This course explores the exquisitely messy, sometimes joyful, sometimes painful contours of transitions from youth to adulthood exemplary of the Bildungsroman (i.e., a novel espousing central themes of education, formation, and/or maturation) genre. In this course, we will explore books such as, Andre Aciman’s, Call Me by Your Name, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s, Americanah, Jim Carroll’s, The Basketball Diaries, and Arundhati Roy’s, The God of Small Things to deeply investigate how “coming of age” texts portray the topsy-turvy nature of dizzying “growth spurts” in the representational lives of young adult characters.