Writings for child-readers are one of the few genres that overtly create the audience to which they’re directed: they aim to create the subjectivity, even the literacy, of their readers. When we study such books, we’re looking simultaneously at the texts as-they-formally-are AND at the concepts of childhood, education, entertainment, development, and play that underlie them. In this half-subject, we read some major texts written for [older] children, written during the 19th and 20th centuries, examining the ideas of childhood behind them. Readings include such classic novels as Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Black Beauty, and Little Women, as well as adventure tales (e.g., Tarzan of the Apes), poems, fairy-tales, nursery rhymes, and visual material. Supplementary readings include texts by Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Maria Montessori, Bruno Bettelheim, and Walter Benjamin.

Note: This is a six-unit half-term subject; its last class meeting is on March 24, 2008.