Chronic Youth

”[] Elmans critiques of particular media content have value.” (The Journal of American History) “Julia Passanante Elman has written a fine cross-disciplinary study that pulls from the fields of disability studies, popular culture, adolescent literature, queer theory, sociology, and history.” (Children’s Literature Association Quarterly) “Chronic Youth is cultural studies at the top of its gamea whip-smart read that makes groundbreaking contributions across a diversity of disciplines. Its voice is passionate; its case studies are meticulously parsed; and its conclusions more than mere food for thought. It is, in sum, a profound treatise on how and why we worry, police, manufacture, and delude ourselves into the faux crisis that is the teenager in contemporary American cultures.” (Scott Herring, author of Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism) “With rigorous and insightful analysis of popular media representations, Elman shows how disability has increasingly become an all-purpose referent for the & problem years of transition from childhood to adulthood. Bringing disability and femininity into the framework of youth studies in order to address a neglected intersection of experiences, Chronic Youth provides a wonderful example of what disability studies can bring to media studies of the body.” (David T. Mitchell,George Washington University) “Chronic Youth is a gripping read; a fascinating and much welcome addition to studies of disability and youth moving beyond dominating and naturalised tropes of youth-as-becoming and disability-to-be-overcome to instead engage with the politics of & adulthood.” (Disability and Society) “In her rigorous, ambitious, and timely study, Chronic Youth, Julie Passanante Elman powerfully demonstrates how the transformation of the teenager from rebel to patient in the US not only reflects an understanding of the teenager as a problem to be managed and solved but has also participated more broadly in an ongoing normalization of a culture of rehabilitation as & coterminous with good citizenship for everyone.” (Journal of American Studies) “Chronic Youth is a timely study whose meaning message of & growing up will appeal to readers of the journal, and Elmans clear and concise writing will enthrall others as well.” (Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth)

Julie Elman is Assistant Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Missouri.

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