Hannah Doermann

Professional Bio

Hannah Doermann is a teacher and scholar of youth media and gender studies. Her research on Young Adult literature, girls' studies, and online communities has been published and is forthcoming in The Lion and the Unicorn, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, and Girlhood Studies. Her current book project, Girls Will Be Girls: Reimagining Girlhood in Young Adult Literature, explores how Young Adult books about girlhood challenge models of childhood and adolescence that sustain the subjugation of girls. This book project proposes that Young Adult literature reimagines girlhood not as a stage of subject formation—i.e., the precursor to womanhood—but as a self-contained subject position. YA's theorizations of age and girlhood, this book argues, are fundamental for understanding the subversive power of Young Adult literature that contemporary efforts to ban or restrict children's access to reading materials attempt to suppress.