Department of English
csigler@email.sjsu.edu
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/csigler/
Office Hours:
M-W 8-10 a.m.
Literary
Texts:
Louisa May Alcott,
Little
Women (Penguin)
Horatio Alger,
Ragged
Dick (Macmillan)
Lewis Carroll,
Aliceís
Adventures in Wonderland (Norton)
John Cleverley,
Visions
of Childhood: Influential Models from Locke to Spock (Teachersí College
P)
Chris Jenks, Childhood
(Routledge)
Francisco Jimenez,
The
Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (U New Mexico P)
William March,
The
Bad Seed. Elaine Showalter, ed. (Ecco Press)
Toni Morrison,
The
Bluest Eye (Pocket Books)
Packet of course
readings, available in Arts and Sciences Copy Center, EH 117
Maurice Sendak,
Where
the Wild Things Are (Harper)
Ntozake Shange,
Whitewash
(Walker)
Carolyn Sigler,
Alternative
Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Carroll's "Alice" Books (U Kentucky
P)
Dare Wright, The
Lonely Doll (Sandpiper)
Jack Zipes, The
Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, 2nd ed. (Routledge)
Course
Description
This class will
examine traditional kinds of childrenís texts, as well as child-rearing
literature, advertising, movies, and television to consider childhood as
a cultural construct. James Kincaid asserts that society has traditionally
viewed being childlike as a kind of emptiness, absence or lack. This class,
then, will read, view and discuss literary, mass media, critical, and pedagogical
works from the Enlightenment to the present to explore the changing ways
that "the emptiness called a child" has been constructed as a religious,
political, aesthetic, and commercial concept (Kincaid 71). We will investigate
such issues in the culture of childhood as constructions of race, gender,
violence, slavery, colonialism, and nationalism to examine the ways that
discourses for and about children both idealize and critique the cultures
that produce them. Critical readings will include theories of childhood
history, psychology, pedagogy, and culture by authors like John Locke,
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Philippe Ariès, Jack Zipes, Susan Willis,
bell hooks and Henry Giroux; literary texts will include works by John
Newbery, Maria Edgeworth, Louisa May Alcott, Jessie Fauset and Francisco
Jimenez. Class discussion will also address visual texts ranging from television
and film to portraiture, and material culture such as clothing and toys.
The class will include a weekly lab section to be used for film showings,
slide presentations, and work in the media lab on using and creating Web
resources. One of our collaborative class projects will be to begin construction
of a Web site on the history and culture of childhood (a resource that
is much needed), an ongoing initiative to which future classes will contribute.
The class will also include a guest lecture and slide presentation by Professor
Jack Zipes (University of Minnesota) on "Re-Framing Little Red Riding Hood,"
and a talk by Russell Reising (University of Toledo) on constructions of
race and class in Walt Disneyís Dumbo.
Grading
Criteria
Two exams, (15%
each); two essays (20% each); participation in classroom and online discussion,
and lab activities (20% total); and participation in class Web project
(10%). Attendance and improvement are also considered in determining the
final grade. Out-of-class writing must use MLA format, be word-processed,
free from mechanical errors, double-spaced, and printed in "best quality"
using a standard 12-point font and one-inch margins. Please keep a copy
of any work you hand in, and retain graded work until the end of the semester.
Class
Web Site
The class Web
site provides a number of online resources to help you with writing, revision
and research. These include links sites devoted to issues of childhood
and children's culture and to online research method and style guides.
Copies of course handouts and assignments will also be available on the
Web site.
Reading and Viewing Schedule
MONDAY MEDIA CENTER WEDNESDAY FRIDAY
| Introduction to class | Philippe Ariès, "The Discovery of Childhood" | John Cleverley, "On Seeing Children Throughout History" | |
| Chris Jenks, Childhood | Childhood in Art | John Locke, from On Education; Cleverley, "The Child and the Environment" | John Bunyan, from The Pilgrim's Progress |
| John Newbery, Little Goody Two-Shoes | Web Resources | Jean Jacques Rousseau, from Emile; Cleverley, "The Free and Constrained Child" | Maria Edgeworth, "The Purple Jar," "Lazy Lawrence" |
| Early "Red Riding Hoods" (in Trials); Jack Zipes, "Fairy Tale Discourse" | Work on Web projects | Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland | Alice in Wonderland; reviews, commentary |
| Alice in Wonderland, James Kincaid, "The Wonder Child in Neverland" | Picturing Alice | Frances Burnett, "Behind the White Brick"; Juliana Ewing, "Amelia and the Dwarfs" | Christina
Rossetti, from Speaking Likenesses;
Anna Richards, from A New Alice in the Old Wonderland |
| Juliana Ewing, "Amelia and the Dwarfs"; Frances Hodgson Burnett, "Behind the White Brick" | Dreamchild and Disney shorts | Walt Disney, Alice in Cartoonland (1923), and Dennis Potter, Dreamchild (1985) | Essay One due |
| From Martha Finley, Elsie Dinsmore | Work on Web projects | Louisa May Alcott, Little Women | Little Women in film: 1933, 1949, 1994 |
| Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick | The Kid | Ragged Dick | Charles Chaplin, The Kid (1921) |
| from Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets | Study session for exam | Midterm Exam | from The Brownies' Book: Jesse Fauset, Yolonde Du Bois, Langston Hughes |
| from The Brownies' Book: April 1921 facsimile | Curly Top and "Baby Burlesks" | Irving Cummings, Curly Top (1935); "Kidíní Hollywood" (1932) | Curly Top; Graham Greene, review of Wee Willie Winkie; Daniel Harris,"On Cuteness" |
| Cleverley, "An Upbringing Fit for Society: Marx and Dewey" | Dumbo | Disney Studios, Dumbo (1947); Henry Giroux, "Animating Youth: The Disneyfication of Childrenís Culture" | Dumbo; Russell Reising, "The Easiest Room in Hell: The Political Work of Disneyís Dumbo" |
| William March, The Bad Seed; Cleverley, "The Loss of Innocence: The Freudian Child" | The Bad Seed | Mervyn LeRoy, The Bad Seed (1956); William March, The Bad Seed | Wright, The Lonely Doll |
| Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are; Bettelheim, Sendak, Nodelman responses | Work on Web projects | Contemporary "Red Riding Hoods" (in Trials) | Contemporary "Red Riding Hoods" (in Trials) |
| Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye | Work on Web projects | Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye; Susan Willis, "I Want the Black One: Is There a Place for African-American Culture in Commodity Culture?" | Marcia Kinder, "Saturday Morning Television: Endless Consumption and Transmedia Intertextuality" |
| Essay Two due | Work on Web projects | Susan Willis, "Playing House: Domestic Labor as Culture" | Francisco Jimenez, The Circuit |
| Francisco Jimenez, The Circuit | Web projects due | Shange, Whitewash ; hooks,"Neo-Colonial Fantasies of Conquest"; Henry Giroux, "White Panic and the Racial Coding of Violence" | Neil Postman, "The Disappearing Child,""Six Questions" |
