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This collection approaches the deconstruction of American "childhood" from a wide variety of critical, interdisciplinary lenses and gestures toward the construction of a more realistic, twenty-first century definition of "childhood"-one which is defined by the real-life struggles of childhood and not by romanticized notions of "innocence."
List of contents
Introduction: "The Death of Childhood", James M. Curtis
Part One: Deconstructing 20th Century Childhood
Chapter One: "The Domesticated Adventuress: Dorothy Gale, Ozma of Oz, and the Pitfalls of Princess-hood", Rodney Marcel Fierce
Chapter Two: "'A Place for You': Subjectivity and Representation in The Brownies Book", James M. Curtis
Chapter Three: "Homecoming: Finding (and Losing) the American Child", Rebecca Long
Part Two: Towards a More Postmodern Childhood: Challenging Childhood "Innocence" in the Late 20
th and Early 21
st Century
Chapter Four: 'Growing Up Too Fast, Too Soon': The Child Prodigy in Late Postmodernist Literature", Oliver J. Hancock
Chapter Five: "In Support of Idyllic Childhood: How Book Challenges Reveal American Views on Childhood and Adolescent Innocence in the 1980s and into the 21st Century", Sarah K. Mazur
Chapter Six: "Fear of Science in the Cold War and the Unknown Childhood: The It's Alive Trilogy", Erika Tiburcio Moreno
Chapter Seven: "Four Little Activists: The Death of Black Childhood Innocence in Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls", Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr.
Chapter Eight: "Technically I'm 112: Youth and Darkness in Avatar: the Last Airbender", Colleen Etman
About the author
Edited by James M. Curtis - Contributions by Colleen Etman; Rodney Marcel Fierce; Oliver J. Hancock; Rebecca Long; Douglas C. MacLeod; Sarah K. Mazur and Erika Tiburcio Moreno
Summary
This collection approaches the deconstruction of American “childhood” from a wide variety of critical, interdisciplinary lenses and gestures toward the construction of a more realistic, twenty-first century definition of “childhood”—one which is defined by the real-life struggles of childhood and not by romanticized notions of “innocence.”
