AMS 311s (Unique #: 30765)
Popular Culture and American Childhood
Spring 2012
Instructor: Rebecca Onion, rebeccaonion@gmail.com, www.rebeccaonion.com
Class Meetings: MWF 1-2 pm, Garrison 0.132
Office hours: MW, 3:15-4:45, at Cafe Medici on the Drag
Course Website: popcultureandamericanchildhood.com
Course Description: This course will look at the development of popular culture
associated with children and adolescents in the United States in the twentieth century.
Using cultural objects made for and by children and youth, we will ask larger questions
about the relationships between children and adults, while addressing topics common to
American Studies, including media, consumption, citizenship, class, race, and gender.
We will approach these themes through diverse primary sources, looking at literature,
advertising, websites, video games, films, television shows, and toys. Because childhood
is often perceived as “timeless”, this class will focus on situating these cultural objects
chronologically, continually asking how culture for children and youth relates to larger
social questions and movements.
Course Objectives: By the end of this class, the student will have encountered a wide
variety of primary documents, as well as scholarship and popular writing about
childhood. Through contributing to the class blog, the student will learn how to connect
news items to class themes, how to analyze primary sources, and how to pose fruitful
questions for class discussion. These blog posts will also teach the student how to use the
WordPress publishing platform, and help the student practice frequent and informal
writing for the web. The final paper will help students practice shaping research questions
into larger projects; the process of writing this final paper, which includes research
workshops and instructor and peer feedback before the production of the final essay, will
sharpen skills of planning and revision.
Readings:
Two books (both available on Amazon Marketplace for cheap, or find in Half Price
Books, or download to your Kindle):
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (2008)
David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed
America (2008)
Course packet, available at Jenn’s Copies, 2518 Guadalupe (the location near Madam
Mam’s, not the one under the Scientologists)
1 Writing Flag Statement:
This course carries the Writing Flag. Writing Flag courses are designed to give students
experience with writing in an academic discipline. In this class, you can expect to write
regularly during the semester, complete substantial writing projects, and receive
feedback from your instructor to help you improve your writing. You will also have the
opportunity to revise one or more assignments, and to read and discuss your peers' work.
You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from your
written work.
Assignments: Students will contribute five posts to the course blog over the semester.
We will discuss the expectations for these posts, and talk about blogging as a form of
academic writing, in depth during the first full week of class. (Note: For students worried
about online privacy, pseudonymity will be an option. We will discuss this more before
the first assignment is due.)
In order to encourage attendance and continuous reading for the course, I will administer
four surprise reading quizzes over the course of the semester. These quizzes will contain
questions that will be easy to answer if you a) are in class when the quiz is popped and b)
have done the reading.
A note on quizzes and makeups: If you miss class without arranging your absence with
me beforehand, there will be no makeups for any quiz that you miss. If you email me
before class, letting me know that you will be absent and why (sickness, other serious
conflict), and we end up having a quiz that day, you may write an extra blog post (of any
category) to make up for the quiz you missed.
Students will turn in a graded paper proposal, which will include sources and major
research questions, prior to writing their final paper.
We will have a “speed dating” peer review workshop to talk about our final papers’
introductions and thesis statements; you will need to bring a completed
introduction/thesis statement to this workshop.
Finally, students will write a 2000-word (about 8 pages) final paper.
Rubrics for these assignments will be provided.
Grading:
Five 250-word blog posts, spread across the three post categories (responses to reading
questions, “in the news” contributions, and primary source analyses), at 8% each: 40%
Four Reading Quizzes, at 5% each: 20%
Final paper proposal, 250 words: 10%
Final paper peer review participation: 5%
Final paper, 2000 words: 25%
2 Policies:
Attendance/Lateness/Preparedness: In lieu of taking attendance, I will administer four
unannounced reading quizzes over the course of the semester.
