Writing Childhoods

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This team-taught module will explore the multiple ways in which literature has engaged with ideas of childhood across several centuries. Through an examination of mainstream/adult literature about childhood experience as well as literature written specifically for children this module will introduce students to a variety of expressions and cultural constructions of childhood in a diverse range of texts. The module will examine texts through the lens of 'childhood' - with a particular focus on issues of power, voice, and agency - and students will be encouraged to engage with subject areas such as Romanticism, Evil and Innocence, Growing Up, The 'Victorian' Child, The Narrator's Voice, Life-Writing, Families, Agency and Rebellion, Illustration, Gender, Race, Ability, Class and Sexuality.