Who were the Harry Potters of the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth century? In this course, we will study children’s texts that achieved such huge popular acclaim that many of them continue to be refashioned into new forms—films, musicals, graphic novels—to this day. Focusing on famous characters such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Barrie’s Peter Pan, and Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, we will read, watch, or listen to multiple versions of their adventures, in order to explore how the representation of these intensely appealing children shifts over time and across genres.