Arriving to class late is strongly discouraged. I will often go over administrative issues in
the first few minutes of class, or use that time to set up the day’s discussion; your late
arrival annoys your fellow students and myself, and jeopardizes your grasp of the
mechanics of the course. Therefore, every three late arrivals (between 5-15 minutes late)
will equal one missed reading quiz, or 5% off your final grade.
Late assignments will be marked down by half a letter grade for each day of lateness,
including weekend days.
Computers: Please do not use laptops, tablets, smartphones, or dumbphones in the
classroom, unless I explicitly ask you to bring your technology on a particular day. I am a
person who is so highly distractible that I must pay a software program to lock me off the
Internet when I need to get work done (www.macfreedom.com, if you’re interested—
works for PCs as well). This no-computer policy exists just in case you are as Internetprone as I am.
Contacting Me: I will respond to emails from you within 24-48 hours of receiving your
communication. Please read this syllabus and the assignment rubrics carefully before
emailing me. I will be posting copies of all course documents on the course website.
Using Blackboard, you can contact your peers with logistical inquiries.
For some small questions, email is a suitable forum. However, sometimes email is not the
best way to get information. If you find you are writing a question for me that results in a
very long email, it is probably an indication that this is a question that can be best dealt
with in person. In these instances, you should come to office hours.
Submitting Assignments: You’ll submit blog posts using WordPress’ dashboard, which
automatically time-stamps each post; these posts are due by 5 pm on their due date. Send
me your non-blog writing assignments (the paper proposal and the final paper) attached
to an email, in a Microsoft Word (.doc) document, by 5 pm on their due date. I will return
the documents electronically, using Word’s comments function to input my feedback;
because of FERPA’s strictures, I won’t be able to return your grades for these papers via
email, but will instead make them visible on Blackboard at the same time I email you
your comments. For all assignments, I judge whether or not you’ve fulfilled the length
requirement by word count, not by the number of pages in the document, so there’s no
need to use a specific font or format.
Late Work: For all assignments, late work will be penalized by a half letter grade for
each day of lateness. (At 5:01 pm on the due date, your work is officially one day late; at
5:01 pm the day after the due date, it’s two days late; etc.)
Undergraduate Writing Center: The Undergraduate Writing Center, located on the
second floor of the Flawn Academic Center (FAC 211), provides free, expert writing help
for undergrads on a drop-in or appointment basis. It is an excellent resource, and I
3 strongly encourage each of you to utilize their services. For an appointment or for more
information, call 512-471-6222 or visit their website: http://uwc.utexas.edu.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is a serious matter, and students caught plagiarizing will be
penalized in accordance with the University’s academic integrity policy. Students are
required to familiarize themselves with this policy, which can be found on the
University’s website at http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs/acint_student.php.
Disabilities: Accommodations for students with documented disabilities are available.
Students with physical, mental or learning disabilities should consult the University’s
Services for Students with Disabilities for more information.
http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd/.
I reserve the right to change this syllabus and reading schedule if it proves
necessary. If such a change occurs, I will alert you of it, and post a revised copy on
the course website.
Schedule
Readings with asterisks (*) are to be found in the course packet (its table of contents
can be found at the end of this syllabus). Readings with two asterisks (**) will be
posted on Blackboard a week before their due date. Readings devoid of asterisks are
books.
Weds Jan 18: First Day of Classes: Syllabus, Introductions, The Usual.
Fri Jan 20: Read for Class: *Stearns, “Intro”; “I’m Bored”.
Mon Jan 23: Read for Class: *Zelizer, “From Useful to Useless.”
Weds Jan 25: Read for Class: *Cross, “Modern Childhood, Modern Toys.”
Fri Jan 27: Read for Class: *Segal, “As the Twig is Bent”; *Billman, “The Rise of Series
Fiction,” “Edward Stratemeyer.”
Mon Jan 30: In-Class Workshop Day (Bring Your Laptop): Blogging, part 1.
