02 CAC MTH1 08216 POWELL MU-111
Children's Literature and Literary Theory
This course will examine classic texts in children’s literature through modern and contemporary literary and cultural theory. What can queer, Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, poststructuralist, and / or postcolonial approaches reveal about fairy tales by the Grimms brothers and Hans Christian Anderson, or Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz, and Wind in the Willows? What do those novels, and recent adaptations and revisions of them, indicate about society’s changing attitudes toward childhood, the nature of play, and the role of literature in society? Course readings will be taken from a variety of time periods and genres and will include well known children’s classics, central texts in literary theory, and contemporary, avant garde adaptations of fairy tales.
