Department of English

Bad choice. Those two words go with adolescence like, well, social media goes with real life. (Think about that statement for a moment.) The adolescent life, like the central path of almost any story, is about wanting something, probably desperately. It’s about the countless and seemingly insurmountable obstacles that get in the way. About the choices made from indoctrination, experience, or lessons learned. About happily-ever-after or exit-followed-by-a-bear. Penn’s own Dr. Frances Jensen, neurologist and expert on the adolescent brain, tells us our decision-making capability doesn’t go fully “online” until our mid-twenties. It’s no accident, then, that youth stands as metaphor for irresponsibility, recklessness, resistance. But then, what about Resistance? Influence? Necessary flux? It’s a metaphor for those, too. 

In this course, we will examine where adolescence and society cross, clash, mesh. Because the impact goes both ways. In a sense, we will stand on the median strip of a crazy road, looking in one direction at what teenagers do to society, and in the other, what society does to them. We will read watch, and listen across era and genre, including works by such figures as Jane Austen and Taylor Swift; Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Carmen Maria Machado. Phillis Wheatley. Jason Reynolds. Suzanne Collins, Kendrick Lamar, Ocean Vuong. We will explore media of the long adolescence through two-and-a-half centuries: prose narrative to graphic novel to television and more, with forays into YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Assignments include several short essays, one longer final paper, weekly quick responses, and a presentation on your literary passion. Ready for a term of high drama, passion, frenemies…who might literally be deadly? Yes or no; you choose.