Weds Feb 1: In-Class Workshop Day (Bring Your Laptop): Blogging, part 2.
Fri Feb 3: First Blog Post Due, by 5 pm. Read for Class: *Collins, “Boy Scouts: A
Battle for Martial Values”; “Commercialism in War: Jobs for Juveniles and Toys for
Tots”; “Advertising the War to Children.”
Mon Feb 6: Read for Class: *Kasson, “Behind Shirley Temple’s Smile.”
Weds Feb 8: Read for Class: Hajdu, chapters 1-4.
Fri Feb 10: Read for Class: Hajdu, chapters 5-8.
Mon Feb 13: Second Blog Post Due, by 5 pm. Read for Class: Hajdu, chapters 9-12.
4 Weds Feb 15: Read for Class: Finish Hajdu.
Fri Feb 17: Read for Class: Finish Hajdu
Mon Feb 20: Read for Class: *Spigel, “Seducing the Innocent.”
Weds Feb 22: Read for Class: *Bradbury, “The Veldt.”
Fri Feb 24: Read for Class: *Chudacoff, “The Commercialization and Co-optation of
Children’s Play.”
Mon Feb 27: Third Blog Post Due, by 5 pm.
Weds Feb 29: Read for Class: *Paris, “Happily Ever After.”
Fri March 1: Read for Class: Henderson, "Ebony Jr!: The Rise and Demise of an AfricanAmerican Children's Magazine." Find on Blackboard, in Course Documents section.
*Bring your laptop to class.
Mon March 5: Read for Class: *Cross, "Spinning Out of Control."
Weds March 7: Read for Class: *James, “Confections, Concoctions, and Conceptions.”
Fri March 9: Fourth Blog Post Due, by 5 pm. No class!
Mon March 19: Class Canceled. Watch "Hoop Dreams" (1994) on Hulu. Take notes
using the sheet I distributed in class on 3.7 (also available for download here). Read
*Robin D.G. Kelley, “Looking to Get Paid.”
Weds March 21: We'll discuss "Hoop Dreams" and the Kelley reading.
Fri March 23: Read for Class: *Lipsitz, “The Hip-Hop Hearings.”
Mon March 26: Read for Class: *Chin, “Hemmed In and Shut Out,” “Anthropologist
Takes Inner-City Children on Shopping Sprees.”
Weds March 28: Read for Class: *Chin, “Ethnically Correct Dolls: Toying with the Race
Industry.”
Fri March 30: Final Blog Post Due, by 5 pm. Read for Class: Introduction, Michelle
Ann Abate, Raising Your Kids Right: Children's Literature and American Political
Conservatism.
Mon April 2: In-Class Workshop Day (Bring Your Laptop): Research Process.
Weds April 4: In-Class Workshop Day (Bring Your Laptop): Research Process.
5 Fri April 6: In-Class Workshop Day (Bring Your Laptop): Finishing Up Research
Process.
Mon April 9: Read for Class: Princesses!
Read First (because it's the first article published that summed up and critiqued the
phenomenon):
• Peggy Orenstein, "What's Wrong With Cinderella?," New York Times Magazine,
December 24, 2006 (link to article in PDF form).
Read in whatever order you'd like (recent updates, critiques, and satires):
• Molly Shalgos, "Characteristics of Disney Princesses That Have Never Actually
Gotten Me A Date," The Hairpin, September 9, 2011 (link to article)
• Jim Griffioen, "Sweet Juniper's Historically Accurate Coloring Book of Cruel and
Unhappy Princesses," Sweet Juniper, February 29, 2012 (link to article)
• Peggy Orenstein, "Disney Agrees: Princesses are Unhealthy for Girls," Peggy
Orenstein's Blog, December 14, 2011 (link to article)
Weds April 11: Read for Class: *Louv, “Introduction,” “The New Relationship Between
Children and Nature.”
Fri April 13: Paper Proposal Due, by 5 pm. Read for Class: *Nelson, “Introduction,”
“Parenting and Technology.”
