Children's Literature: A History, Spring 2021

An exploration of children’s literature as it evolved over the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The course will examine the relationship between ideologies of childhood and literature for children and young adults. Students will learn how to evaluate and interpret a children’s text and its accompanying illustrations. Attention will be given to the socio-political context of each work, the rise of gender-specific fiction, and the ways children’s literature and young adult fiction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have responded to child development, race, religion, and alternative parenting and sexuality. Students will help to shape the curriculum by proposing a children’s book to be added to the syllabus, voting on these selections, and leading class discussion.  Our class exhibition  will focus on the history of children’s literature. We will collectively decide on an approach to the exhibit. Each student will design a virtual “case” of 3-5 images and write headers and captions as well as an introduction.