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Because childhood is not only culturally but also legally and biologically understood as a period of dependency, it has been easy to dismiss children as historical actors. By putting children at the center of our thinking about American history, Karen Sánchez-Eppler recognizes the important part childhood played in nineteenth-century American culture and what this involvement entailed for children themselves. Dependent States examines the ties between children's literacy training and the growing cultural prestige of the novel; the way children functioned rhetorically in reform literature to enforce social norms; the way the risks of death to children shored up emotional power in the home; h...
"Extremely well researched, finely nuanced, and clearly written. . . . Her analyses are stunning. . . . This study juxtaposes consideration of non-canonical works with canonical works to produce remarkable insights about the politics of the body during an intensely political period of the nineteenth century."--Barbara Christian, author of "Black Women Novelists" "A superb contribution. . . a highly important study that will make its mark on the fields of American literary and cultural studies. In addition, Sanchez-Eppler performs an extremely valuable political service in exposing the 'asymmetries' between white and Black women in feminist-abolitionist discourse and the manner in which 'mome...
49 original essays on the essential terms and concepts in children's literature
In this striking study of the pre–Civil War literary imagination, Karen Sánchez-Eppler charts how bodily difference came to be recognized as a central problem for both political and literary expression. Her readings of sentimental anti-slavery fiction, slave narratives, and the lyric poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson demonstrate how these texts participated in producing a new model of personhood—one in which the racially distinct and physically constrained slave body converged alongside the sexually distinct and domestically circumscribed female body. Moving from the public domain of abolitionist politics to the privacy of lyric poetry, Sánchez-Eppler argues that attention to ...
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The first interdisciplinary contribution to studies about Asian Americans in New England
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 forma...
He was a veteran of the Greek War of Independence, a fervent abolitionist, and the founder of both the Perkins School for the Blind and the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Children. Married to Julia Ward Howe, author of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," he counted among his friends Senator Charles Summer, public school advocate Horace Mann, and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A committed reformer, Howe believed in the perfectibility of human beings and spoke out in favor of progressive services for disabled Americans. He embraced a notion of manliness that included heroism under fire but also compassion for the underdog and the oppressed. Though hardly a man without flaws and failures, he nevertheless represented the optimism that characterized much of antebellum American reform. The first full-length biography of Howe in more than fifty years, The Manliest Man offers an original view of his personal life, his association with social causes of his time, and his efforts to shape those causes in ways that allowed for the greater inclusion of devalued people in the mainstream of American life. Book jacket.
Children's Literature Has always been produced by radicals and reformers. Critical analysis of their views and methods is a fascinating and increasingly contested new field. Bringing together a range of perspectives from established academics, well-known children's writers and students of children's literature, this collection provides an unusual and challenging read. Whether you are interested in how writers present the lives of working children in nineteenth-century America, how picture books challenge and subvert the political stance of contemporary Australia, or how issues in Kenya or Palestine can become the material of children's fiction, there are plenty of ideas to explore. --
Visual artists and poets respond to Dickinson's life and work