This graduate course is an introduction to critical theories in children’s and young adult literature. While the course is open to and may be useful for students not specializing in youth literature, we will focus on the ways in which literary and cultural theories developed for peer texts (that is, adults writing for adults) have had uptake and may need adjustment in scholarly studies and research when they are deployed in the study of texts for young people.

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Students will be expected to have read Peter Pan, Charlotte’s Web, The Arrival, The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963: A Novel, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian prior to the start of class. Some of the topics we will address include: Histories of Children’s Literature and Conceptions of Childhood; Author/ity; Identity and Cultural Studies; Reading and Readers; Translation and Access; Subjectivity and Identity; Genre and Textuality; Difference; Visual and Transmedial Methodologies.

 

Readings:

Most of the readings will be essays made available through ReggieNet. However, all students will be required to read and write a review of a new academic book devoted to children’s and/or young adult literature (I will provide a list, but acquiring the book will be up to you). In addition, please have access to a copy of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll, for the duration of the semester. It would also be nice, though not required, for you to have read The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children’s and Young Adult Literature.

 

Requirements:

Teaching or Conference Presentation
Book review with Class Participation
Review of a new children’s book
Seminar paper (submitted in stages)
F2F and online participation