I will be presenting my paper "Reading for Alternatives: The Lived Experience of Young Women Who Read Sexuality-Themed Fiction Online" at the CAIS/ACSI 2018 conference held May 30-June 1, 2018, at the University of Regina. It is part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
I will be presenting my paper Reading Difficult Stories: Girls and Sexual Knowledge in Text and Lived Experience Sunday morning on a panel with Dr. Lynne McKechnie and Dr. Melanie Kimball.
For the Progressive Librarian's Guild and FIMS Graduate Resource Center Human Library Event
Human Book Perspective: Youth Need (More) Sexually-Explicit Novels
Young Adult fiction that contains sex has a contentious presence in public libraries. A long and continuing history of challenges to these books has led to systemic issues of censorship and limited access to materials for young users. These limitations inhibit the potential for Young Adult fiction to be utilized as a way of introducing contemporary understandings of sexuality into the lives of youth. Through my interviews with young readers on this topic, I am learning that fiction can be greatly informative to how readers construct and perform their sexual identities, their relationships, and their sexual fantasies.
