The teenage years are fraught with drama and emotional ups and downs, coinciding with bewildering new social situations and sexual tension. For these reasons, pop culture and media have repeatedly created entertainment that depicts, celebrates, or lampoons coming of age experiences, through sitcoms like The Wonder Years to the brat pack films of the 1980s to the teen-centered television series of today.

Coming of Age in Popular Culture: Teenagers, Adolescence, and the Art of Growing Up covers a breadth of media presentations of the transition from childhood to adulthood from the 1950s to the year 2010. It explores the ways that adolescence is characterized in pop culture by drawing on these representations, shows how powerful media and entertainment are in establishing societal norms, and considers how American society views and values adolescence. Topics addressed include race relations, gender roles, religion, and sexual identity. Young adult readers will come away with a heightened sense of media literacy through the examination of a topic that inherently interests them.