Fantasies of Neglect Fantasies of Neglect
Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

Fantasies of Neglect

Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction

    • 36,99 €
    • 36,99 €

Descripción editorial

In our current era of helicopter parenting and stranger danger, an unaccompanied child wandering through the city might commonly be viewed as a victim of abuse and neglect. However, from the early twentieth century to the present day, countless books and films have portrayed the solitary exploration of urban spaces as a source of empowerment and delight for children. 

Fantasies of Neglect explains how this trope of the self-sufficient, mobile urban child originated and considers why it persists, even as it goes against the grain of social reality. Drawing from a wide range of films, children’s books, adult novels, and sociological texts, Pamela Robertson Wojcik investigates how cities have simultaneously been demonized as dangerous spaces unfit for children and romanticized as wondrous playgrounds that foster a kid’s independence and imagination. Charting the development of free-range urban child characters from Little Orphan Annie to Harriet the Spy to Hugo Cabret, and from Shirley Temple to the Dead End Kids, she considers the ongoing dialogue between these fictional representations and shifting discourses on the freedom and neglect of children. 

While tracking the general concerns Americans have expressed regarding the abstract figure of the child, the book also examines the varied attitudes toward specific types of urban children—girls and boys, blacks and whites, rich kids and poor ones, loners and neighborhood gangs. Through this diverse selection of sources, Fantasies of Neglect presents a nuanced chronicle of how notions of American urbanism and American childhood have grown up together. 

 

GÉNERO
Arte y espectáculo
PUBLICADO
2016
19 de septiembre
IDIOMA
EN
Inglés
EXTENSIÓN
222
Páginas
EDITORIAL
Rutgers University Press
TAMAÑO
2,1
MB

Más libros de Pamela Robertson Wojcik

Media Crossroads Media Crossroads
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Gidget Gidget
2020
The Apartment Complex The Apartment Complex
2018
Fantasies of Neglect Fantasies of Neglect
2016
New Constellations New Constellations
2012
The Apartment Plot The Apartment Plot
2010

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