{"id":918,"date":"2021-10-13T17:42:12","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T16:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/?p=918"},"modified":"2021-10-13T17:42:14","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T16:42:14","slug":"locating-the-child-in-american-studies-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/locating-the-child-in-american-studies-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Locating the Child in American Studies, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Forgiving Our Fathers (and Mothers): The Role of Adolescence in Crisis Narratives within American Studies and Children\u2019s Literature<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dr Emily Murphy brings the first in a series of posts exploring the intersections between American studies and children\u2019s literature. <\/em>The remarks presented here by Julia Mickenberg and Donald Pease are from the launch event for Murphy\u2019s new book, <\/em>Growing Up with America, which took place on 1 September 2021. This series makes space for continued conversations which Murphy believes the newer field of childhood studies helps to facilitate. The next part of this series will explore more the role of adolescence in shaping and bridging these two fields of study.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his 1998 film, Smoke Signals<\/em>, American Indian author Sherman Alexie quotes the poem \u201cForgiving Our Fathers\u201d by Dick Lourie. One of the main characters in Alexie\u2019s film, an eccentric orphan named Thomas-Builds-the-Fire, asks, \u201cHow do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream\u2026Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?\u201d The question of how to \u201cforgive our fathers\u201d is one that is relevant to many fields of study, but I\u2019d like to approach it from two fields that are central to my own research: American studies and children\u2019s literature. At the source of the question raised by Lourie\u2019s poem about fathers is an anxiety about the absence left when the tension between and the older and younger generation dissipates: does this lack of tension, often the source of new critical insights in the case of academia, leave the one who forgives feeling empty and uninspired? Or, in forgiving those who came before, are we actually setting ourselves free and escaping the boundaries (disciplinary or otherwise) set by them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the one-year anniversary of the publication of my first monograph, Growing Up with America <\/em>(2020)<\/a>, I had the pleasure of engaging in a dialogue about intersections between childhood studies and American studies with Donald Pease and Julia Mickenberg. Pease, as those in American studies will well know, has greatly contributed to the field as it currently stands, adding to conversations about the \u201ctransnational turn\u201d in American studies and opening up new insights into the field as founder\/director of the Futures of American Studies Institute and editor of the New Americanists <\/em>series from Duke University Press. Similarly, Julia Mickenberg is an early advocate for bridging the fields of American studies and children\u2019s literature, drawing our attention to the radical politics in both and recognizing the importance of girlhood, in particular, through her scholarship on Cold War politics. In their commentary on the book, they make a series of important criticisms about the potential risk of the narrative I create in Growing Up with America<\/em>, which seeks to intervene in the field of American studies by revealing the role of adolescence in the shaping of some of its early history, particularly in the Cold War era when the myth-symbol criticism became popular through the efforts of founding figures that included Henry Nash Smith, Perry Miller, R.W.B. Lewis, and Leo Marx.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Landmark texts by the myth and symbol scholars of American studies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What is at risk here, as both Pease and Mickenberg rightfully pointed out, is that in returning to this scholarship we repeat it\u2014something I think that connects to larger conversations about \u201cdecolonizing the curriculum\u201d that are happening more broadly within literary studies. This is an argument that American studies has circled back to again and again, and that is most eloquently described in Brian T. Edwards and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar\u2019s edited collection Globalizing American Studies <\/em>(2010), to which Pease also contributes. In the introduction to this collection, Edwards and Gaonkar remark on what they call \u201cfounding\u201d and \u201ccrisis\u201d narratives, which they view as responses to some of the central currents of \u201cdisciplinary anxiety\u201d within the field. They define these two types of narratives as follows: the founding narrative employs a metacritical approach whereby either new objects of study and\/or methods of studying these objects are put forward; in the case of the crisis narrative, however, a \u201cdiscursive rather than performative\u201d mode is more common. This type of narrative is metacritical in a way that is distinct from that of founding narratives, and on occasion uses these founding narratives as a springboard for its insights (8). Edwards and Gaonkar give the example of Amy Kaplan\u2019s influential essay, \u201cLeft Alone with America\u201d (1993), where she first analyses the intellectual impulses in myth-symbol critic Perry Miller\u2019s preface to the Errand into the Wilderness<\/em> (1956). However, in returning to the founding myths of America that Miller deploys in his scholarship, Kaplan also \u201cunwittingly reinstalls exceptionalism\u201d by failing to locate the United States in a global framework (Edwards and Gaonkar 9). It is a classic conundrum, in the sense that by returning to foundational texts, even without intention, scholars take the risk (and I am guilty of this myself) of letting these voices and the narratives they promote continue to have dominance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are now a rich and diverse number of studies exploring topics related to childhood and national identity in American culture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We have seen a similar critical turn within children\u2019s literature, whose own founding narrative begins with figures such as Jacqueline Rose. Rose, who famously declared that \u201cchildren\u2019s fiction is impossible\u201d\u2014by now one of the most-cited phrases within children\u2019s literature criticism\u2014was preoccupied with language, fantasy, and desire, in large part due to her own investment in Lacanian theory (1). Rose launched a set of disciplinary anxieties specific to children\u2019s literature that continue to permeate the field, in a manner similar to the myth of American exceptionalism which plagues American studies. How, those in the field of children\u2019s literature continue to ask themselves, can we take account of the power dynamics between adult and child in the production and consumption of children\u2019s fiction? And, more recently, to what extent does the child have a say in all of this? A special anniversary edition of Children\u2019s Literature Association (ChLA) Quarterly<\/em> from 2010<\/a> offered a \u201creturn to Rose,\u201d but far more insightful are critical essays that attempt a more daring paradigm shift, breaking from Rose\u2019s limiting critical lens for interpreting childhood and children\u2019s literature. I am thinking, for instance, of Marah Gubar\u2019s wonderful essay \u201cRisky Business: Talking about Children in Children\u2019s Literature Criticism\u201d (2013), where she discards what she calls the \u201cdifference\u201d and \u201cdeficit\u201d models of childhood in favor of a more flexible model of growth\u2014the \u201ckinship model\u201d\u2014that rejects the binary opposition of adult\/child altogether (450).