From Pinocchio’s confrontation with the nagging Cricket, to an enchanted sewing needle that tortures the evil Queen, to the lowly Zero who becomes a big shot Ten: children’s literature often aims both to entertain and to teach. Because these stories seek to form their young readers, they can serve as a useful lens through which to identify and assess the values, aspirations, and self-images of their culture. Reading a range of fairy tales, short stories, picture books, nursery rhymes, and novels, we analyze how these texts reaffirm and/or call into question the political, moral, religious, and economic trends in Italy from the late nineteenth century to the present. Throughout, we consider the changing ways in which these books imagine what it means to be Italian and what it means to be a child. Conducted in Italian, the course also aims to help students improve all their linguistic skills in the target language. 

This course examines aspects of Caribbean literature through the lens of children’s literature; Caribbean history, language, and other factors affecting the creation, publication, and distribution of literature will be discussed

During this course students acquire an understanding of how children’s literature functions in an international context. They are able to analyze translations of children’s literature in the light of trends in cultural exchange and different images of childhood. They broaden their knowledge of international classics and are able to interpret these by relying on the theoretical paradigms that currently prevail in the international field of children’s literature studies (translation theory, polysystem theory, imagology, childhood studies, postcolonial theory, glocalisation). They develop insight in how cultural diversity is reflected (or lacks reflection) in children’s books. The classes are clustered around three themes:

• The translation of children’s books

• International classics

• Children’s literature and cultural diversity

In this course, originally taught at NYU Shanghai, we will explore how travel can serve as a lens for understanding national identity and how it works in the twenty-first century, particularly for young people. We will study both traditional travel narratives, where the protagonist strengthens her national identity through her travels, as well as more contemporary travel narratives that encourage young people to adopt a cosmopolitan perspective. The course will also focus on a range of national literatures, but will place a special emphasis on American and Chinese texts as a way of considering our own unique position in a Sino-American educational institution.

What makes a children’s novel a bestseller? Is it memorable characters? A scintillating subject matter? Provocative descriptions? A masterful plot? Does it vary across time, culture, and ethnicity? To answer such questions, this senior seminar will work to discover the bag of tricks many authors use in creating narratives and ideologies that resonate with both the reader and the market. Further, the course will give particular attention to the fact that children’s literature, unlike adult literature, is read by a variety of ages, thereby raising compelling questions regarding ownership, authorship, and definitions of childhood.