Freedom Dreaming With Young Adult Literature: Engaging Students in Critical Gender Analysis

This study explores how college undergraduate students read young adult literature through a critical gender lens in a general education course. Drawing on critical literacy, gender theory, and discourse theory, we examined students' written work to understand how they constructed, questioned, and reimagined gender and power in the texts they read. Applying a critical content analysis, we identified three themes: (1) leveraging personal transactions as interpretive tools strengthens students' critical gender analysis; (2) students developed critical consciousness in four recursive ways—identifying gendered norms, analyzing how norms function, developing systemic understanding, and envisioning structural change; and (3) some students demonstrated an emerging intersectional analysis of how gendered power intersects with other systems of power. This article offers secondary and tertiary educators practical insights on using the Gender Harm and Healing Lens to support students in freedom‐dreaming and reading‐as‐resistance.