Childhood And Innocence In American Culture

Download Childhood And Innocence In American Culture full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Childhood And Innocence In American Culture ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Racial Innocence

Author : Robin Bernstein
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814787088
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Racial Innocence by : Robin Bernstein

Download or read book Racial Innocence written by Robin Bernstein and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-12 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Outstanding Book Award, Association for Theatre in Higher Education Winner, Grace Abbott Best Book Award, Society for the History of Children and Youth Winner, Book Award, Children's Literature Association Winner, Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize, New England American Studies Association Winner, IRSCL Award, International Research Society for Children's Literature Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize, American Studies Association Honorable Mention, Book Award, Society for the Study of American Women Writers Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series 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. Check out the author's blog for the book here.

The Cute and the Cool

Author : Gary Cross
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195348132
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (481 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Cute and the Cool by : Gary Cross

Download or read book The Cute and the Cool written by Gary Cross and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-04-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Erotic Innocence

Author : James Russell Kincaid
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822321934
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (219 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Erotic Innocence by : James Russell Kincaid

Download or read book Erotic Innocence written by James Russell Kincaid and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the current preoccupation with child molesting and children's sexuality and the ways that this degree of fascination is itself suspect.

The Children's Culture Reader

Author : Henry Jenkins
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814742319
Total Pages : 542 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Children's Culture Reader by : Henry Jenkins

Download or read book The Children's Culture Reader written by Henry Jenkins and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reader on children's culture

Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood

Author : Crystal Lynn Webster
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469663244
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood by : Crystal Lynn Webster

Download or read book Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood written by Crystal Lynn Webster and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

An American Childhood

Author : Annie Dillard
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 006184313X
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (618 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis An American Childhood by : Annie Dillard

Download or read book An American Childhood written by Annie Dillard and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An American Childhood more than takes the reader's breath away. It consumes you as you consume it, so that, when you have put down this book, you're a different person, one who has virtually experienced another childhood." — Chicago Tribune A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s. Dedicated to her parents—from whom she learned a love of language and the importance of following your deepest passions—Dillard's brilliant memoir will resonate with anyone who has ever recalled with longing playing baseball on an endless summer afternoon, caring for a pristine rock collection, or knowing in your heart that a book was written just for you.

Stealing Innocence

Author : NA NA
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137109165
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (371 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Stealing Innocence by : NA NA

Download or read book Stealing Innocence written by NA NA and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Little Cold Warriors

Author : Victoria M. Grieve
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190675705
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Little Cold Warriors by : Victoria M. Grieve

Download or read book Little Cold Warriors written by Victoria M. Grieve and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-21 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Huck’s Raft

Author : Steven Mintz
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674736478
Total Pages : 472 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (747 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Huck’s Raft by : Steven Mintz

Download or read book Huck’s Raft written by Steven Mintz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-30 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like Huck’s raft, the experience of American childhood has been both adventurous and terrifying. For more than three centuries, adults have agonized over raising children while children have followed their own paths to development and expression. Now, Steven Mintz gives us the first comprehensive history of American childhood encompassing both the child’s and the adult’s tumultuous early years of life. Underscoring diversity through time and across regions, Mintz traces the transformation of children from the sinful creatures perceived by Puritans to the productive workers of nineteenth-century farms and factories, from the cosseted cherubs of the Victorian era to the confident consumers of our own. He explores their role in revolutionary upheaval, westward expansion, industrial growth, wartime mobilization, and the modern welfare state. Revealing the harsh realities of children’s lives through history—the rigors of physical labor, the fear of chronic ailments, the heartbreak of premature death—he also acknowledges the freedom children once possessed to discover their world as well as themselves. Whether at work or play, at home or school, the transition from childhood to adulthood has required generations of Americans to tackle tremendously difficult challenges. Today, adults impose ever-increasing demands on the young for self-discipline, cognitive development, and academic achievement, even as the influence of the mass media and consumer culture has grown. With a nod to the past, Mintz revisits an alternative to the goal-driven realities of contemporary childhood. An odyssey of psychological self-discovery and growth, this book suggests a vision of childhood that embraces risk and freedom—like the daring adventure on Huck’s raft.

Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King

Author : Debbie Olson
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793600139
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King by : Debbie Olson

Download or read book Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King written by Debbie Olson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique and timely collection examines childhood and the child character throughout Stephen King’s works, from his early novels and short stories, through film adaptations, to his most recent publications. King’s use of child characters within the framework of horror (or of horrific childhood) raises questions about adult expectations of children, childhood, the American family, child agency, and the nature of fear and terror for (or by) children. The ways in which King presents, complicates, challenges, or terrorizes children and notions of childhood provide a unique lens through which to examine American culture, including both adult and social anxieties about children and childhood across the decades of King’s works.

Saving Childhood

Author : Michael Medved
Publisher : Harper Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 9780060932244
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (322 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Saving Childhood by : Michael Medved

Download or read book Saving Childhood written by Michael Medved and published by Harper Paperbacks. This book was released on 1999-08-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saving Childhood offers parents and grandparents practical strategies to cope with a society that seems perversely determined to frighten and corrupt its young. Cultural critic and popular radio host Michael Medved and his wife, psychologist Diane Medved, argue that in a mistaken effort to curb problems plaguing its youth, our culture has changed from protecting childhood as a precious time of growth to hammering even the smallest youngsters with a grim, harsh, and menacing view of the world. The Medveds systematically present unassailable scientific evidence, moving anecdotes, and personal experiences of raising their three young children to explain the attack from four primary directions--media, schools, peers, and even well-intentioned parents themselves. In a unique analysis the Medveds define innocence not as ignorance but as the result of three components--security, a sense of wonder and optimism. They empower parents and all who care about childhood with concrete, easily accomplished means to fend off the assault, as well as advice for handling hurdles such as the Internet, television, peer pressure, and the plague of pessimism. Saving Childhood enables us to restore and maintain for our children imagination, confidence, and hope for the future.

Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood

Author : Kerry H. Robinson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136304169
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (363 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood by : Kerry H. Robinson

Download or read book Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood written by Kerry H. Robinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood provides a critical examination of the way we regulate children’s access to certain knowledge and explores how this regulation contributes to the construction of childhood, to children’s vulnerability and to the constitution of the ‘good’ future citizen in developed countries. Through this controversial analysis, Kerry H. Robinson critically engages with the relationships between childhood, sexuality, innocence, moral panic, censorship and notions of citizenship. This book highlights how the strict regulation of children’s knowledge, often in the name of protection or in the child’s best interest, can ironically, increase children’s prejudice around difference, increase their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, and undermine their abilities to become competent adolescents and adults. Within her work Robinson draws upon empirical research to: provide an overview of the regulation and governance of children’s access to ‘difficult knowledge’, particularly knowledge of sexuality explore and develop Foucault’s work on the relationship between childhood and sexuality identify the impact of these discourses on adults’ understanding of childhood, and the tension that exists between their own perceptions of sexual knowledge, and the perceptions of children reconceptualise children’s education around sexuality. Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood is essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking courses in education, particularly with a focus on early childhood or primary teaching, as well as in other disciplines such as sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies.

The Rage of Innocence

Author : Kristin Henning
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 1524748919
Total Pages : 513 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Rage of Innocence by : Kristin Henning

Download or read book The Rage of Innocence written by Kristin Henning and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant analysis of the foundations of racist policing in America: the day-to-day brutalities, largely hidden from public view, endured by Black youth growing up under constant police surveillance and the persistent threat of physical and psychological abuse "Storytelling that can make people understand the racial inequities of the legal system, and...restore the humanity this system has cruelly stripped from its victims.” —New York Times Book Review Drawing upon twenty-five years of experience representing Black youth in Washington, D.C.’s juvenile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational, manufactured fears of these young people and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children. Henning explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and she details the long-term consequences of racism that they experience at the hands of the police and their vigilante surrogates. She makes clear that unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries, experiment with sex and drugs, and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White America and are denied healthy adolescent development. She examines the criminalization of Black adolescent play and sexuality, and of Black fashion, hair, and music. She limns the effects of police presence in schools and the depth of police-induced trauma in Black adolescents. Especially in the wake of the recent unprecedented, worldwide outrage at racial injustice and inequality, The Rage of Innocence is an essential book for our moment.

