The Embodied Child: Readings in Children's Literature and Culture brings together essays that offer compelling analyses of children's bodies as they read and are read, as they interact with literature and other cultural artifacts, and as they are constructed in literature and popular culture. The chapters examine the ideology behind the cultural constructions of the child's body and the impact they have on society, and how the child's body becomes a carrier of cultural ideology within the cultural imagination. They also consider the portrayal of children's bodies in terms of the seeming dichotomies between healthy-vs-unhealthy bodies as well as able-bodied-vs-disabled, and examines flesh-and-blood bodies that engage with literary texts and other media. The contributors bring perspectives from anthropology, communication, education, literary criticism, cultural studies, philosophy, physical education, and religious studies. With wide and astute coverage of disparate literary and cultural texts, and lively scholarly discussions in the introductions to the collection and to each section, this book makes a long-needed contribution to discussions of the body and the child

Includes bibliographical references and index

Anne's body has a mind (and soul) of its own: embodiment and the Cartesian legacy in Anne of Green Gables / Janet Wesselius -- Learning not to hate what we are: black power, literature, and the black child / Karen Sands-O'Connor -- "It's my skin that's paid most dearly": Katniss Everdeen and/as the Appalachian body / Roxanne Harde -- Invisibility and (dis)embodiment in Louise O'Neill's Only Ever Yours / Heather Braun -- Kitchens and edges: the politics of hair in African American children's picture books / Michelle Martin and Rachelle Washington -- Disciplining normalcy: what Katy did and nineteenth-century female bodies / Julie Pfeiffer and Darla Schumm -- Embodying the healthy, charitable child in the junior Red Cross / Kristine Moruzi -- Liberty in the age of eugenics: non-normative bodies in Fabian Socialist children's fiction / Amanda Hollander "My story starts right here": the embodied identities of Blackfoot readers / Erin Spring -- A feeling connection: embodied flourishings as represented in contemporary picturebooks / Adrielle Britten -- The child's reading body / Margaret Mackey -- Hands on reading: the body, the brain, and the book / Lydia Kokkola -- "Little cooks": food and the disciplined body in nineteenth-century stories for girls / Samantha Christensen and Roxanne Harde -- Break dancing: reading the ballerina in To Dance / Jennifer M. Miskec -- Embodied performances by lesbian cheerleaders and dancers in Glee and Leading Ladies / Kate Norbury -- "A dolla makes her holla": Honey Boo Boo and the collaborative gaze of the twenty-first century knowing child / Lance Weldy

Print version record

Open Access EbpS