Examining Adolescence and Agency in the Midst of International Crisis: Pandemics, Pandemonium, and Zombie Young Adult Literature

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-22 brought an abundance of changes to secondary education as students transitioned across the country to virtual and hybrid learning contexts. Teachers flexed quickly and frequently to support the learning that students acquired in these new, digital spaces even as school, district, and state demands on teaching increased. The English/Language Arts classroom pivoted along with others as teachers sought out digital reading and writing resources for students to engage in. In the midst of a national crisis, a metaphorical monster that sought to destroy, much like Beowulf ’s dragon did, adolescent readers, despite the discourses of learning loss, turned to the monsters of zombie young adult literature (ZYAL) to cope with fear and tragedy around them. They did so because of a common genre feature where adolescent protagonists, much like their adult counterparts, deal with the horrors of their real world through literature when given a sense of power and agency both in the classroom and outside of it. Thus, popular culture becomes a tool for teachers and students to grapple with the great difficulties of life while examining it through high interest literature.