Beyond Nancy Drew: CMU Professor Explores the Legacy of Girls’ Series Fiction
In a new essay, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University remembers her childhood reading experiences as she reviews a book about fictional young adult heroines like Nancy Drew. The book, Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century, was edited by Luella D’Amico and Emily Hamilton-Honey and published by Rowan & Littlefield. In the essay, Rebekah Fitzsimmons, assistant teaching professor of professional communication in Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, notes that the edited volume is not so much about Nancy Drew as it is about the young detective’s outsized footprint.
The book addresses such topics as publishing trends, research on young adult literature, and other series with strong female protagonists. Fitzsimmons suggests that the collection is well-suited to interdisciplinary scholars because it weaves together essays that combine literary analysis with cultural and material analysis under the broad umbrella of young adult studies. Chapters on the impact of fictional series through a feminist or queer theory lens also examine the physicality of the books and dust jackets, mention the ads that introduced characters to the readers, analyze the structure of larger series in comparison to contemporary adult series, or highlight the marketing techniques and merchandise publishers used to sell books.
Among the book’s common threads are an emphasis on class and how the financial positions of female protagonists affected the types of stories they experienced as well as series’ target markets, and a focus on fashion.
The article, Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century, appears in the International Journal of Young Adult Literature and is written by Fitzsimmons, R (Carnegie Mellon University). Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.
About Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy
The Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy is home to two internationally recognized graduate-level institutions at Carnegie Mellon University: the School of Information Systems and Management and the School of Public Policy and Management. This unique colocation combined with its expertise in analytics set Heinz College apart in the areas of cybersecurity, health care, the future of work, smart cities, and arts & entertainment. In 2016, INFORMS named Heinz College the #1 academic program for Analytics Education. For more information, please visit www.heinz.cmu.edu.