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Reading selections are coded as follows: NATC refers
to The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, OC refers to Only
Connect: Readings on Children's Literature, and UCL refers to Understanding
Children's Literature. Reserve readings are indicated--most will be
available on eReserve (I hope). Some readings are linked through Project
Muse--from off-campus, you must be online through your ilstu account to
access them.
1/16 Introduction to the Course
1/23 Critical Isms at Stake in the Study of
Children's Literature: Classicism, Romanticism, and Modernism
Plato, Republic, Book
X, Ion (NATC)
Wordsworth, selections
from "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood" and other poems
Nietzsche, from The
Birth of Tragedy (NATC)
Chesterton, "The
Ethics of Elfland" (reserve)
Lewis, "On Three
Ways of Writing for Children" (reserve)
Plotz, "The
Perpetual Messiah" (reserve)
1/30 Children's Literature and Conceptions of
Childhood
Hunt, "Defining Children's
Literature" (OC)
Nodelman, "Progressive Utopia, Or, How
to Grow Up Without Growing Up" (OC)
Zipes, "Taking Political Stock:
New Theoretical and Critical Approaches to Anglo-American Children's
Literature in the 1980s" (OC)
Hunt, "Introduction: The World of
Children's Literature Studies" (UCL)
Lesnik-Oberstein, "Essentials: What is
Children's Literature? What is Childhood?" (UCL)
"The Impossibility of Innocence:
Ideology, Politics, and Children's Literature" (UCL)
Touchtext: Anne of Green Gables
2/6 Structuralism and Semiotics
de Saussure, Part One: General
Principles and Part Two: Synchronic Linguistics (NATC)
Barthes, "From Work to Text"
(NATC)
Silverman, The Subject of
Semiotics, chapters 1 and 6
McCallum, "Very Advanced Texts:
Metafictions and Experimental Work" (UCL)
Touchtext: Through the Looking Glass
2/13 Marxism
Althusser, "Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses" (NATC)
Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (NATC)
Jameson, "Postmodernism and
Consumer Society" (NATC)
Williams, "Marxism and
Literature" (NATC) or Wilson, "Marxism and
Literature" (NATC)
Watkins, "The Setting of
Children's Literature: History and Culture" (UCL)
Touchtexts: Martin's Big
Words, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963: A Novel
2/20 Reader-Oriented Theories
Benton, "Readers,
Texts, Contexts: Reader-Response Criticism" (UCL)
Iser, "Interaction
between Text and Reader" (NATC)
Fish, "Interpreting the
Variorum" (NATC)
Chambers, "The Reader in the
Book" (reserve)
Hirsch, "Objective
Interpretation"
Touchtext: Holes
2/27 Poststructuralism: Deconstruction
Derrida, selections from Deconstruction
in a Nutshell
Caputo, selections from Deconstruction
in a Nutshell
Stephens, "Analyzing Texts
for Children: Linguistics and Stylistics" (UCL)
Touchtext: When Zachary Beaver
Came to Town
3/2 Extra Class--Lois Lenski Lecture
3/6 Poststructuralism: Foucault
Foucault, "What is
an Author?" "Truth and Power" (NATC)
Foucault,
"Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History" (reserve)
Trites, TBA from Disturbing
the Universe (reserve)
Touchtext: The
Chocolate War
3/20 Poststructuralism: Psychoanalysis
Lacan, "Structure
and Reality"
Lacan, "The Mirror
Stage" "The Significance of the Phallus" (NATC)
Coats, "Lacan
with Runt Pigs" (reserve)
Bosmajian, "Reading
the Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Criticism" (UCL)
Touchtext: Charlotte's
Web
3/27 Feminisms and Queer Theory
Clark, Introduction to Girls,
Boys, Books, Toys (reserve)
Paul, "Enigma Variations:
What Children's Literature Knows about Feminist Theory" (reserve)
Rich, "When we Dead
Awaken: Writing as Re-vision" (reserve)
Gubar,
M. "'Where is the Boy?': The Pleasures of Postponement in the Anne
of Green Gables Series" Lion and the Unicorn 25.1.
(January 2001): 47-69.
Paul, "From Sex-Role
Stereotyping to Subjectivity: Feminist Criticism" (UCL)
Bordo, "Unbearable
Weight" (NATC)
Sedgwick, "Between
Men" (NATC)
Thacker,
Deborah. "Feminine Language and the Politics of Children's
Literature." Lion and the Unicorn 25.1 (January 2001): 3-16.
Touchtext: Anne of Green
Gables, Eva (by Peter Dickinson)
4/3 Race and Multiculturalism
Fanon, TBA from Black Skin,
White Masks
Baker, "Blues, Ideology, and
Afro-American Literature" (NATC)
hooks, "Postmodern
Blackness" (NATC)
Tolson, TBA (reserve)
Touchtexts: Amazing Grace, Nappy
Hair, various picture books
4/10 No Class--Nashville Conference
4/17 Theorizing the Visual
Nodelman, "Decoding
the Images: Illustration and Picture Books" (UCL)
Part VI of Only Connect
Silverman, chapter 5 from The Subject of Semiotics
Coats, “P is for Patriarchy: Re-Imaging the Alphabet.”
(reserve)
Touchtexts: your favorite, or
least favorite, picture books
4/24 "The Irreducible Community of Two"
Bakhtin, TBA (reserve)
Kristeva, "Revolution in
Poetic Language" (NATC)
Wilkie, "Relating Texts:
Intertextuality" (NATC)
Touchtext: Through the
Looking Glass
5/1 Summing up: Final Thoughts
Final Projects Due
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