Gabrielle Owen

Book

A Queer History of Adolescence: Developmental Pasts, Relational Futures. University of Georgia Press, 2020. A Queer History of Adolescence develops a critical, historical, and theoretical framework that brings together questions of queer theory and categories of age, tracking shifts in social conceptions of adolescence from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to reconceive notions of identity and relationality in the present.

Selected Publications

“Adolescence, Blackness, and the Politics of Respectability in Monster and The Hate U Give.” Lion and the Unicorn 43.2 (2019). Forthcoming.

“‘The Absurdities and Crudities of Adolescence’: Nineteenth Century Logics of Development and the Politics of Difference.” Nineteenth Century Studies 31 (2019). Forthcoming.

“Gabrielle Owen on Trans Bathroom Access.” Social Science Matters Blog. Palgrave MacMillan, 2017.

“Adolescence, Trans Phenomena and the Politics of Sexuality Education.” The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. Eds. Mary Lou Rasmussen and Louisa Allen. London: Palgrave, 2017.

“Is the Trans Child a Queer Child? Constructing Normativity in Raising Ryland andI am Jazz: A Family in Transition.” Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 1.1 (2016): 95-109. 

“Toward a Theory of Adolescence: Queer Disruptions in Representations of Adolescent Reading.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 7.1 (2015): 110-134.

“Adolescence.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 1: 1/2 (2014): 22-4. 

“Queer Theory Wrestles the ‘Real’ Child: Impossibility, Identity, and Language in Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 35.3 (2010): 255-73.

Recent Conference Presentations

Session Organizer for “The Ethical Turn in Children’s Literature and Childhood Studies.” Non-guaranteed session sponsored by Children’s Literature Association. Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Toronto, ON, 2021. Forthcoming. 

“Toward a Theory of the Human in #OwnVoices Trans Young Adult Literature.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Seattle, WA, 2020. Forthcoming. 

“Radical Acceptance: Queer Alternatives to the Exceptional Outsider Story.” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference. Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, IN, 2019. 

“Queer Theory in the Age of Alternative Facts.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2019.

“The Ethics of Queer Futurity.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. New York, NY, 2018.

“Intertwining Histories: Catechisms and the Emergence of Eighteenth Century Children’s Literature.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Philadelphia, PA, 2017.  

“Animating Trans Phenomena and Queer Sexualities in Sex is a Funny Word.” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 2016. 

“The Politics of Queer Futurity in Lois Gould’s X: A Fabulous Child’s Story.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. Harvard University, Boston, MA, 2016.

“Rewriting the History of Adolescence: Projects of Classification and the Politics of Identity.” Nineteenth Century Studies Association Annual Conference. Lincoln, NE, 2016.

“Baby X: Queer Futures and the Figure of the Child.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. Seattle, WA, 2015. 

“Gender as Play, Gender as Risk: The Transgender Child in Three Picture Books.” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference. Biloxi, MI, 2013.

“The Transgender Child and the Question of Queer Science.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. Toronto, ON, University of Toronto, 2013.

“Queer Politics and the Logic of Adolescence.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. Providence, RI, Brown University, 2012.

Courses regularly taught

Introduction to Children’s Literature

Introduction to Young Adult Literature

LGBTQ Literature & Film 

Queer Theory