Representing Children in Chinese and U.S. Children's Literature (original) (raw)
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Southeast Asian Review of English, 2018
This Special Issue brings together a diverse collection of papers analysing children's literature, film, and animation, all of which represent aspects of Asian culture and the Asian diaspora. Importantly, the issue provides a forum through which a range of academics and scholars-both from within and from beyond Asia-can bring greater attention to children's written and visual texts, reflect upon the social and cultural mores represented in those texts, and discuss the issues that concern Asian children and society, both past and present. The broad spectrum of children's and young adults' literature and other forms of visual media constitute categories that are not easily defined, crossing over as they do with numerous other genres and subgenres, just as the definition of Asia in itself is also tenuous. Yet, amid these broad referential points, connections may be made. The prevailing threads that run through many of these stories are the changing issues that confront children in the contemporary societies of Asia, and despite the concerns often represented in the narratives, concerns which express themselves socio-culturally and often in relation to gender or economic imbalances, the clearest unifying thread is the underlying belief in the need for human connection and guidance. As such, though the issues raised in these essays and in the texts they discuss may from their content often be seen to be regional and localised, they are, in many ways, very much universal in their import.
Children’s literature in China: Revisiting ideologies of childhood and agency
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 2019
In this article we consider historical and contemporary ideologies of childhood in China and critically examine notions of ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ in Chinese children’s literature. We analyse the themes and knowledge that relate to relevant historical and contemporary political events and policies, and how these contribute to the production of childhoods. We focus on three images of childhoods in China: the Confucian child, the Modern child and the Maoist child. Each of the images reflects a way of seeing, a perspective about what a child ought to be and become, and what their childhood should look like. Everyday media are reflected in the texts and stories examined and portray both ‘imagined’ and ‘real-life’ narratives of children and their childhoods. The stories, and the connected power relations, represent an important link between the politics of childhood and the pedagogy associated with these politics, including large-scale state investment in the production of desired, ideal...
Contemporary Children’s Literature and Film
2011
The book's major contribution is to showcase contemporary forms/iterations of theory, such as posthumanism, cognitive poetics, and spatiality studies. This very fine collection of essays will be of use to a wide range of students as well as to established scholars.' Kenneth Kidd, Associate Professor of English, University of Florida 'A volume like this is long overdue: a single work that not only talks about literature and film alongside each other without making either seem the poor relation, but which also makes theory work in a practical, productive, and even (dare I say it) pleasurable manner. Students, and the rest of us, should benefit hugely.'
The Politics of Childhood and Children’s Literature: A Critique
Journal of Social Sciences, 1999
KEY WORDS cutcure of silence; saniiud ldenlity of child: radical objceu and fo rms of knowledge; myth of purity •nd eter• nhy. ABSTRACf This p.,. ~;ritk}ues die poUdes of child• bood and children's lilerlllure by at&ulng that child• hood is • co1utruc1 by the aduhs thai disavows the mAterUiity or chlldrct1 in sociecy. ln ~;o~~S~Cque-noce. ehil• di'Cfl's literalure assumes the StNc:tu.te ar.d ruRCiioD ol11 myth 10 de.hi.uoticize 1he rea.lity it prese.nu aDd, In so doinJ, rdnfotecs the domin-llnt class ldC'olo&ies. The paper suggests a conective 10 the eonveetional chil• dre.n. 's lherauare a~ abo <:3-lls for an age!Kia to break the ''CUIUifC or silcn~;e" CtiVc!Opin:g tbe COIU1:ruttion or cllildren M~d the literatute for them.
Editorial. Childhood in Literature, Media and Popular Culture
Global Studies of Childhood, 2011
Literary, media and popular texts are a powerful means by which the broad category of childhood is constructed, maintained, protected and challenged. Whether cultural texts are produced for children or about them, their depictions of childhood provide important resources for those interested in exploring the logics and practices through which contemporary childhoods are imagined, produced and experienced. In recent years, scholars have considered how representations of children and childhood in cultural texts contribute to shared understandings and normative discourses about children's place in the social world (Burman, 2008; Khan, 2009; Saltmarsh, 2011). Of course, representations of childhood and the discourses in which they are implicated are neither determined nor fixed. As Alan Prout points out, globalising forces in the latter half of the twentieth century have brought about economic, social and technological changes that have in turn been implicated in destabilising the representation of childhood as a coherent and knowable category: Traditional ways of representing childhood in discourse and in image no longer seemed adequate to its emerging forms. New ways of speaking, writing and imaging children are providing new ways of seeing them… These new representations construct children as more active, knowledgeable and socially participative than older discourses allowed. They are more difficult to manage, less biddable and hence are more troublesome and troubling. (Prout, 2005, p. 7