123041 PS PS Literary Studies (2023S)

According to the WHO, on average, one in five adolescents worldwide was already battling a serious mental health condition before 2020. With COVID-19 posing an unforeseen challenge to most people’s mental well-being, it is not surprising that several studies around the globe now indicate a further decline in mental health among youth, a decline that frequently goes unnoticed and untreated for years, in part because mental illness still has a great deal of stigma attached to it. Parallel to these developments, a trend can be observed in which more and more young adult literature that explicitly addresses mental illness is hitting shelves and topping bestseller lists.
Over the course of this proseminar students will discuss and critically engage with the following key questions and concepts:

- What is mental health? / What is mental illness? – In how far are these definitions fixed or arbitrarily constructed?
- How can the depiction of mental illness in popular culture influence the way we (mis)understand mental illness and treat those among us with mental health issues?
- How can mental health themed young adult literature act as a counternarrative to the stigmatization of mental illness in our society?
- In which ways do questions of race, gender, class and sexuality intersect with mental health and in how far is(n’t) this intersectionality represented in YAL?

Within the context of its thematic focus, this proseminar is also designed to guide students along the process of academic writing. At the end of this course students will have learned how to carve out a research topic, formulate a thesis/research question, find & effectively utilize secondary literature, adhere to the rules of good scientific practice, and ultimately, how to structure and write a term paper.