Childhood And Innocence In American Culture

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Racial Innocence

Robin Bernstein
Racial Innocence Book PDF

Author : Robin Bernstein
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2011-12-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780814789780

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Racial Innocence by Robin Bernstein Pdf

2013 Book Award Winner from the International Research Society in Children's Literature 2012 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2012 Winner of the Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies Association 2012 Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association 2012 Honorable Mention, Distinguished Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series Beginning in the mid nineteenth century in America, childhood became synonymous with innocence—a reversal of the previously-dominant Calvinist belief that children were depraved, sinful creatures. As the idea of childhood innocence took hold, it became racialized: popular culture constructed white children as innocent and vulnerable while excluding black youth from these qualities. Actors, writers, and visual artists then began pairing white children with African American adults and children, thus transferring the quality of innocence to a variety of racial-political projects—a dynamic that Robin Bernstein calls “racial innocence.” This phenomenon informed racial formation from the mid nineteenth century through the early twentieth. Racial Innocence takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which Bernstein analyzes as “scriptive things” that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how “innocence” gradually became the exclusive province of white children—until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself. Check out the author's blog for the book here.

Childhood and Innocence in American Culture

James M. Curtis
Childhood and Innocence in American Culture Book PDF

Author : James M. Curtis
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 183 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781666940268

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Childhood and Innocence in American Culture by James M. Curtis Pdf

This collection approaches the deconstruction of American "childhood" from a wide variety of critical, interdisciplinary lenses and gestures toward the construction of a more realistic, twenty-first century definition of "childhood"--one which is defined by the real-life struggles of childhood and not by romanticized notions of "innocence."

Childhood and Innocence in American Culture

James M. Curtis
Childhood and Innocence in American Culture Book PDF

Author : James M. Curtis
Publisher : Children and Youth in Popular Culture
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : Children
ISBN : 1666940259

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Childhood and Innocence in American Culture by James M. Curtis Pdf

This collection approaches the deconstruction of American "childhood" from a wide variety of critical, interdisciplinary lenses and gestures toward the construction of a more realistic, twenty-first century definition of "childhood"-one which is defined by the real-life strugg...

The Cute and the Cool

Gary Cross
The Cute and the Cool Book PDF

Author : Gary Cross
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2004-04-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0195348133

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The Cute and the Cool by Gary Cross Pdf

The twentieth century was, by any reckoning, the age of the child in America. Today, we pay homage at the altar of childhood, heaping endless goods on the young, reveling in memories of a more innocent time, and finding solace in the softly backlit memories of our earliest years. We are, the proclamation goes, just big kids at heart. And, accordingly, we delight in prolonging and inflating the childhood experiences of our offspring. In images of the naughty but nice Buster Brown and the coquettish but sweet Shirley Temple, Americans at mid-century offered up a fantastic world of treats, toys, and stories, creating a new image of the child as "cute." Holidays such as Christmas and Halloween became blockbuster affairs, vehicles to fuel the bedazzled and wondrous innocence of the adorable child. All this, Gary Cross illustrates, reflected the preoccupations of a more gentle and affluent culture, but it also served to liberate adults from their rational and often tedious worlds of work and responsibility. But trouble soon entered paradise. The "cute" turned into "cool" as children, following their parental example, embraced the gift of fantasy and unrestrained desire to rebel against the saccharine excesses of wondrous innocence in deliberate pursuit of the anti-cute. Movies, comic books, and video games beckoned to children with the allures of an often violent, sexualized, and increasingly harsh worldview. Unwitting and resistant accomplices to this commercial transformation of childhood, adults sought-over and over again, in repeated and predictable cycles-to rein in these threats in a largely futile jeremiad to preserve the old order. Thus, the cute child-deliberately manufactured and cultivated--has ironically fostered a profoundly troubled ambivalence toward youth and child rearing today. Expertly weaving his way through the cultural artifacts, commercial currents, and parenting anxieties of the previous century, Gary Cross offers a vibrant and entirely fresh portrait of the forces that have defined American childhood.

The Children's Culture Reader

Henry Jenkins
The Children s Culture Reader Book PDF

Author : Henry Jenkins
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 542 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 1998-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0814742319

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The Children's Culture Reader by Henry Jenkins Pdf

A reader on children's culture

Erotic Innocence

James Russell Kincaid
Erotic Innocence Book PDF

Author : James Russell Kincaid
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 0822321939

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Erotic Innocence by James Russell Kincaid Pdf

Explores the current preoccupation with child molesting and children's sexuality and the ways that this degree of fascination is itself suspect.

