On 7 July, 2020, The YA Studies Association (YASA) announced its first Executive Board, consisting of President Dr. Leah Phillips, Vice-President Emily Corbett, Secretary-Treasurer Jennifer Gouck, Membership Manager Dr. Rebekah Fitzsimmons, and Social Media Coordinator Emily Booth. In this post celebrating their first anniversary, the Executive Board looks back on the last year–and forwards, at their future goals for YASA.
What has been your highlight in being involved in YASA for the last year?
Leah: I initially thought ‘conference’ — many great things came from that event. However, I think my biggest highlight has been witnessing YASA grow, especially as we enter our second year. There is much planned, and I can’t wait for the AGM in November. Relatedly, YASA has also given me the chance to learn from so very many people, especially the Reading Group members, willing participants in a few projects, and YASA’s inaugural Board. Thank you all. And, from YASA’s membership — y’all are the real rockstars, and you’re doing amazing, incredible, needed things, and I thank you too.
Emily C.: By being involved in the conference, the Theory Reading Group, the Fiction Reading Group, and even the informal chats that go on in our Slack space, I am connected with a community of YA scholars, practitioners, and fellow enthusiasts. YASA has facilitated so many wonderful, dynamic, and inspiring conversations that I have been fortunate enough to be part of over the last year. It’s cheesy as anything, but any one of those conversations could very easily be counted as my highlight.
Jennie: The conference was a huge highlight for me. I’ve never been a part of something like that from the early stages and I loved the model of pre-recorded papers and live-but-recorded roundtable discussions that allowed for a kind of flexibility that in-person conferences just don’t have. I think it was a real boost for the community, particularly given the pandemic, to be able to safely hear all the wonderful scholarship going on in the field of YA studies from all around the world. Tied with the conference is the Fiction Book Club. I’ve really enjoyed our bi-monthly chats and getting to read new YA titles I wouldn’t otherwise have picked up. The conversations have been both great fun and thought-provoking. I can’t wait for the months and years ahead!
Rebekah: I’ve really enjoyed all of my work with YASA, but I have to say that the conference was really a highlight in the midst of a very difficult time. It was so carefully planned (largely by others on the exec board who deserve full credit!) and the brilliant discussions coming out of the panelists and attendees was inspiring. It was an honor to be able to soak in so much brilliance from so many scholars from my own home!
Emily B.: Meeting so many people! By this I mean the wonderful Executive Board I’m working with, but also the broader YA community that exists on social media. Before YASA, I was only discovering people through coincidental connections online or chance meetings at a conference. With YASA, we now have this central hub that people are able to gather around and find each other through. In particular, I think our member’s directory on our website is a fantastic resource where people can set up their profile and discover not just “who is working in YA”, but the specific research or practice areas people are in.
What motivates your work with YASA?
Rebekah: Seeing people make connections – whether it is linking up new YA scholars via Twitter conversations or listening to members of the Fiction Book Club realize they are studying overlapping texts. It is so great to see the lines of the network fill in and tighten. I just know we are going to see some incredible collaborations coming out of these connections, not to mention friendships! I absolutely love the feeling of cooperation and mutual admiration we all have for one another and exceptional work being done by our members.
Emily B.: I had considerable difficulty finding a supervisor who would support my research into YA. Once I started my research in 2016, I felt really alone because I didn’t know that many people who were studying YA; especially not in my areas of interest. I don’t want that to be the case for any other scholars coming up after me. I want a strong international network that people can easily find and join in on. So building up this space on social media is part of my job, but it’s also personally important to me.
Jennie: YA studies, as we all know, is an exciting and emerging field. For too long, though, it hasn’t had its own space to flourish and grow, often being conflated with our sister area of study, Children’s Literature. For me, YASA is playing a key role in creating that space. I also love that YASA is a community and hub for YA studies; in my own institution, I’m the only scholar working in this area. Knowing that there is now a dedicated platform for people like me makes all the hard work worthwhile!
Leah: YASA was my response to feeling that YA was overlooked in academia; it’s still too often conflated with children’s literature in damaging ways because they participate in maintaining the status quo. It was also a response to isolation and disconnection (not entirely pandemic produced, though we joke that ‘of course’ my response to a global pandemic was to instigate a virtual, international conference). Because of YA’s status within academia (not to mention popular culture, but that’s a project for future tackling), YA researchers are often tucked into related fields and subfields, making it difficult to find people — especially when those people are outside the US-UK bubble. Creating a space with the potential to change things for the better motivates my work with YASA.
Emily C.: I can see YASA slowly becoming that hub for YA studies that Leah, Rebekah, Emily B, Jennie, and I are striving towards. The work we do is not always easy, and, at times, it can feel difficult to balance with the other demands I have on my time. Witnessing YASA thrive and flourish makes all that work worth it, though.
What goal would you like YASA to accomplish in the next 12 months?
Emily B.: I want to expand our social media presence considerably, across platforms and on the ones we already have established. I’d like us to be a space that people can tag when they have a YA research/practice query that they want to “crowdsource” resources for, and I want people to engage with us more socially in terms of what they’re reading. I’d love this to spill over into YASA’s established YA Fiction Bookclub and YA Critical Theory Reading Group, too, since we have such fantastic discussions there!
Jennie: I have to cheat here and say I have three. Firstly, to keep growing the Fiction Book Club as a fun, informal place to chat about new YA books – the yin to our Theory Group’s yang. Secondly, I want our blog to flourish; I can’t wait to be posting exciting and thought-provoking content from our contributors more regularly. Finally, as Secretary-Treasurer, I would love to see YASA’s financial health improve. At the moment, we are largely running on generous donations from our President and Vice-President, as well as from those who were able to donate at #YASA2020. We have so many exciting plans, but we need to wait until our bank account reflects our imagination! However, it’s important to me to see this goal achieved in a fair and balanced way. Academia can be – and often is – a precarious place; I want YASA to be a tonic to the system’s imbalance, rather than contributing to it.
Emily C.: I have many hopes and goals for YASA’s next 12 months, some of which I can share and some of which are still in the behind-the-scenes planning stages. My current priority is creating and launching the YASA seminar series (eeek!). Then, I would like to see #YASA2022 make even more of an impact to YA studies than #YASA2020 did (call that my 16-month goal…). But to make the exciting things happen – to make them happen well – my number one goal for YASA is to work towards a position of better financial stability. There’s so much more we could be doing, if only we could afford to pay for it!
Rebekah: Leah and I have talked quite a bit about how we can work on features of the website to improve members’ ability to connect with one another. I’d very much like to follow through on those so we can see our members continue to meet, talk, collaborate, and share their work with one another beyond our events and platforms. I’m also really excited to continue to expand our membership internationally and welcome new voices into existing conversations and groups.
Leah: I agree with Rebekah. YASA’s next big challenge is to increase the opportunities for conversation and collaboration available to our members — across the world (and to keep growing that membership!). I’m also keen to keep finding ways to support and make spaces for early career researchers and marginalised scholars. I know of a couple of things that are in the works that I can’t talk about yet, but there’s always space for more.
