Rampage violence narratives : what fictional accounts of school shootings say about the future of America's youth / Kathryn Linder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Linder, Kathryn, 1983-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Youth and violence--United States.

Youth and violence.

Violence in mass media--Social aspects.

Violence in mass media.

Violence in literature.

Social aspects.

School violence.

United States.

School violence--United States.

Young adult literature, American.

Violence in literature--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

135 pages ; 24 cm

Other Title:

What fictional accounts of school shootings say about the future of America's youth

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, [2014]

Summary:

Springfield. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Each school shooting in the United States is followed by a series of questions. Why does this happen? Who are the shooters? How can this be prevented? Along with parents, school officials, media outlets, and scholars, popular culture has also attempted to respond to these questions through a variety of fictional portrayals of rampage violence. Rampage Violence Narratives: What Fictional Accounts of School Shootings Say about the Future of America's Youth offers a detailed look at the state of youth identity in American cultural representations of youth violence through an extended analysis of over forty primary sources of fictional narratives of urban and suburban/rural school violence. Representations of suburban and rural school shootings that are modeled after real-life events serve to shape popular understandings of the relationship between education and American identity, the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and the centrality of white heterosexual masculinity to definitions of social and political success in the United States. Through a series of case studies that offer in-depth examinations of fictional depictions of school shootings in film and literature, it becomes clear that these stories are representative of a larger social narrative regarding the future of the United States. The continuing struggle to understand youth violence is part of an ongoing conversation about what it means to raise future citizens within a cultural moment that views youth through a lens of anxiety rather than optimism. Book jacket.

Contents:

Becoming monstrous : representations of race in fictional narratives of school violence

Heteronormativity and the queer school shooter

Violence, pregnancy, agency : the birth of the female shooter

Fictionalizing youth violence for youth consumption.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 117-128) and index.

ISBN:

9780739187500

0739187503

OCLC:

869527384