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Joseph Krumgold, the first author to win the Newbery award twice, praises Lena de Grummond for her innovative approach to including children in children\u2019s literature, solving what he calls the \u201ccommunications gap\u201d between the adults who produce children\u2019s books and the young readers who consume them. [Image courtesy of the de Grummond Children\u2019s Literature Collection].<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While American studies has yet to locate the child within the field to this extent, there are some interesting moments of critical overlap. Rose, for example, appears in Pease\u2019s influential study The New American Exceptionalism<\/em>. Here, though, Pease is not looking to her famous work on children\u2019s fiction, The Case of Peter Pan<\/em>, but rather to her later work on the role of fantasy in relation to English studies in States of Fantasy <\/em>(1998). Rose\u2019s interest in a psychoanalytic approach to fantasy remains, over ten years after the publication of her study on children\u2019s fiction, and Pease utilizes this scholarship to talk about what he calls the \u201cstate fantasy\u201d of American exceptionalism (7). Similarly, in Beverly Lyon Clark\u2019s Kiddie Lit<\/em>, which is still a definitive history of the field, American studies enters into her argument about the marginalization of children\u2019s literature and childhood. Here, Clark remarks on the way in which, if it did enter the conversation, childhood was simply a reflection on adolescent rebellion in a larger narrative of manhood promoted by the early proponents of American studies (67). In reflecting, then, on founding myths, it is perhaps these moments where one field enters into the other that provides the richer context for the role of childhood and adolescence in shaping American culture and literary thought. As Julia Mickenberg raises in her observations about the shifting academic landscape at the annual American Studies Association meeting, there is now a significantly larger group of children\u2019s literature scholars who have been drawn and converted to the insights offered by American studies. I am certainly a good example of this having trained in children\u2019s literature and only having come to the scholarship of American studies in 2012 after passing my PhD exams and embarking on my dissertation project, which is the early version of Growing Up with America<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So where does this leave us in terms of the founders? Firstly, there is the question of who constitutes as a founder? Is it the \u201cfathers\u201d of the myth-symbol school? Is it a founding \u201cmother\u201d such as Jacqueline Rose\u2014a mother, importantly, who abandoned her \u201cchild\u201d (if we continue with the familial metaphors) of children\u2019s literature? And, importantly, in casting ourselves as \u201cfathers\u201d or \u201cmothers,\u201d \u201csons\u201d or \u201cdaughters,\u201d are we doing a disservice to children, who we employ metaphorically to create narratives of progress about these academic fields of study? (I am thinking, for instance, back to the 2010 issue of ChLA Quarterly <\/em>I mentioned earlier, where Perry Nodelman quips about the \u201cpossibility of growing wiser,\u201d in a play on Rose\u2019s famous quote on children\u2019s fiction). The truth is that both fields are continually being founded and refounded, and this isn\u2019t because American studies or children\u2019s literature has \u201cgrown up\u201d into a new, mature self\u2014that would <\/em>do a disservice to children who we are then casting as immature and na\u00efve. Instead, we might take our clue from childhood studies and the models of growth, such as those I have cited here, that seek to disrupt such linear narratives of progress and maturation. In doing so, even if we cannot completely escape it, we might be able to alleviate some of the disciplinary anxieties at the root of both fields and break the cyclical pattern of a return to the founders that limits the boundaries of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clark, Beverly Lyon. Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children\u2019s Literature in America<\/em>. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edwards, Brian T., and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, eds. \u201cIntroduction: Globalizing American Studies.\u201d Globalizing American Studies<\/em>. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. 1\u201344. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gubar, Marah. \u201cRisky Business: Talking about Children in Children\u2019s Literature Criticism\u201d (2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nodelman, Perry. \u201cFormer Editor\u2019s Comments: Or, The Possibility of Growing Wiser.\u201d Children\u2019s Literature Association Quarterly <\/em>35.3 (2010): 230\u2013242. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Brien, Sharon. \u201cCommentary.\u201d In Locating American Studies: The Evolution of a Discipline<\/em>. Ed. Lucy Maddox. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 110\u2013113. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pease, Donald. The New American Exceptionalism<\/em>. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan<\/em>. 1984. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smoke Signals<\/em>. Dir. Chris Eyre. Miramax Films, 1999. DVD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forgiving Our Fathers (and Mothers): The Role of Adolescence in Crisis Narratives within American Studies and Children\u2019s Literature Dr Emily Murphy brings the first in a series of posts exploring the intersections between American studies and children\u2019s literature. The remarks presented here by Julia Mickenberg and Donald Pease are from the launch event for Murphy\u2019s … Continue reading Locating the Child in American Studies, Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7893,"featured_media":925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[314,303,312,152,313,315],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-adolescence","tag-american-literature","tag-american-studies","tag-childhood-studies","tag-jacqueline-rose","tag-locating-the-child"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions\/926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}