​​'You Cannot Own an Animal!' : Animals, Agency and Activism in Håkan Alexandersson's and Carl Johan De Geer's Television Series for Children​

This article studies the human-animal relations in three fiction series aimed at children and broadcasted on Swedish public service television 1973–1983: Tårtan, Doktor Krall and Privatdetektiven Kant. The interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approach combines theoretical concepts and methods from cinema studies and childhood studies, focusing on the power relations between humans and non-human animals. The analysis reveals a certain ambivalence throughout all the series: On the one hand, the non-human animals have a strong agency, human exceptionalism is openly challenged, Haraway's attitude of 'greeting significant others' is held up as ideal, and animal rights activism is encouraged. On the other hand, the series also display speciesist traits such as objectification of non-human animals, disnification, naive anthropomorphism, and a production process exposing non-human animals for severe stress. The article points out that the depictions of human-animal relations in the studied television series differ from the vast majority of stories for children, especially by not depicting children at all, and thereby questioning the supposed historically strong link between children and non-human animals. Concludingly, the article discusses the inherent potential of children's television to influence the young audience, in this case by extension contributing to a less anthropocentric society where humans treat non-human animals with respect. We might even talk of children's television as a natureculturetechnology (cf. Haraway).&nbsp

Recent trends in children's literature research: Return to the body

Twenty-first-century children's literature research has witnessed a material turn in strong response to the 1990s perception of childhood and the fictional child as social constructions. Cultural theories have generated fruitful approaches to children's fiction through the lenses of gender, class, race and sexual orientation, and psychoanalytically oriented theories have explored ways of representing childhood as a projection of (adult) interiority, but the physical existence of children as represented in their fictional worlds has been obscured by constructed social and psychological hierarchies. Recent directions in literary studies, such as ecocriticism, posthumanism, disability studies and cognitive criticism, are refocusing scholarly attention on the physicality of children's bodies and the environment. This trend does not signal a return to essentialism but reflects the complexity, plurality and ambiguity of our understanding of childhood and its representation in fiction for young audiences. This article examines some current trends in international children's literature research with a particular focus on materiality. </jats:p

From the Horse\u27s Mouth: Voices of the Nonhuman in Classic Children\u27s Literature

Children’s literature often features anthropomorphized talking animal characters with individual lives and voices. This thesis clarifies the types of animal voices heard in children’s literature, utilizing a tripartite spectrum of expressions of animal emotions and perspectives, moralizing speech, and world building or plot progressing speech. This framework facilitates the exploration of the animal-human relationships and events of communication which shine through human-filtered animal voices. Using this framework, this thesis analyzes Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle and The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle, and C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Horse and His Boy. In these works of classic children’s literature, animal voices advocate for animal rights, affirm animal subjectivity, explore the imagined lives of animals, and explore the methods and benefits of communication between human and nonhuman animals

Didactic Children\u27s Literature and the Emergence of Animal Rights

The belief that animals deserve kindness or benevolence, now commonplace, began to emerge as a pressing social and philosophical problem in late-eighteenth-century discussions about the scope of “proper” feeling and behavior. This thesis investigates the history of that social feeling—how it emerged as normal—in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century didactic children’s books, where those books’ authors frequently urged both emotional and social responses to others’ treatment of animals. By first examining the children’s books of British Romantic writer Charlotte Smith, and then linking her to American writers Sarah Josepha Hale and Lydia Sigourney, this thesis demonstrates the connections between didactic children’s literature and early animal- rights discourse in Britain and America. Smith, Sigourney, and Hale saw in their work the possibility of changing public opinion and civic life by encouraging their readers to adopt particular attitudes toward animals. In the context of didactic children’s literature, these writers sought to reform society by teaching children what they saw as proper behavior. By depicting animals as suitable objects of sympathetic concern, and in the process of establishing kindness to animals as an important signifier of middle-class identity—therefore normalizing such behavior—didactic children’s literature contributed in important ways to the rise of animal rights discourse. Adviser: Stephen C. Behrend

Taking the pledge : a study of children's societies for the prevention of cruelty to birds and animals in Britain, c.1870-1914

This thesis examines the work of children's societies that aimed to instruct children to be kind to animals and birds, from c. 1870 to 1914. Its aims are to account for the growth of these societies managed by animal protectionists and the press; to assess how contemporary modes of masculinity affected children's relationships with animals; to explain how children embarked upon progressive conservation; and contribute to the history of childhood and the press. A widely held belief was that cruelty to animals led to interpersonal violence. By surveying the children's press, and the work of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals, this thesis argues that moralists realised that the solution to this anxiety lay in teaching children to respect animals. The RSPCA's educational work was reorganised in 1870, and the first Band of Mercy children's society followed in 1875. The Dicky Bird Society, the first children's `press club', was formed a year later by the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle. These associations obliged children to sign a pledge making a commitment to be kind towards animals. Literature and proactive activities then provided a means of reinforcing this undertaking and measuring progress. By creating `tiny humanitarians' as active conservation workers, the societies inspired children to care about animals and also reform their peers. This was not without its tensions, most conspicuously the reticence of boys to join the societies because of their love of bird-nesting and received ideas about masculinity. Existing surveys depict the nineteenth-century animal protection movement as one managed by privileged individuals concerned with enforcing legislation by harassinga supposedlyb rutal working class,w ho had no time to care about animal welfare. On the contrary, this thesis suggests that children, especially those of the working classes, as active `tiny humanitarians', played a positive role in pulling public opinion towards a more appreciative disposition towards wildlife.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceArts and Humanities Research Council : Royal Historical Society : School of Historical Studies : Robinson Library Bursary SchemeGBUnited Kingdo

The hums of childhood: musical adaptations of children's literature

Since the nineteenth century, composers have fostered a musical media of universal childhood, stuffing ears with cotton candy melodies to pair with rose colored glasses, but from what forces were these songs inspired and why do we continue to hum them over and over? The Hums of Childhood tells the story of how pastoralism became the quintessential technique for children’s music through musical adaptations of British and American children’s literature. If children’s literature is never without ideological dimension, so too, music fortifies their ideological constrictions of Westernized Romantic childhood through pastoral sentimentalism, conveying an obvious musical message intended towards the societal domestication of children. Drawing on archival research, literary criticism, and theoretical music analysis, The Hums of Childhood offers a historical examination of the socio-political factors, cultural influences, and authors’ childhood experiences that have shaped not only their literary contributions, but the idyllic ideology embedded in future adaptations. Chapters progress chronologically and thematically, tracing how music, through adaptations of children’s literature from A.A. Milne’s song cycle The Hums of Pooh (1929) to animated musicals like Charlotte’s Web (1973), continuously reinforces these imaginary bucolic worlds as a collective space for youthful mediation.Musi