Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Radical Children's Writers of the 18th and 20th Centuries: Those 'Barbarous and Didactic'
Instructor(s): Susan Lehr, Education
Students will explore the nature of the 18th and 20th Century "feminist" children's books through an interdisciplinary lens, including an examination of attitudes toward these groundbreaking female children's writers, the religious and cultural foundation of these perspectives, early 'flickers of feminism', literary criticism, feminist writings, and the harsh censorship against these authors by the 'strict literary police'. Students will read selected works of the female writers beginning with Sarah Fielding's The Governess (1749) and ending with Lois Lowry's The Giver (1993), in order to understand parallels between these women writers separated by more than 200 years.