Digital Commons Network^™

Returning To Childhood: Memoirs Of Childhood Reading, Stephanie Montalti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes Francis Spufford’s The Child that Books Built: A Life in Reading, Jane Sullivan’s Storytime: Growing up with Books, and Margaret Mackey’s One Child Reading: My Auto-Bibliography to investigate how memoirists recall events and reread stories from childhood. I argue that memoirs of childhood reading or bibliomemoirs temporarily fuse childhood and adulthood through the act of rereading, which produces emotional responses, and writing a memoir. By rereading childhood stories, memoirists identify with their child self and express feelings comparable to those they felt upon first reading. In bibliomemoirs, passive and active reading create what I describe as a …

Innocent No More: How Child Vampires Challenge The Social Narrative Of Childhood, Ashley Quinn

Masters Theses

The inclusion of children within Gothic and horror fiction has always been regarded as untoward because children are vulnerable to misrepresentation. However, excluding children from transgressive genres eliminates a space where childhood can be critically analyzed. Fortunately, authors such as Stephen King, Anne Rice, and John Ajvide Lindqvist break the taboo through the inclusion of children in vampiric narratives. These narratives encourage readers to question the social narrative of childhood within the context of vampire stories. Through an examination of ‘Salem’s Lot (King, 1975), “Popsy” (King, 1987), Interview with the Vampire (Rice, 1976), and Let the Right One In (Lindqvist, …

The Golden Gates Of Childhood: Romantic Influences On Childhood Perspective In George Eliot's The Mill On The Floss And Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, Tara Rosenzweig

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study explores George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, specifically in terms of how these Victorian authors portray childhood. I focus on the Romantic influences of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and William Wordsworth to analyze this portrayal. I examine how Eliot and Dickens use Wordsworth’s Romantic images of nature, gates, and windows to portray Victorian adults as corruptors of childhood innocence. Further, I analyze how these authors use Rousseau’s teaching philosophies to criticize Victorian educational policies. By comparing Dickens’s Oliver Twist to Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, I trace how both authors depend on Romanticism …

"And All Were Welcome": An Analysis Of The Transgender Child In Contemporary Picture Books, Isaac Prestwich

Pomona Senior Theses

This paper constitutes an interrogation of children’s picture books that feature trans and gender non-conforming child protagonists. In these books, the audience, presumed to be a child, whose experience of the narrative is mediated through the adult or older figure reading the picture book, is brought to empathize and identify with the book’s characters, whether they be the protagonist themselves, or those auxiliary figures who surround the main character. My goal is to identify consistent themes across the genre, as well as within the field of critical childhood studies, particularly as they pertain to the rhetorical value of the Child, …

Early Black Poetry, Social Justice, And Black Children: Receptions Of Child Activism In African American Literary History, Tabitha Lashay Joy Lowery

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In spite of the substantial amount of critical work that has been produced on the recovery of early African American literature in the last few decades, our representations of black authors are still limited. Current studies of early African American poets privilege the identification of African American literature with resistance to slavery. This identification has persisted and has made the field one-dimensional. My dissertation provides reception histories of four early black poets—Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, Frances Harper, and Paul Laurence Dunbar—to argue for and present an expansive understanding of African American literature. A thorough examination of these authors’ circulation …

This, My Breath, Suzette Louise Mack

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This, My Breath, is a creative collection of memories gathered along the seasons in my life-mostly from my formative years. The stories highlight the patient, unconditional love my parents shared, and the way it has influenced me throughout my life. The stories are about life, love, loss, a yearning to belong, and a longing to be both interdependent and independent.

In my family of origin, it was the simple rhythms established through daily life and the honoring of traditions that inspired the deepest meaning, purpose, and hope. The seasons of the year brought my family alive with a flow of …