Elusive Childhood

Elusive Childhood PDF Author: Susan Honeyman
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 081421004X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
"Elusive Childhood examines how discourse touched by the identity politics of youth might be revised for fairness. Susan Honeyman demonstrates this potential by reading representations of children from throughout the Modern episteme in works of such writers as Henry James, Edith Wharton, and James Baldwin. Identity politics have changed the way we classify literature by opening up the canon, but they have also changed the way we approach literature. We've learned to recognize that biology is not destiny - sex doesn't necessarily determine gender or orientation, nor do fictitious absolutes like blood ratios measure ethnocultural identity, and so in an effort to avoid false generalizing about "others" we endorse individual self-representation, all the while recognizing how society constructs us." "But when it comes to representing the position we call childhood, there is little opportunity in legitimated discourse for children's self-representation and inadequate attention to social constructedness. Recognizing political inequity in literary representations of children, Honeyman proposes a method of reading child figuration in relief to impose as little adult prejudice as possible. This might be impossible for adults, yet it is necessary to attempt."--BOOK JACKET.

Elusive Childhood

Elusive Childhood PDF Author: Susan Honeyman
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 081421004X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
"Elusive Childhood examines how discourse touched by the identity politics of youth might be revised for fairness. Susan Honeyman demonstrates this potential by reading representations of children from throughout the Modern episteme in works of such writers as Henry James, Edith Wharton, and James Baldwin. Identity politics have changed the way we classify literature by opening up the canon, but they have also changed the way we approach literature. We've learned to recognize that biology is not destiny - sex doesn't necessarily determine gender or orientation, nor do fictitious absolutes like blood ratios measure ethnocultural identity, and so in an effort to avoid false generalizing about "others" we endorse individual self-representation, all the while recognizing how society constructs us." "But when it comes to representing the position we call childhood, there is little opportunity in legitimated discourse for children's self-representation and inadequate attention to social constructedness. Recognizing political inequity in literary representations of children, Honeyman proposes a method of reading child figuration in relief to impose as little adult prejudice as possible. This might be impossible for adults, yet it is necessary to attempt."--BOOK JACKET.

The Elusive Child

The Elusive Child PDF Author: Lesley Caldwell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429920571
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
'Fuelled by agitation and panic about paedophilia, child abuse, violence and neglect on the one side, and by children as violent murderers and killers on the other, there has been an explosion of concern regarding the place, care, treatment and life of Children, in Europe and beyond. This broad-ranging and provocative collection of papers, a volume in the Winnicott Studies Monograph Series, focuses on all factors pertaining to the child and childhood, including the role that psychoanalysis has to play. The book offers a unique and fascinating understanding of developmental issues from early infancy through latency and into adolescence from various psychoanalytic approaches. The papers, written by experts in the field examine closely all aspects of this fascinating subject from Freud to Winnnicott; from neo-natal care to adolescence. The contributors take into account issues such as fostering and adoption, vital scrutiny of the role of the family, and presentation of children in the media while all the time asking the salient question, "What is a child?"

Secret Spaces of Childhood

Secret Spaces of Childhood PDF Author: Elizabeth N. Goodenough
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472026003
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Whether it's real or imaginary, every child has a secret space, and this remarkable book explores them all. For some it's a treehouse or a hidden spot beneath a bush; for others it's a private psychic refuge--a favorite book, or a dollhouse that becomes a stage for a young imagination. As the more than four dozen pieces collected here reveal, such spaces play a key role in a child's development and retain a symbolic power that resonates throughout our adult lives. No reader will put this book down without experiencing a rush of familiar memories and new insights into that bygone world. Poet Diane Ackerman evokes that "parallel universe behind the eyes / which no one shared, or dare discover"; Paul Brodeur recalls the "fort" where he and his brother defended Cape Cod against invaders in World War II; Nobelist Wole Soyinka offers a poignant verse portrait of Africa's lost children; and Paul West remembers youthful encounters with his eccentric neighbors Edith and Osbert Sitwell. Elsewhere, Robert Coles summons up memories of his first years as a doctor and a wise young patient who taught him a lesson he has never forgotten, and Mary Galbraith shows how childhood loss is transformed into art in Ludwig Bemelmans's classic Madeline. And these are just a few of the gems in a treasury that includes Anne Frank, the controversial photographs of Sally Mann and the crudely eloquent drawings of young South African refugees, clinical case studies and profoundly personal imagery. A perceptive, thought-provoking work for general readers, Secret Spaces of Childhood opens a wonderful window on the world of the young. Elizabeth Goodenough is Lecturer in Comparative Literature, the Residential College, University of Michigan.

Fictions of Childhood

Fictions of Childhood PDF Author: Marjorie Salvodon
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739118290
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Fictions of Childhood analyzes identity from the perspective of child/adolescent narrators and protagonists using the works of Nina Bouraoui, Linda Lê, and Gisèle Pineau. This theme is studied in French narratives that bring to the fore questions of the power imbalances in both the sociological context of the family and the larger geopolitical context of French colonialism.

Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel

Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel PDF Author: Sandra Dinter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000692051
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Since the 1980s novels about childhood for adults have been a booming genre within the contemporary British literary market. Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel offers the first comprehensive study of this literary trend. Assembling analyses of key works by Ian McEwan, Doris Lessing, P. D. James, Nick Hornby, Sarah Moss and Stephen Kelman and situating them in their cultural and political contexts, Sandra Dinter uncovers both the reasons for the current popularity of such fiction and the theoretical shift that distinguishes it from earlier literary epochs. The book’s central argument is that the contemporary English novel draws on the constructivist paradigm shift that revolutionised the academic study of childhood several decades ago. Contemporary works of fiction, Dinter argues, depart from the notion of childhood as a naturally given phase of life and examine the agents, interests and conflicts involved in its cultural production. Dinter also considers the limits of this new theoretical impetus, observing that authors and scholars alike, even when they claim to conceive of childhood as a construct, do not always give up on the idea of its ‘natural’ core. Accordingly, this book reconstructs how the English novel between the 1980s and the 2010s oscillates between an acknowledgment of constructivism and an endorsement of childhood as the last irrevocable quintessence of humanity. In doing so, it successfully extends the literary and cultural history of childhood to the immediate present.

Childhood Beyond Pathology

Childhood Beyond Pathology PDF Author: Lisa Farley
Publisher: Suny Series, Transforming Subj
ISBN: 9781438470900
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Brings psychoanalytic concepts to the notion of childhood development with a keen eye to discussions of social justice and human dignity.

Children in Culture, Revisited

Children in Culture, Revisited PDF Author: K. Lesnik-Oberstein
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230307094
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Children in Culture, Revisited follows on from the first volume, Children in Culture , and is composed of a range of chapters, newly written for this collection, which offer further fully inter- and multidisciplinary considerations of childhood as a culturally and historically constructed identity rather than a constant psycho-biological entity.

Childhood and Markets

Childhood and Markets PDF Author: Lydia Martens
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137315032
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This book explores how young children and new families are located in the consumer world of affluent societies. The author assesses the way in which the value of infants and monetary value in markets are realized together, and examines how the meanings of childhood are enacted in the practices, narratives and materialities of contemporary markets. These meanings formulate what is important in the care of young children, creating moralities that impact not only on new parents, but also circumscribe the possibilities for monetary value creation. Three main understandings of early childhood - those of love, protection and purification - and their interrelationships are covered, and illustrated with examples including food, feeding tools, nappies, travel systems and toys. The book concludes by re-examining the relationship between adulthood and the cultural value of young children, and by discussing the implications of the ways markets address young children, also examines the realities of older children in consumer culture. Childhood and Markets will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, childhood studies, anthropology, cultural studies, media studies, business studies and marketing.

The Child in Film

The Child in Film PDF Author: Karen Lury
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857732226
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Ghastly and ghostly children, 'dirty little white girls', the child as witness and as victim, have always played an important part in the history of cinema, as have child performers themselves. In exploring the disruptive power of the child in films made for an adult audience across popular films, including "Taxi Driver" and Japanese horror, and 'art-house' productions like "Mirror" and "Pan's Labyrinth", Karen Lury investigates why the figure of the child has such a significant impact on the visual aspects and storytelling potential of cinema.Lury's main argument is that the child as a liminal yet powerful agent has allowed filmmakers to play adventurously with cinema's formal conventions - with far-reaching consequences. In particular, she reveals how a child's relationship to time allows it to disturb and question conventional master-narratives. She explores too the investment in the child actor and expression of child sexuality, as well as how confining and conservative existing assumptions can be in terms of commonly held beliefs as to who children 'really are'.

Philosophy in Children's Literature

Philosophy in Children's Literature PDF Author: Peter R. Costello
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739168231
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
This book allows philosophers, literary theorists, and education specialists to come together to offer a series of readings on works of children's literature. Each of their readings is focused on pairing a particular, popular picture book or a chapter book with philosophical texts or themes. The book has three sections--the first, on picturebooks; the second, on chapter books; and the third, on two sets of paired readings of two very popular picturebooks. By means of its three sections, the book sets forth as its goal to show how philosophy can be helpful in reappraising books aimed at children from early childhood on. Particularly in the third section, the book emphasizes how philosophy can help to multiply the type of interpretative stances that are possible when readers listen again to what they thought they knew so well. The kinds of questions this book raises are the following: How are children's books already anticipating or articulating philosophical problems and discussions? How does children's literature work by means of philosophical puzzles or language games? What do children's books reveal about the existential situation the child reader faces? In posing and answering these kinds of questions, the readings within the book thus intersect with recent, developing scholarship in children's literature studies as well as in the psychology and philosophy of childhood.