Academic Calendar 2015/2016 - Children's Literature

ENGL 2445  Children's Literature

Prerequisites:

Three credits of 1000 level ENGL (excluding ENGL 1551 and ENGL 1552).

Hours:

Two hours of lecture and one hour of seminar per week.

Credits:

6

Description:

This course conducts a critical/historical survey of works in English composed for, or appropriated by, children. Selections may vary annually but each year will include both classic and less familiar texts, and examples of dominant and suppressed or subversive works. Through the study of the course texts the major genres, from the street song to the illustrated book, will be illuminated. The chronological organization will permit the treating of texts in their contexts, and facilitate the tracing of the influence of shifting ideas about childhood and other aspects of ideology on the works reflecting and constructing them. Formal literary analysis will be complemented by a variety of critical approaches that will enable the class to explore relevant theoretical issues and to comprehend the cultural and psychological work being done by specific texts. This is not a teaching methods course, but will provide an excellent foundation for such a study.