Mon April 16: Classes Canceled, Student Paper Conferences (we’ll sign up for these in
class)
Weds April 18: Classes Canceled, Student Paper Conferences (we’ll sign up for these in
class)
Fri April 20: Read for Class: *Jenkins, “’Complete Freedom of Movement’.”
Mon April 23: Read for Class: *Davidson, “The Attention Deficit Society—And What
We Can Do About It”; *Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”; Turkle, "The Flight From
Conversation" (link to article in PDF form)
Weds April 25: Read for Class: Hunger Games, Part 1 (pp 1-130); Laura Miller, "Fresh
Hell: What's Behind the Boom in Dystopian Fiction for Young Readers?" (New Yorker,
June 14, 2010). Link to Miller article in PDF.
Fri April 27: Read for Class: Hunger Games, Part 2 (pp 133-244); Rebecca
Hains, "Katniss Everdeen: The First Post-Girl-Power Hero" (Rebecca Haines' blog, April
9, 2012); Roxie Moxie, "Yes, There Are Black People In Your Hunger
Games" (Racialicious, November 15, 2011); Dodai Stewart, "Racist Hunger Games Fans
Are Very Disappointed" (Jezebel, March 26, 2012).
Mon April 30: “Speed-Date” Peer Review: Bring Intro/Thesis of Paper to Class.
6 Weds May 2: Finish Hunger Games; read Timothy Noah, "The Immorality of 'Hunger
Games'" (The New Republic, April 30, 2012).
Fri May 4: Last Day of Classes: Kid Stars of YouTube. Evaluations.
Weds May 9: Final Paper Due, via email, by 5 pm.
7 Packet TOC for Onion, Pop Culture and American Childhood (Spring 2012)
Stearns, Peter N. “Introduction”; “I’m Bored: The Two Faces of Entertainment.” Anxious
Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America. New York: New York
University Press, 2003 (pp 1-5; 163-210)
Zelizer, Viviana A. “From Useful to Useless: Moral Conflict Over Child Labor.” In The
Children’s Culture Reader, edited by Henry Jenkins, 81-94. New York, N.Y.: NYU
Press, 1998.
Cross, Gary S. “Modern Childhood, Modern Toys.” In Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the
Changing World of American Childhood, 11-49. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press, 1997.
Segel, Elizabeth. “‘As the Twig is Bent...’: Gender and Childhood Reading.” In Gender
and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts, edited by Elizabeth A Flynn
and Patrocinio P Schweickart, 165-186. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1986.
Billman, Carol. “The Rise of Series Fiction”; “Edward Stratemeyer: The Man and the
Literary Machine.” The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate: Nancy Drew, theHardy
Boys, and the Million Dollar Fiction Factory, 1-36. Recognitions. New York:
Ungar, 1986.
Collins, Ross F. “Boy Scouts: A Battle for Martial Values”; “Commercialism in War:
Jobs for Juveniles and Toys for Tots”; “Advertising the War to Children.” Children,
War & Propaganda, 159-174, 187-207. Mediating American history v. 6. New
York: Peter Lang, 2011.
Kasson, John F. “Behind Shirley Temple’s Smile: Children, Emotional Labor, and the
Great Depression.” In The Cultural Turn in U.S. History: Past, Present & Future,
edited by James W. Cook, Lawrence B. Glickman, and Michael O’Malley, 185-216.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Spigel, Lynn. “Seducing the Innocent: Childhood and Television in Postwar America.” In
Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs, 185-218.
Console-ing passions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
Bradbury, Ray. “The Veldt.” 1950.
Chudacoff, Howard P. “The Commercialization and Co-optation of Children’s Play,
1950-present.” In Children at Play: An American History, 154-181. New York: New
York University Press, 2007.
Douglas, Susan J. “Introduction,” “Fractured Fairy Tales,” “Mama Said.” In Where the
Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media, 1-60. New York: Three Rivers
Press, 1995.
