youth.
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