Texts of Desire

Popular fiction continues to be the object of both academic and political interest as educators seek to understand the role literacy plays in constructing the gender, class, race, ethnic, age, sexual and national subjectivites of youth. This book focuses on the role of teen romance fiction in the construction and reconstruction of femininity internationally. Developed in the United States amid the conservative political restoration of Reganism, teen romance fiction condenses and articulates the long standing fears and resentments of conservative groups regarding feminism and women's growing independence and political power. Drawing on multidisciplinary approaches from cultural studies and feminist theories, psychoanalysis, semiotics, reader research, and critical theory, these essays signal the complexity of the world wide teen romance novel phenomenon and the political character of women's literacy. The book is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students of literacy, women's studies, sociology of education and cultural studies.