Transgendered Magic: The Radical Performance of the Young Wizard in YA Literature

  • Jes Battis Simon Fraser University

Abstract

This article is an important addition to scholarship about magic in children's and young adult fantasy fiction. Jes Battis argues that the performance of magic is an interstitial space that simultaneously reinforces gender norms and allows characters to transgress those norms. His ideas, combined with earlier explorations about the roles magic plays in protagonists' coming of age journeys and with subjectivity and identity in fantasy fiction, should provoke thought among speculative fiction scholars.

Author Biography

Jes Battis, Simon Fraser University
Javid Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
Section
Alice's Academy