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Doctors, Drugs, and Danger

Disentangling Discourses of Adolescence/ts in Dreamland (original version) and Dreamland (young adult adaptation) with Critical Comparative Content Analysis

Authors

  • MARK A. SULZER University of Cincinnati
  • LAUREN M. COLLEY University of Cincinnati
  • MICHAEL C. HELLMAN University of Cincinnati
  • TOM LIAM LYNCH The Center for New York City Affairs: The New School

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2376-5275.2021.5.1.1-40

Keywords:

young adult literature, youth adaptation, critical comparative content analysis, critical discourse analysis, implied reader, adolescence

Abstract

 

Scholarship on young adult (YA) literature has long attended to the interrelationship of power, ideology, and narrative. Drawing on this scholarship, we examined a nonfiction text about the opiate epidemic. Using critical comparative content analysis (CCCA), our study examined differences in Dreamland (the original version) and Dreamland (the young adult adaptation) to better understand the changing nature of textual representation when youth become the imagined audience. We found that in the youth adaptation of Dreamland, the implied youth reader is (a) provided less information about the opiate epidemic, which is also delivered in a simpler structure; (b) kept at a greater rhetorical distance from people who might be deemed unsavory, and (c) given a more optimistic view of the opiate epidemic in terms of progress achieved rather than action needed. The youth adaptation of Dreamland, therefore, positions youth as needing simplicity, protection, and a sense of optimism. Our analysis demonstrates how the implied youth reader is a textual byproduct of discourses of adolescence/ts. As youth adaptations continue their prominence in the YA marketplace, scholars and teachers should critically engage how youth are positioned as readers and thinkers by the YA publishing industry. Next steps involve additional studies that focus on the implied (youth) reader through CCCA and studies that involve middle and secondary education students, the real readers of these texts. This study is supplemented by an interview with Sam Quinones, the author of the original version of Dreamland

Author Biographies

MARK A. SULZER, University of Cincinnati

MARK A. SULZER is an Assistant Professor in the areas of Secondary English Education and Literacy & Second Language Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Previous to joining the faculty at the University of Cincinnati, he worked as a high school English language arts teacher and drum line instructor. His research and teaching focus on young adult literature, secondary English teaching methods, digital literacies, dialogic pedagogies, and phenomenology. 

LAUREN M. COLLEY, University of Cincinnati

LAUREN M. COLLEY is an educator, researcher, and mother to three equally amazing, demanding, and unique children. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Integrated Social Studies Education at the University of Cincinnati where her research focuses primarily on how students and teachers use and think about gender and feminism in the social studies curriculum and classroom. Before coming to UC, she worked as an Assistant Professor of Secondary Social Sciences Education at the University of Alabama from 2015-2019 and taught high school social studies in Central Kentucky. 

MICHAEL C. HELLMAN, University of Cincinnati

MICHAEL C. HELLMANN is a doctoral student in the Educational Studies Program at the University of Cincinnati. He studies curriculum and instruction through the lens of teacher agency and teaches middle school English in Kentucky. 

TOM LIAM LYNCH, The Center for New York City Affairs: The New School

TOM LIAM LYNCH is Director of Education Policy at The Center for New York City Affairs at The New School and Editor-in-Chief of the website InsideSchools. A former educational technology professor, English teacher, and school district official for the New York City Department of Education, Lynch has written dozens of articles and presented the world over on educational technologies, online learning, school reform, new literacies, and K-12 computer science. 

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Quinones, S. (2019). Dreamland: The true tale of America's opiate epidemic (a young adult adaptation). New York, NY: Bloomsbury YA.

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Published

2022-04-06

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