A Hood Project is an experiment in teaching, reading, and learning about Children and Young Adult (in) Literature in 21st century America where issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, and mental health shape and are shaped by our understanding of the always elusive category, adolescence. From Sandyhook to Michael Brown, America exerts considerable energy protecting itself from the teenager, young adult, or adolescent even (if not by way of) it’s passionate pleas for greater protection of our youth. Teenagers are terrifying, and when that teenager is black or Muslim or gay or poor (or fill in any combination of a non-normative identity marker)–that teenager is monstrous.
In this project we try to consider the following questions:
1) In what ways do we imagine adolescence as monstrous and what are the effects of those imaginings?
2) How does the way we imagine race, gender, class, and other markers compound that monstrosity?
3) How does the monstrosity of adolescence in turn shape our understanding of race, gender, class, and marginalized identity markers?
4) Might there be some generative possibilities which can emerge from those said to be monsters and ways of being said to be monstrous?
5) How can the study and creation of literature and other arts help us to think through the above questions and others surrounding the way we regard youth, development, and marginalized peoples in the U.S?
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