This edited collection, Killing It In The Classroom: Teaching the Young Adult Detective Genre aims to address the changes in young adult detective/mystery literature, television shows, movies, and video games from 2015 to the present. The time, we maintain, is ripe for a re-investigation: adolescent engagement with social media and technology, along with the psychological after-effects of the Covid years, have significantly impacted what it means to be a teen in 2025. How does the YA detective fiction genre offer ways to explore contemporary issues and anxieties relevant to teens today? How have tropes, plots, and themes changed in the genre to reflect changing social/political landscapes, cultural trends, and technological advancements? To what extent is teen detective fiction influenced by the rise of true crime and podcasting? What is the effect of adults as crossover consumers of young adult fiction? How does the growing phenomenon of hybrid genres affect young adult detective fiction? Revisiting this perennially popular subgenre through fiction, film, TV, and videogames, we want to explore how and why it still resonates with teens even as the cultural landscape has dramatically shifted. 

This proposed edited volume originates from the observation that the young adult (YA) detective genre has developed and taken off in new directions over the past 10 years, since the publication of Nancy Drew and Her Sister Sleuths (2008), ed. Michael Cornelius and Melanie Gregg, and The Boy Detectives (2010), ed. Michael Cornelius. In the decade and a half there have been specialized critical texts on a single series, such as Investigating Veronica Mars: Essays on the Teen Detective Series (2011), ed. Rhonda Wilcox and Sue Turnbull and publications such as Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century (2024), ed. LuElla D'Amico and Emily Hamilton-Honey that are recovering “lost” heroines of the genre that spends so much energy on Nancy Drew. At the same time there have been books and articles on teaching detective/crime fiction in the classroom, notably Murder 101: Essays on the Teaching of Detective Fiction (2009), ed. Edward Rielly and Teaching Crime Fiction (2018), ed. Charlotte Beyer. More recently, Clues 41.2 (2023) devoted part of an issue to exploring how reading and studying detective/crime fiction can enhance student writing and critical thinking, with contributions from teachers and professors who supplied sample syllabi for middle, high school, and college classrooms. There is also a proliferation of blog posts on YA detective novels, movies, and television shows, especially since Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder (2019) was adapted as a Netflix Series in August 2024. 

However, no scholarly work, to our knowledge, has exclusively focused on the YA detective subgenre as a whole and the ways in which it can be taught or incorporated in the classroom. Drawing on the robust scholarship surrounding detective/mystery fiction, young adult studies, and pedagogy, this edited collection will center the convergence of these topics across various media formats to explore how the genre is being reconfigured and ways to approach ideas about gender, sex, race, social class, and politics in the classroom. For example, race and gender issues feature prominently in recently published YA teen detective novels like Firekeeper’s Daughter (2021) by Angeline Boulley, Monday’s Not Coming (2018) by Tiffany D. Jackson, and Where Sleeping Girls Lie (2024) by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé. 

What is unique about our proposal is that we hope to combine both elements—the pedagogical/practical and the literary/critical—centering the subgenre of YA detective fiction in the undergraduate classroom, with an emphasis on more recent teen sleuths from 2015 to the present. We believe focusing on the genre from 2015-2025 offers a fresh perspective on technology, diversity, and genre blending that just wasn’t possible or deemed irrelevant in the past. The early 2020s have seen an increase in popular teen detective/mystery television shows, such as A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (2024), Nancy Drew (2019-2023), One of Us Is Lying (2021-2022), and the prolific Enola Holmes (2020) Netflix franchise, focusing on the sister of Sherlock Holmes, which announced an upcoming third film to air in late 2025. Not coincidentally, these popular shows and movies are based on YA novels published shortly beforehand. By focusing on works from 2015 through the present day, we are not excluding earlier, foundational works of the YA detective/mystery genre. Instead, we are hoping to think about how those texts have allowed the genre to evolve into what it is today. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys are seminal to the genre, and much scholarship has been written on their impact. We’re hoping to publish a collection that is heavily located in the present-day not to ignore the past, but to give space to what the genre has become and to produce ideas for contemporary readers of the genre to connect with the new Nancy Drews. 

We envision a two-part structure in which one section would provide resources, syllabi, and personal experiences about teaching a course on YA detective fiction or incorporating a single work of YA detective fiction in a class. This teaching section will ideally provide concrete ways (through in-class activities, assignments, and lesson plans) to implement a YA detective novel, television show, or movie into a literature or writing course at the college level. We understand that devoting an entire course to teaching detective fiction isn’t feasible for many academics, so we welcome smaller ways to implement even one novel or television episode into a class. A second section would consist of engaging and accessible scholarly essays on YA detective fiction aimed at modeling literary criticism for undergraduate readers, as something interesting and relevant, that they can learn to do to produce writing about fiction they enjoy and care about. This scholarship section is a more traditional approach to writing criticism about YA detective novels, television shows, or movies but with the intended audience of undergraduate college students rather than a select group of scholars in the field. Overall our goal for this collection is to provide a comprehensive tool for professors to use in their own classrooms, whether it is their first time teaching the YA detective genre or they are seasoned scholars. We already have some scholars lined up to address historical aspects of the genre, so we kindly ask that you only submit material focused on the specified years (2015-present day). 

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, engaging with young adult detective novels, television shows, movies, and video games in the following ways: 

• Pedagogy that emphasizes anti-racism, structural violence, and/or cultural inclusivity 

• The genre’s potential for agency (as evidenced by the characters or for readers to enact their own agency) 

• Racial and gender motivated crimes represented in the genre 

• Marginal positions (i.e. age, race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, documentation status, nationality, etc.) of characters in the genre or consumers of the genre 

• Teaching YA detective fiction in a creative writing classroom 

• Female detectives who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)

• Representation of disability (broadly defined) as a crime, mark of criminality, etc. 

• Intersections with the supernatural, gothic, historical, or romance genres 

• Teaching in a composition classroom 

• Relevance of the detective genre or its relation to young adult fiction 

• Representation of adolescence 

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words and a brief CV to Dr. Myers Enlow at myersenlow@gmail.com and Dr. Marla Harris at mhcrocombe@gmail.com by September 1, 2025. 

Once abstracts have been accepted, completed submissions of 5,000-6,000 words (including notes and references) are due by January 15, 2026. Please format final articles in MLA.