Summer 2003

Schedule

The modern Western concept of childhood was invented between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, Philippe Aries claimed in Centuries of Childhood (1962), catalyzing a wide variety of studies that explore how societies shape the everyday lives of people as they grow.  In this course we’ll focus on the development of American children’s literature during the nineteenth century, looking for what it tells us about the nation’s stakes in shaping children’s culture, and how gender, class, race, and ethnicity figure in the norms of childhood we still embrace today.  Readings will include social history and criticism as well as juvenile fiction and poetry—some still well remembered, some long forgotten and buried in library stacks, waiting to be rediscovered.

First Week:  The Historical Construction of Childhood; children's poems

Monday

Introductions, assignments, a mummy and a party (in-class freewriting and discussion of two nineteenth-century American children's poems)

Tuesday

Janet Gray, "The Containment of Childhood."  This chapter discusses a number of nineteenth-century children's poems; if you'd like to read the poems in full, they're available on SOCS  under "Poems"

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi on education

Children's verse by Sarah Josepha Hale (on SOCS) and Eliza Lee Follen (here).    Bring to class any editions you have of "Mary's Lamb" and "Three Little Kittens" (including audio, if you have them).

Facilitators:  Danielle and Joyce

Wednesday

Murray, Chapter 1:  "The Sinful Child:  Anglo-American Colonial Children's Literature, 1690-1810" and Chapter 2: "Virtues for the New Republic, 1790-1850"

Illick, Chapter 1, "Native American Childhood," and 2, "European American Childhood"

Stephen Kline, "The Making of Children's Culture" from The Children's Culture Reader (SOCS)

Facilitators:  Jenna and Rachel

Thursday

Mother Goose.  Please bring to class any editions you have.

On SOCS:  Karin Calvert, "Children in the House:  The Material Culture of Early Childhood" (from The Children's Culture Reader)

Facilitators:  Melissa and Alina

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Second Week

Monday

                    2-4 page paper on a poem due

Lydia Maria Child, The Girl's Own Book

Facilitators:  Melissa and ?

Tuesday

Lydia Maria Child, "Children's Literature and Domestic Advice" and "Jumbo and Zairee" (on SOCS)

Facilitators:  Rachel and Joao

Wednesday   

Bronson Alcott, from How Like an Angel Came I Down (SOCS)

Louisa May Alcott, "Stories for Children" and "Nellie's Hospital" (SOCS)

Facilitators:  Jenna and Alina

Thursday

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (chapters 1- 10)

Facilitators:  Joyce and Danielle

Third Week

Monday

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (chapters 11- 23)

Tuesday

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (chapters 24-35)

Wednesday

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (chapters 36-47)

Thursday

Gail S. Murray, Chapter 3, "Good Girls, Bad Boys, 1850-1890" from American Children's Literature and the Construction of Childhood

Illick, chapters 4 and 5

Horatio Alger Jr., Ragged Dick (preface and Chapter 1)

Horatio Alger Jr., Ragged Dick (Chapters 2-27)

Facilitators:  Danielle, Rachel