Books in the Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present series

By analysing the competing discourses within girls' periodicals, this book demonstrates how they were able to frame feminine behaviour in ways that both reinforced and redefined the changing role of girls in nineteenth-century society while also allowing girl readers the opportunity to respond to these definitions.

Taking up the various conceptions of heroism that are conjured in the Harry Potter series, this collection examines the ways fictional heroism in the twenty-first century challenges the idealized forms of a somewhat simplistic masculinity associated with genres like the epic, romance and classic adventure story. The collection''s three sections address broad issues related to genre, Harry Potter''s development as the central heroic character and the question of who qualifies as a hero in the Harry Potter series. Among the topics are Harry Potter as both epic and postmodern hero, the series as a modern-day example of psychomachia, the series'' indebtedness to the Gothic tradition, Harry''s development in the first six film adaptations, Harry Potter and the idea of the English gentleman, Hermione Granger''s explicitly female version of heroism, adult role models in Harry Potter, and the complex depictions of heroism exhibited by the series'' minor characters. Together, the essays suggest that the Harry Potter novels rely on established generic, moral and popular codes to develop new and genuine ways of expressing what a globalized world has applauded as ethically exemplary models of heroism based on responsibility, courage, humility and kindness.

Offering a wide range of critical perspectives, this volume explores the moral, ideological and literary landscapes in fiction and other cultural productions aimed at young adults. Topics examined are adolescence and the natural world, nationhood and identity, the mapping of sexual awakening onto postcolonial awareness, hybridity and trans-racial romance, transgressive sexuality, the sexually abused adolescent body, music as a code for identity formation, representations of adolescent emotion, and what neuroscience research tells us about young adult readers, writers, and young artists. Throughout, the volume explores the ways writers configure their adolescent protagonists as awkward, alienated, rebellious and unhappy, so that the figure of the young adult becomes a symbol of wider political and societal concerns. Examining in depth significant contemporary novels, including those by Julia Alvarez, Stephenie Meyer, Tamora Pierce, Malorie Blackman and Meg Rosoff, among others, Contemporary Adolescent Literature and Culture illuminates the ways in which the cultural constructions ''adolescent'' and ''young adult fiction'' share some of society''s most painful anxieties and contradictions.

Taking up the understudied relationship between the cultural history of childhood and media studies, this volume traces twentieth-century migrations of the child-savage analogy from colonial into postcolonial discourse across a wide range of old and new media. Older and newer media such as films, textbooks, children''s literature, periodicals, comic strips, children''s radio, and toys are deeply implicated in each other through ongoing ''remediation'', meaning that they continually mimic, absorb and transform each other''s representational formats, stylistic features, and content. Media theory thus confronts the cultural history of childhood with the challenge of re-thinking change in childhood imaginaries as transformation-through-repetition patterns, rather than as rise-shine-decline sequences. This volume takes up this challenge, demonstrating that one historical epoch may well accommodate diverging childhood repertoires, which are recycled again and again as they are played out across a whole gamut of different media formats in the course of time.

Drawing on examples from British world expressions of Christianity, this collection further greater understanding of religion as a critical element of modern children¿s and young people¿s history.

This volume traces twentieth-century migrations of the child-savage analogy from colonial into postcolonial discourse across a wide range of old and new media, including films, textbooks, children's literature, periodicals, comic strips, children's radio, toys, and digital games. In particular, the collection takes up the important questions of how the trope of the child savage is fleshed out from one medium to another and what cultural, social, and political functions it fulfills on diverse occasions.

Respected as a writer by critics and commentators, Hesba Stretton (1832-1911) was a vigorous campaigner for the rights of oppressed minorities and a founding member of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This book examines Stretton's writing for children and adults.

Focusing on dystopian novels featuring a female protagonist, this collection explores the liminal nature of a young woman contending with societal and governmental threats at the same time that she is navigating the treacherous waters of young adulthood. Essays on writers that include Libba Bray, Scott Westerfeld, Tahereh Mafi, Veronica Roth.

Examining the experiences of very young 'native' children in three British colonies, the authors focus on the shared as well as unique aspects of the colonial experience in infant schools across the northern part of the North Island of New Zealand, Upper Canada, and British-controlled India. Informed by archival research.

Conceived to explore the relationship between children's vernacular play cultures and their media-based play, this collection challenges two popular misconceptions: that children's play is dying out and that it is threatened by contemporary media such as television and computer games.

Pearson examines British children's literature during the period widely regarded as a 'second golden age', giving particular attention to children's book publishing. Making use of archival resources, she explores the careers of influential children's book editors.

Reflects the advanced developments in Disney and Disney-Pixar animation such as the apocalyptic tale of earth's failed ecosystem, "WALL-E". This title examines a range of Disney's feature animations, in which images of wild nature are central to the narrative.

Conceived to explore the relationship between children's vernacular play cultures and their media-based play, this collection challenges two popular misconceptions: that children's play is dying out and that it is threatened by contemporary media such as television and computer games.

How did the 'flat' characters of eighteenth-century children's literature become 'round' by the mid-nineteenth? While previous critics have pointed to literary Romanticism for an explanation, this book argues that this shift can be understood by looking to the discipline of history.

Adopts a cultural studies framework to explore the range of scholarly concerns awakened by Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" novels and their filmic adaptations. This title examines "Twilight's" debts to its predecessors in young adult, vampire, and romance literature; and issues in fan and critical reception in the United States and Korea.

Bringing together children's literature scholars from China and the United States, this collection provides an introduction to the scope and goals of a field characterized by active but also distinctive scholarship in two countries with very different rhetorical traditions.

States that the 19th-century representations of childhood and adolescence - in paintings, various forms of visual culture, and in diverse written discourses of the period - are critical for understanding modernity. This book contains chapters structured according to such themes as parent-child relations, modes of discipline, work, and others.

In her exploration of China in British children's literature, Shih-Wen Chen considers travelogue storybooks, historical novels, adventure stories and periodicals to demonstrate the diversity of images of China in the Victorian and Edwardian imagination.

Argues that the social construction of the public schoolboy, a figure made ubiquitous by a huge body of fictional, biographical, and journalistic work, had a role to play in the development of social perceptions of adolescence and in forming ideas of how young people should be educated to become citizens in an age of increasing democracy.

Offers an interpretive framework for understanding the specific formulation of child cruelty popularized by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in the late nineteenth century. This book examines the emergence of child abuse as a subject of legal and social concern in England.

Despite Kipling's popularity as an author and his standing as a politically controversial figure, much of his work has remained relatively unexamined due to its characterization as 'children's literature'. This book challenges the division between 'children's' and 'adult' literature.

Offering a wide range of critical perspectives, this volume explores the moral, ideological and literary landscapes in fiction and other cultural productions aimed at young adults. It illuminates the ways in which the cultural constructions 'adolescent' and 'young adult fiction' share some of society's most painful anxieties and contradictions.

Examines the ways fictional heroism in the twenty-first century challenges the idealized forms of a somewhat simplistic masculinity associated with genres like the epic, romance and classic adventure story.

Using turn-of-the-century Melbourne as a prime historical location for investigating the relationship between a discourse of youth, youthful experience and the shaping of new urban spaces, Simon Sleight examines the uses of public space for purposes of play, street work, consumerism, courtship, gang-related activities and civic parades.