Jeunesse - Young People, Texts, Cultures (E-Journal)
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The Consumption of Laughter in Everyday Life
Full text linkReview of:
Arnaldo, Monica. Time for Bed’s Story. Kids, 2020.
Forsythe, Matthew. Pokko and the Drum. Simon and Schuster/ Wiseman, 2019.
Rex, Adam. Why? Illustrated by Claire Keane, Chronicle, 2019.
Yoshitake, Shinsuke. The Boring Book. Chronicle, 2019
Seeing Through the Dark, Breaking Through the Silence: An Interview with Julie Flett
Full text linkThe Canadian policy of aggressive assimilation, in which First Nations children were removed from their families and institutionalized in residential schools robbed generations Indigenous children of their mother tongues. Now, following the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there is a long-overdue impetus to revitalize and preserve these critically endangered languages. This paper considers the ways in which Cree-Métis children’s author and illustrator, Julie Flett, is breaking the silence imposed on Indigenous voice through her growing corpus of bilingual texts for young readers. Featuring an interview with conducted with Julie Flett, I show how her gentle illustrations and growing confidence in her authorial voice draw family languages, hidden from children out of necessity, out of the darkness. Like the owl heralding a moment of transition, Flett’s texts herald the need to break the silence imposed on Indigenous voices and restore voice to new generations.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.0.001
“Which One of You Is the Twelve-Year-Old Boy?”: Children’s Humour, Wittgensteinian Jokes, and the Sack Lunch Bunch
No full textThis article reads the comedic after-school special John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (Netflix 2019) alongside philosophical accounts of humour, comedy, and laughter—collectively, Humour—and elaborates upon how Sack Lunchrepurposes the conceptual binary of adult and child, neither reinforcing nor denying its formative role in the relationship between people of diverse ages. Interpreted as what Ludwig Wittgenstein called a grammatical investigation (or a study of how language is used), Sack Lunch inhabits the ambiguous and artificial boundary between child and adult to trouble an overly familiar picture of growing up. In showing how children’s and adults’ Humour is alike in showing what is funny, or off, in our world, Sack Lunch is a non-instrumental example of Humour as a pedagogical resource. Because it exposes the sedimented conceptions underlying how intergenerational social relationships perpetuate socio-political injustices, children’s Humour in particular warrants further attention by philosophers of humour
Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? Nordic Ecocritical Approaches to Children’s Texts
Full text linkReview of:
Goga, Nina, Lykke Guanio-Uluru, Bjørg Oddrun Hallås, Aslaug Nyrnes, editors. Ecocritical Perspectives on Children’s Texts and Cultures: Nordic Dialogues. Palgrave, 2018.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2020.001
“God Only Knows What It’s Doing to Our Children’s Brains": A Closer Look at Internet Addiction Discourse
No full textThis article examines the current discourse of “ethical technology” or “tech humanism” as it relates to young people’s use of mobile and social media. Reminiscent of earlier moral and media panics surrounding the use of communication technologies by young people, the current rhetoric focuses on “internet addiction” and other health aspects, and whether and how tech companies should be responsible for the use of their products and services. It is a contested debate that has brought together reformed Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, policy-makers, health specialists, academics, educators, and parents. In this article we demonstrate the range of stakeholders deeply engaged in these debates to argue that while there is genuine concern about the power and influence of social media and digital technologies, fears about young people’s relationships with digital technology has been profitable, and discourse on “internet addiction” has worked in ways that protect corporations and redirect condemnation away from them and toward the young people they are claiming to protect. In making this argument, we trace a history of “internet addiction” research in order to situate the current discourse, examine the rhetorical shift that emphasizes the health effects of technology on young people, survey the stakeholders leading these debates, and assesses the corporate responsibility of tech companies that depend on the commodification of young people’s content for their bottom line.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2020.000
Youth Agency and Ideology: La Movida and the Demise of the Francoist Regime
Full text linkReview of:
Valencia-García, Louie Dean. Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism. Bloomsbury, 2018
“It’s Such a Small Planet, Why Do You Need Borders?”: Seeing Flying in Le Petit Prince and Its Screen Adaptations
No full textIn this article, I analyze the potential positive impact of aerial perspectives on children’s understanding of their place in the world, with Le Petit Prince envisioning a borderless world of ecological and social unity. The novellas of the pilot and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry encourage their projected viewers to see the interconnectedness of all life, including the life of the planet itself. Most notably, Le Petit Prince raises environmental responsibility in discussing the prince’s planet and undermines ideas of national difference as the prince views the earth from space. Visual adaptations of Le Petit Prince by Stanley Donen and Will Vinton pick up on Saint-Exupéry’s phenomenology of perception and translate them through visual techniques into politicized aerial perspectives. Looking at Le Petit Prince and its film adaptations, this article argues that aerial perspectives work to transform children’s perceptions and break down bordered mappings of the world.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2019.002
The Role of Borders in the Lives of Greek–Cypriot Enclaved Children in Ira Genakritou’s Beyond the Barbed Wire
No full textA dramatic increase in Cypriot juvenile literature appeared in the decades following the traumatic events of the coup d’etat and subsequent Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. A crucial aspect of the political-national situation arising from those events—which affected the political geography of Cyprus, defined its contemporary history, and had an impact on several areas, including writing for the young—was the creation of a 180 km border dividing the island. The focus of this paper is on literary representations of enclavement and the strong impact borders and barbed wire played in the lives of young enclaved—those who chose to stay in their place of origin rather than be displaced. The discussion focuses on the book Πέρα από το συρματόπλεγμα (Beyond the Barbed Wire) and the traumatic separations of young children from their families arising from enclavement. Τhe story offers important insights into a situation that is not so well known or represented in juvenile literature and highlights the threating, violating, and traumatic role borders can play in young people’s lives.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2019.002
Reforming Borders of the Imagination: Diversity, Adaptation, Transmediation, and Incorporation in the Global Disney Film Landscape
No full textThe transmediation involved in recent Walt Disney Company productions including A Wrinkle in Time, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Coco, and Moana engage with a process of visualizing the nonvisual in ways that have heretofore differed from past Disney offerings. These films respond to calls for increased diversity, unlocking the potential of imagined spaces on a global scale. Although it addresses postcolonial identity politics that are both salient and fraught in the current geopolitical climate, such diversity nevertheless serves Disney’s corporate interests, (re)producing a colonizing progression decentralized from the nation-state but rooted in projection of culture. As Disney adapts new narratives, it also engages in a process of incorporation, absorbing these narratives into the larger framework of the overarching corporate structure of the “magic kingdom”—intended to designate a cultural home for childhood, imagination, and reminiscence of how things were and what they might become. I contend that Disney’s incorporation of new narratives extends greater access to imaginary spaces while producing a homogenizing effect on global media culture.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2019.002
Unfiltered and Unapologetic: March for Our Lives and the Political Boundaries of Age
No full textWhen young people took to the streets on 24 March 2018 as part of March for Our Lives (MFOL), they leveraged narratives of age and generation to inspire others to take action on preventing gun violence incidences across the United States. Despite the political precarity associated with their ages, student-activists claimed public space and voice as more than the victims of the so-called “mass shooting generation.” This article explores how narratives of age and generation shape their political legibility and authority in the MFOL movement. Based on analyses of Parkland student speeches and reflections and MFOL protest signs, I consider the paradoxical manner in which youth-activists play with notions of age in order to mark themselves as essential political actors and vulnerable not-yet subjects in need of protection. It is my contention that MFOL illustrates the liminal borders of youth political (in)visibility and the transformative possibilities of age-based politics for youth-activists.
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2019.001