8 Paris, Leslie. “Happily Ever After: Free To Be...You and Me, Second-Wave Feminism,
and 1970s American Children’s Culture.” In The Oxford Handbook of Children’s
Literature, edited by Julia L Mickenberg and Lynne Vallone, 519-538. Oxford
handbooks. Oxford  ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Postman, Neil. “Introduction,” “When There Were No Children,” “The Beginning of the
End,” “The Disappearing Child.” The Disappearance of Childhood, 3-19, 67-80,
120-142. Vintage/Random House, 1994.
Cross, Gary S. “Spinning Out of Control.” In Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World
of American Childhood, 188-227. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
1997.
Seiter, Ellen. “Utopia or Discrimination?: Commercials for Kids.” In Sold Separately:
Children and Parents in Consumer Culture, 115-144. Communications, media, and
culture. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
Chin, Elizabeth M. Liew Siew. “Hemmed In and Shut Out,” “Anthropologist Takes
Inner-City Kids on Shopping Sprees,” “Ethnically Correct Dolls: Toying with the
Race Industry.” “Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture,
91-173. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
James, Allison. “Confections, Concoctions, and Conceptions.” In The Children’s Culture
Reader, edited by Henry Jenkins, 394-406. New York N.Y.: NYU Press, 1998.
Lipsitz, George. “The Hip Hop Hearings: Censorship, Social Memory, and
Intergenerational Tensions Among African Americans.” In Generations of Youth:
Youth Cultures and History in Twentieth-Century America, edited by Joe Austin and
Michael Nevin Willard, 395-411. New York City: New York University Press,
1998.
Kelley, Robin D. G. “Looking to Get Paid: How Some Black Youth Put Culture to
Work.” In Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban
America, 43-77. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997.
Boog, Jason. “The Military-Toy-Industrial Complex.” The Believer, October 2008.
Sirota, David. “How the ’80s programmed us for war.” salon.com, March 15, 2011.
http://mobile.salon.com/news/feature/2011/03/15/sirota_excerpt_back_to_o
ur_future.
Orenstein, Peggy. “Picture Books for Little Princesses.” The New York Times, March 11,
2011, sec. Books / Sunday Book Review.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/picture-books-for-littleprincesses.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=silverlicious&st=cse.
———. “Should the World of Toys be Gender-Free?” The New York Times, December
29, 2011, sec. Opinion. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/opinion/does-­‐
stripping-­‐gender-­‐from-­‐toys-­‐really-­‐make-­‐sense.html?_r=1.
9 Giroux, Henry A. “Stealing Innocence: The Politics of Child Beauty Pageants.” In The
Children’s Culture Reader, edited by Henry Jenkins, 265-282. New York N.Y.:
NYU Press, 1998.
Kapur, Jyotsna. “Free Market, Branded Imagination: Harry Potter and the
Commercialization of Children’s Culture.” In Coining for Capital: Movies,
Marketing, and the Transformation of Childhood, 146-162. New Brunswick, N.J:
Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Louv, Richard. “Introduction,” “The New Relationship Between Children and Nature.”
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, 1-35.
Chapel Hill, N.C: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2008.
Nelson, Margaret K. “Introduction,” “Parenting and Technology.” Parenting Out of
Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times, 107-162. New York: New York
University Press, 2010.
Jenkins, Henry. “‘Complete Freedom of Movement’: Video Games as Gendered Play
Spaces.” In From Barbie to Mortal Kombat, edited by Justine Cassell and Henry
Jenkins. MIT Press, 2000.
Davidson, Cathy. “The Attention Deficit Society--And What We Can Do About It.”
HASTAC.org, May 10, 2011. http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-­‐davidson/attention-­‐
deficit-­‐society-­‐and-­‐what-­‐we-­‐can-­‐do-­‐about-­‐it.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, August 2008.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-usstupid/6868/.
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