Gender in Children's Literature

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INTRODUCTION

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WGS 225   Gender in Children's Literature is designed to meet a requirement for the double major in Women's and Gender Studies and Elementary or Early Childhood Education.   It can also fulfill an elective for majors and minors in Women's and Gender Studies as well as English Education majors, and, space permitting, may be taken by other students seeking Liberal Learning credits in Literary, Visual, and Performing Arts and Gender. There are no prerequisites.  

Our purpose in this course will be to develop a critical appreciation of the roles of children's literature in the social construction of gender--not only how it prescribes or resists normative gender roles, but how it represents the subjective experience of growing up gendered.   With a grounding in gender theory and critical texts, we will explore the early beginnings of children's literature in collections of folklore and fairy tales, then move on to modern classics and contemporary favorites, limiting our scope to works for young children and pre-teens.  

While the syllabus does not take for granted that students enrolled are preparing to become teachers, the course will explore the ways that our topics of study involve children's relationships with adults--and adults' relationships to childhood.   Throughout the course we will consider how adults can help foster children's awareness of gender through children's literature by selecting texts and engaging children in conversation about texts, returning to these focal questions:

Learning goals

A. Content

WGS 225 Gender in Children's Literature features gender as an analytical category in appreciating literary works for children and understanding their relationship to their cultural contexts.   The following outcomes integrate the liberal learning goals for both Literary, Visual, and Performing Arts and Gender, which correspond to the learning goals for 200-level courses in English and Women's and Gender Studies.

Students will:

  1. Gain an understanding of how to apply gender as a critical thinking tool to analysis of the cultural construction of childhood
  2. Analyze how literary and visual texts represent the formation of identities, focusing on the intersections of gender with other patterns of inequality, such as sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, and nation
  3. Understand how children's literature expresses the subjective experience of growing up gendered
  4. Perceive and analyze how texts and illustrations in children's literature convey gendered meanings within particular cultural contexts
  5. Analyze how literary texts for children intervene in the cultural construction of gender, whether to support, reinforce, resist, disrupt, or encourage alternatives to prevailing values and norms

B.   Performance

Since teachers-in-training are the main constituency for WGS 225, the Performance goals conform to the following NCATE/NCTE program standards:

3.5 Candidates demonstrate knowledge of, and uses for, an extensive range of literature.   Candidates demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of, and ability to use, varied teaching applications for:

3.5.2 Works from a wide variety of genres and cultures, works by female authors, and works by authors of color

3.5.3 Numerous works written specifically for older children and younger adults

3.5.4 A range of works of literary theory and criticism and an understanding of their effect on reading and interpretive approaches

4.0 Candidates acquire and demonstrate the dispositions and skills needed to integrate knowledge of English Language Arts (ELA), students, and teaching

4.1 Understand the purposes and characteristics of different kinds of curricula and related teaching resources and select or create instructional materials that are consistent with what is currently known about student learning in ELA

4.10 Use assessment in instruction by

•  Establishing criteria and developing strategies for assessment that allow all students to understand what they know and can do in light of their instructional experiences

•  Assisting all students in becoming monitors of their own work and growth in speaking, listening, reading, enacting, and viewing

LANGUAGES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

A one credit Languages Across the Curriculum independent study may be added to this course for those students who have intermediate level proficiency in another language and who wish to complement the work in this course by utilizing their language skills. Please visit the LAC website at http://internationalstudies.intrasun.tcnj.edu or contact dcompte@tcnj.edu for more information. Students must meet with Dr. Compte to enroll in the LAC independent study by January 25.