ENGL 420
Childhood in Film and Culture
Professor Carolyn Sigler
Department of English
Required Texts
Alcott, Louisa May, Little Women (Signet)
Baum, L. Frank, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Dover)
Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson, Film Art 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill)
Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland (Dover)
Cleverly, John and D. C. Phillips, Visions of Childhood: Influential
Models from Locke to Spock (Teacherís College)
Course Packet of Photocopied Articles, available at the Arts &
Sciences Copy Center
Jackson, Kathy Merlock, Images of Children in American Film
(Scarecrow)
Jenks, Chris, Childhood (Routledge)
Kinder, Marcia, Playing With Power in Movies, Television, and Video
Games (California)
Seiter, Ellen, Sold Separately: Parents and Children in Consumer
Culture (Rutgers)
Zipes, Jack, Fairy Tale as Myth (UP Kentucky)
Recommended Items
March, Willliam, The Bad Seed , Elaine Showalter ed. (Ecco)
Bright Ideas: Media Education (Scholastic)
TV Alert: A Wake-Up Guide for Television Literacy (Center for
Media Literacy)
Course Purposes
Childhood in Film and Culture explores issues in the popular mass culture
of childhood (such as commercialization, gender and racial stereotyping,
violence, and censorship) to enable students to better understand childhood
as a cultural ideal, and to further develop active critical skills in reading
and understanding literary and mass-culture texts. Childhood in Film and
Culture addresses the interests of students across the university curricula,
ranging from education, psychology, sociology and cultural studies, history,
human ecology and English, those who are or plan to be parents, those who
simply want to think about the ways that their reading, film and television
viewing as a child may have influenced them, and any general education
student interested in popular culture and its effects on the ways we think
about ourselves and others. Class readings and media viewings, collaborative
and individual journal writings, and class discussions will enable students
to explore the ways that childhood as a changing cultural ideal has both
reflected and affected our ideas, our attitudes, our values, even our "tastes"
as a culture.
Grading Criteria
Students will be graded on their class participation and attendance
(20% of final grade), two exams, which will consist of short-answer and
essay questions (20% each), one essay on a topic of the studentís choice
(20%), and an ungraded class journal of informal individual and collaborative
writings (20%, for which students receive credit by completing weekly entries).
The class journal will be an open and ungraded space for free writing:
speculations, ideas, and discoveries (though the professor will contribute
responses to each studentís entries).
Course Syllabus ó Childhood in Film and Culture
Week 1
Childhood Through the Popular Culture Looking-Glass
Readings: Jenks
Screening: Twenty One-Up (1965); d. Michael Apted (documentary)
Weeks 2 & 3
Early Images of Childhood in Film
Readings: Cleverly and Phillips, ch. 1; Jackson, pp. 31-55
Screening: The Little Darling (1909): d. D.W. Griffith, with
Mary Pickford; The Kid (First National, 1921): d. Charlie Chaplin;
with Jackie Coogan; The Little Rascals (1932-5).
Week 4
The Child-Star: Images of the "Beautiful Child"
Readings: Jackson, pp. 56-81
Screening: Baby Burlesques (Fox, 1932): with Shirley Temple;
Curly Top (Fox, 1935): d. Irving Cummings; with Shirley Temple
Week 5
The "Disnification" of Childrenís Mass Culture
Readings: Jackson, pp. 118-136; Zipes, "Breaking the Disney Spell"
Screening: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney, 1937): d.
David Hand
Week 6
Mass Culture and Social Crises: Juvenile Delinquency
Readings: Jackson 137-154
Screening: Dead End (1937): d. William Wyler; with Humphry Bogart,
the Dead End Kids
Week 7
Popular Images of Childhood and National Identity
Readings: Zipes, "The Wizard of Oz as American Myth"
Screening: from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910); d. Otis Turner and
L. Frank Baum; The Wizard of Oz (1939): d. Mervyn LeRoy; with Judy Garland
Week 8
The Loss of Innocence: The "Corrupt" Child in Popular Culture
Readings: Cleverly and Phillips, ch. 5
Screening: The Bad Seed (Warner Brothers, 1956): d. Mervyn LeRoy;
with Patty McCormack
Week 9
Midterm Exam and Review
Week 10
Childrenís Literature and Popular Culture
Readings: Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Screening: from Alice in Cartoonland (Disney, 1923); from Alice
in Wonderland (Disney, 1951): d. Clyde Geronimi; Dreamchild
(1989): d. Dennis Potter
Week 11
Independent Filmmaking for Children
Readings: Giroux
Screening: White Socks Only (1985): d. Barbara Bryant; Girls
Like Us (1997): d. Tina deFeliciantonio
Week 12
Childhood, Mass Culture and Issues of Race and Gender
Readings: hooks, "Neo-Colonial Fantasies of Conquest: Hoop Dreams"
Screening: Hoop Dreams (1991): d. Steve James
Week 13
Childhood, Mass Culture and Issues of Race and Gender
Readings: Chris Richards, "Taking Sides? What Young Girls Do With Television";
David Buckingham, "Boysí Talk: Television and the Policing of Masculinity"
Screening: 1 hour childrenís programming and 1 hour "prime time" programming,
studentsí choice
Week 14
Childhood, Mass Culture and Issues of Race and Gender
Readings: Kinder, "Saturday Morning Television: Endless Consumption
and Transmedia
Intertextuality"; Cy Schneider, "How Television Affects Children"
Screening: Selected television commercials
Weeks 15 and 16
Student Presentations and Conclusions
Readings: Neil Postman, "The Disappearing Child," "Six Questions"
