SCAN 496: CRN: 59031; Childhood and Children's Literature: From Fairy Tales to Harry Potter
In this course we will explore the changing understanding of childhood and youth in Scandinavian literature and film with a comparative focus on the United States and the United Kingdom. Works analyzed range from Hans-Christian Andersen's fairy tales and Astrid Lindgren's world literature classic Pippi Longstocking to Dr. Seuss and contemporary youth fiction and cinema, including Harry Potter. We will address questions about how childhood is construed in books self-described as children's literature as well as in adult-audience fiction and memoirs, and how representations of childhood correlate with evolving ideas about family formation, child-rearing, the welfare state, secularism, and education in twentieth- and twenty-first century Scandinavia. Course goals include gaining knowledge of important texts, concepts, genres, and narrative strategies in children’s and youth literature and understanding these in terms of social-historical, aesthetic, and philosophical contexts. The course will offer students US and UK comparative contexts through which to gain a fuller understanding of Scandinavian children's and youth culture, and will provide an opportunity to gain in-depth insight into a culture known internationally as a forerunner in children's rights and education. Perspectives applied include psychological approaches; constructions of selfhood; theories of education, feminism, and social reform; political radicalism; and gender, sexuality, and masculinity.
Dr. Theo Malekin holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow's Center for Literature, Theology, and the Arts, and has spent much of his life in Sweden and the United Kingdom. He has been teaching in the Scandinavian program since 2010, offering courses on Viking Mythology, Viking Sagas, the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and films of Ingmar Bergman. His research and teaching interests remain interdisciplinary in nature, lying at the intersection of literature and the arts with broad intellectual and religious currents.