A new book co-authored by an associate professor of English education in the College of Education and Health Professions examines the concept of neoliberalism and its manifestations in young adult literature.

In Neoliberalism and Young Adult Fiction: Exceptionalism, Exploitation, and Erasure, Sean P. Connors teams up with Roberta Seelinger Trites, Distinguished Professor of English emerita at Illinois State University, to explore how young adult literature naturalizes neoliberalism in positioning teenagers as self-enclosed, competitive individuals.

As the book progresses, readers will explore neoliberalism's connections to racism, environmental degradation, extreme individualism and youth activism in young adult literature.

Connors hopes readers will come away from the book with a refined understanding of the ways neoliberalism influences competition in everyday life and a newfound appreciation for the cultural work that young adult literature engages in.

"Today, people are expected to compete for jobs, educational opportunities for their children, access to resources, even medical care," he said. "Beyond being exhausting, this never-ending cycle of competition atomizes society. When we only ever focus on our own self-interests or the interests of those peoples closest to us, it becomes much harder to recognize our shared interests, let alone work toward them together."

The book has been a decade in the making for Connors and Seelinger Trites.

The idea spawned from a simple book recommendation Connors wanted to make for a young adult dystopian novel he felt resisted popular trends that appeared in the genre at the time. That book recommendation led to the two exchanging ideas and the publishing of several scholarly articles on the topic. Eventually, Connors and Seelinger Trites realized the issue was much larger in scope than first anticipated, and they set out to combine their work into a book.

"Collaborating with Roberta was nothing short of a dream. Not only is she an accomplished scholar but our conversations always challenge me to become a more careful reader, writer and thinker," Connors said. "To see our book published a decade later is enormously gratifying."

The book is currently available for purchase through the University Press of Mississippi website.