Kids' Media Culture

Marsha Kinder
Kids Media Culture Book PDF

Author : Marsha Kinder
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 0822323710

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Kids' Media Culture by Marsha Kinder Pdf

A collection of feminist cultural studies essays on children's television.

Little Cold Warriors

Victoria M. Grieve
Little Cold Warriors Book PDF

Author : Victoria M. Grieve
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2018-06-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190675707

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Little Cold Warriors by Victoria M. Grieve Pdf

Both conservative and liberal Baby Boomers have romanticized the 1950s as an age of innocence--of pickup ball games and Howdy Doody, when mom stayed home and the economy boomed. These nostalgic narratives obscure many other histories of postwar childhood, one of which has more in common with the war years and the sixties, when children were mobilized and politicized by the U.S. government, private corporations, and individual adults to fight the Cold War both at home and abroad. Children battled communism in its various guises on television, the movies, and comic books; they practiced safety drills, joined civil preparedness groups, and helped to build and stock bomb shelters in the backyard. Children collected coins for UNICEF, exchanged art with other children around the world, prepared for nuclear war through the Boy and Girl Scouts, raised funds for Radio Free Europe, sent clothing to refugee children, and donated books to restock the diminished library shelves of war-torn Europe. Rather than rationing and saving, American children were encouraged to spend and consume in order to maintain the engine of American prosperity. In these capacities, American children functioned as ambassadors, cultural diplomats, and representatives of the United States. Victoria M. Grieve examines this politicized childhood at the peak of the Cold War, and the many ways children and ideas about childhood were pressed into political service. Little Cold Warriors combines approaches from childhood studies and diplomatic history to understand the cultural Cold War through the activities and experiences of young Americans.

Racial Innocence

Robin Bernstein
Racial Innocence Book PDF

Author : Robin Bernstein
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : History
ISBN : 9780814787090

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Racial Innocence by Robin Bernstein Pdf

"In Racial Innocence, Robin Bernstein argues that the concept of "childhood innocence" has been central to U.S. racial formation since the mid-nineteenth century. Children--white ones imbued with innocence, black ones excluded from it, and others of color erased by it--figured pivotally in sharply divergent racial agendas from slavery and abolition to antiblack violence and the early civil rights movement. Bernstein takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which she analyzes as "scriptive things" that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom's Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how "innocence" gradually became the exclusive province of white children--until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself." -- Publisher's description.

Children and Consumer Culture in American Society

Lisa Jacobson
Children and Consumer Culture in American Society Book PDF

Author : Lisa Jacobson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2007-12-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780313015021

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Children and Consumer Culture in American Society by Lisa Jacobson Pdf

Children play a crucial role in today's economy. According to some estimates, children spend or influence the spending of up to $500 billion annually. Journalists, sociologists, and media reformers often present mass marketing toward children as a recent fall from grace, but the roots of children's consumerism — and the anxieties over it — date back more than a century. Throughout the twentieth century, a wide variety of groups — including advertisers, retailers, parents, social reformers, child experts, public schools, and children themselves — helped to socialize children as consumers and struggled to define the proper boundaries of the market. The essays and documents in this volume illuminate the historical circumstances and cultural conflicts that helped to produce, shape, and legitimize children's consumerism. Focusing primarily on the period from the Gilded Age through the twentieth century, this book examines how and why children and adolescents acquired new economic roles as consumers, and how these new roles both reflected and produced dynamic changes in family life and the culture of capitalism. This volume also reveals how children and adolescents have used consumer goods to define personal identities and peer relationships — sometimes in opposition to marketers' expectations and parental intentions.

Stealing Innocence

NA NA,Henry A. Giroux
Stealing Innocence Book PDF

Author : NA NA,Henry A. Giroux
Publisher : Springer
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2016-04-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781137109163

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Stealing Innocence by NA NA,Henry A. Giroux Pdf

Continuing his ongoing social critique, Henry Giroux now looks at the way corporate culture is encroaching on the lives of children by exploring three myths prevalent in our society: that the triumph of democracy is related to the triumph of the market; that children are unaffected by power and politics; that teaching and learning are no longer linked to improving the world. Looking at childhood beauty pageants, school shootings and the omnipresent nihilistic chic of advertising, Giroux paints a disturbing picture of the world surrounding our children. Ultimately, he turns to the work of Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire and Stuart Hall for lessons about how we can reinstitute a realistic childhood for our children.