Portrayals of Children in Popular Culture

Author : Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 073917956X
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Portrayals of Children in Popular Culture by : Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic

Download or read book Portrayals of Children in Popular Culture written by Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-12-21 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portrayals of Children in Popular Culture: Fleeting Images, edited by Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic and Debbie Olson, is a collection which examines images of “children” and “childhood” in popular culture, including print, online, television shows, and films. The contributors to this volume explore the constructions of “children” and “childhood” rather than actual children or actual childhoods. In the chapters that are concerned with depictions of actual, individual children, the authors investigate how the images of those children conform or “trouble” current notions of what it means to be a child engaged in a contemporary “childhood.” This is a unique volume, because of the academic discourse which is employed—that of “Childhood Studies.” The Childhood Studies scholars represented in this collection utilize an interdisciplinary approach which draws upon various academic fields—their methodologies, theoretical approaches, and scholarly conventions—for the scholarly research in this collection. Together, the contributions to this collection interrogate classic notions of childhood innocence, knowledge, agency, and the fluid position of the signifier “child” within contemporary media forms. These interdisciplinary works function as a testament to the infectiousness of the child image in print, television, and cinematic contexts, and represent a new avenue of discursive scholarship; the questions raised and connections made provide fresh insights and unique perspectives to topics regarding children and childhood and their representation within multiple media platforms. The growing field of Childhood Studies is enriched by the intellectual originality represented by this volume’s authors who ask new questions about the enduring and captivating image of the child.

Innocent Experiments

Author : Rebecca Onion
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469629488
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Innocent Experiments by : Rebecca Onion

Download or read book Innocent Experiments written by Rebecca Onion and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1950s to the digital age, Americans have pushed their children to live science-minded lives, cementing scientific discovery and youthful curiosity as inseparable ideals. In this multifaceted work, historian Rebecca Onion examines the rise of informal children's science education in the twentieth century, from the proliferation of home chemistry sets after World War I to the century-long boom in child-centered science museums. Onion looks at how the United States has increasingly focused its energies over the last century into producing young scientists outside of the classroom. She shows that although Americans profess to believe that success in the sciences is synonymous with good citizenship, this idea is deeply complicated in an era when scientific data is hotly contested and many Americans have a conflicted view of science itself. These contradictions, Onion explains, can be understood by examining the histories of popular science and the development of ideas about American childhood. She shows how the idealized concept of "science" has moved through the public consciousness and how the drive to make child scientists has deeply influenced American culture.

Childhood Beyond Pathology

Author : Lisa Farley
Publisher : Suny Series, Transforming Subj
ISBN 13 : 9781438470900
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (79 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Childhood Beyond Pathology by : Lisa Farley

Download or read book Childhood Beyond Pathology written by Lisa Farley and published by Suny Series, Transforming Subj. This book was released on 2019-01-02 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings psychoanalytic concepts to the notion of childhood development with a keen eye to discussions of social justice and human dignity.

Raising Consumers

Author : Lisa Jacobson
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231113897
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Raising Consumers by : Lisa Jacobson

Download or read book Raising Consumers written by Lisa Jacobson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the present electronic torrent of MTV and teen flicks, Nintendo and Air Jordan advertisements, consumer culture is an unmistakably important--and controversial--dimension of modern childhood. Historians and social commentators have typically assumed that the child consumer became significant during the postwar television age. But the child consumer was already an important phenomenon in the early twentieth century. The family, traditionally the primary institution of child socialization, began to face an array of new competitors who sought to put their own imprint on children's acculturation to consumer capitalism. Advertisers, children's magazine publishers, public schools, child experts, and children's peer groups alternately collaborated with, and competed against, the family in their quest to define children's identities. At stake in these conflicts and collaborations was no less than the direction of American consumer society--would children's consumer training rein in hedonistic excesses or contribute to the spread of hollow, commercial values? Not simply a new player in the economy, the child consumer became a lightning rod for broader concerns about the sanctity of the family and the authority of the market in modern capitalist culture. Lisa Jacobson reveals how changing conceptions of masculinity and femininity shaped the ways Americans understood the virtues and vices of boy and girl consumers--and why boys in particular emerged as the heroes of the new consumer age. She also analyzes how children's own behavior, peer culture, and emotional investment in goods influenced the dynamics of the new consumer culture. Raising Consumers is a provocative examination of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produced and ultimately legitimized a distinctive children's consumer culture in the early twentieth century.