Growing Up with America

Emily A. Murphy
Growing Up with America Book PDF

Author : Emily A. Murphy
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2020-09-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780820357799

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Growing Up with America by Emily A. Murphy Pdf

When D. H. Lawrence wrote his classic study of American literature, he claimed that youth was the “true myth” of America. Beginning from this assertion, Emily A. Murphy traces the ways that youth began to embody national hopes and fears at a time when the United States was transitioning to a new position of world power. In the aftermath of World War II, persistent calls for the nation to “grow up” and move beyond innocence became common, and the child that had long served as a symbol of the nation was suddenly discarded in favor of a rebellious adolescent. This era marked the beginning of a crisis of identity, where literary critics and writers both sought to redefine U.S. national identity in light of the nation’s new global position. The figure of the adolescent is central to an understanding of U.S. national identity, both past and present, and of the cultural forms (e.g., literature) that participate in the ongoing process of representing the diverse experiences of Americans. In tracing the evolution of this youthful figure, Murphy revisits classics of American literature, including J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, alongside contemporary bestsellers. The influence of the adolescent on some of America’s greatest writers demonstrates the endurance of the myth that Lawrence first identified in 1923 and signals a powerful link between youth and one of the most persistent questions for the nation: What does it mean to be an American?

Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood

Crystal Lynn Webster
Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood Book PDF

Author : Crystal Lynn Webster
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2021-04-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9781469663241

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Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood by Crystal Lynn Webster Pdf

For all that is known about the depth and breadth of African American history, we still understand surprisingly little about the lives of African American children, particularly those affected by northern emancipation. But hidden in institutional records, school primers and penmanship books, biographical sketches, and unpublished documents is a rich archive that reveals the social and affective worlds of northern Black children. Drawing evidence from the urban centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Crystal Webster's innovative research yields a powerful new history of African American childhood before the Civil War. Webster argues that young African Americans were frequently left outside the nineteenth century's emerging constructions of both race and childhood. They were marginalized in the development of schooling, ignored in debates over child labor, and presumed to lack the inherent innocence ascribed to white children. But Webster shows that Black children nevertheless carved out physical and social space for play, for learning, and for their own aspirations. Reading her sources against the grain, Webster reveals a complex reality for antebellum Black children. Lacking societal status, they nevertheless found meaningful agency as historical actors, making the most of the limited freedoms and possibilities they enjoyed.

Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia

Elisabeth Wesseling
Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia Book PDF

Author : Elisabeth Wesseling
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2017-09-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317068464

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Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia by Elisabeth Wesseling Pdf

While Romantic-era concepts of childhood nostalgia have been understood as the desire to retrieve the ephemeral mindset of the child, this collection proposes that the emergence of digital media has altered this reflective gesture towards the past. No longer is childhood nostalgia reliant on individual memory. Rather, it is associated through contemporary convergence culture with the commodities of one's youth as they are recycled from one media platform to another. Essays in the volume's first section identify recurrent patterns in the recycling, adaptation, and remediation of children's toys and media, providing context for section two's exploration of childhood nostalgia in memorial practices. In these essays, the contributors suggest that childhood toys and media play a role in the construction of s the imagined communities (Benedict Anderson) that define nations and nationalism. Eschewing the dichotomy between restorative and reflexive nostalgia, the essays in section three address the ethics of nostalgia in terms of child agency and depictions of childhood. In a departure from the notion that childhood nostalgia is the exclusive prerogative of narrative fiction, section four looks for its traces in the child sciences. Pushing against nostalgia's persistent associations with wishful thinking, false memories, and distortion, this collection suggests nostalgia is never categorically good or bad in itself, but owes its benefits or defects to the ways in which it is brought to bear on the representation of children and childhood.

New Directions in Print Culture Studies

Jesse W. Schwartz,Daniel Worden
New Directions in Print Culture Studies Book PDF

Author : Jesse W. Schwartz,Daniel Worden
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2022-06-16
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781501359743

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New Directions in Print Culture Studies by Jesse W. Schwartz,Daniel Worden Pdf

New Directions in Print Culture Studies features new methods and approaches to cultural and literary history that draw on periodicals, print culture, and material culture, thus revising and rewriting what we think we know about the aesthetic, cultural, and social history of transnational America. The unifying questions posed and answered in this book are methodological: How can we make material, archival objects meaningful? How can we engage and contest dominant conceptions of aesthetic, historical, and literary periods? How can we present archival material in ways that make it accessible to other scholars and students? What theoretical commitments does a focus on material objects entail? New Directions in Print Culture Studies brings together leading scholars to address the methodological, historical, and theoretical commitments that emerge from studying how periodicals, books, images, and ideas circulated from the 19th century to the present. Reaching beyond national boundaries, the essays in this book focus on the different materials and archives we can use to rewrite literary history in ways that highlight not a canon of “major” literary works, but instead the networks, dialogues, and tensions that define print cultures in various moments and movements.