On
Wednesday, Oct. 31 at noon (location to be announced) the National Center for
the Study of Children’s Literature, in collaboration with the
Department of English & Comparative Literature, will be holding a brown bag discussion
session with University of Florida Professor (and Friend of the Department!)
Kenneth Kidd. We’ll be reading Chapter II of his fabulous book,
Freud in OZ: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature (“Child Analysis, Play, and the
Golden Age of
Pooh”). We’ll make the
chapter available to those who are interested next week: details to be
announced! (Or go out and buy a copy of the whole book: it’s super duper totes
great!)
The Center
asked Professor Kidd to write up a little introductory piece, and he kindly
obliged us! So we’ll turn things over to the dear doctor K:
A Few Words
by Kenneth Kidd on Kenneth Kidd
In graduate
school I had no idea one could specialize in children's literature, so I
started out as a nineteenth-century Americanist with side interests in
gender/queer studies. I wrote my dissertation on (mostly American) discourses
of boyhood from the nineteenth century forward, and that eventually became my
first book,
Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale (U of Minnesota Press, 2004). The book explores
how the pseudo-science of "boyology" intersects with and draws energy
from what I call the "feral tale", the story of a "wild
child" raised by animals or otherwise away from human culture. By that
point I had gotten active with the Children's Literature Association and also
the MLA's Division on Children's Literature. I had also moved from my first
faculty appointment at Eastern Michigan University to the University of
Florida, where I now teach. Both universities have excellent programs in
children's literature and so I've had the benefit of interacting with other
like-minded scholars locally as well as through my professional networks. I've
published on a number of topics, and have coedited two essay collections that
reflect particular interests –
Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism (Wayne State U Press, 2004) and
more recently
Over the Rainbow: Queer Children's and Young Adult Literature (U of Minnesota Press, 2012). Both
are the first such collections on their respective topics.
My most
recent book is
Freud in Oz: At the
Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children's Literature, a portion of
which I've suggested as reading for the brown bag session (we’ll be reading
chapter two, “Child Analysis, Play, and the Golden Age of
Pooh”). I had a lot of fun researching and writing this project,
which I would describe as intellectual and cultural history rather than
literary criticism. It is most definitely not applied psychoanalytic criticism;
rather, it's a study of the many relays and exchanges between psychoanalysis
and children's literature.
Freud in Oz
continues some themes and emphases from
Making
American Boys but is more comprehensively concerned with children's
literature. Both projects are basically "history of ideas"
scholarship.
I chose the
second chapter for our brown bag discussion for several reasons. First, it
showcases my general strategy in the book, namely to historicize the relation between
psychoanalysis and children's literature while also theorizing new ways of
thinking about both. I suggest that the attention of child analysts to the play
and "forms" of childhood amounts to a kind of "children's
literature" all its own. The chapter makes clear my fascination with the
play of tropes (including the trope of play) across multiple discourses and
professional registers. Also, the chapter is concerned with a canonical
children's book, one of the so-called classics of the so-called Golden Age of
Anglo-American children's literature. I'm interested in the uses to which such
books are put, how they are mobilized in service of various aims and ends. Finally,
Chapter 2 is connected to two book projects now in progress, The Children's Classic, and Philosophy, Theory, and Childhood. The
former explores the children's literary classic as a cultural formation and
fantasy; the second takes up theory "for beginners" and philosophy
"for children," making the case that philosophy and theory depend
upon childhood and children's literature more than has been recognized. I'll be
reading from a chapter in progress from Philosophy,
Theory, and Childhood when I visit next Spring,and I'm very much looking
forward to that visit, and to the brown bag discussion on Halloween!
Kenneth's
Book Picks (with the understanding, of course, that there's no such thing as
Essential Books):
Pierre
Bayard, How to Talk About Books You
Haven't Read
Lauren
Berlant, Cruel Optimism
Jacques
Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am
James F.
English, The Culture of Prestige: Prizes,
Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value
Emer
O'Sullivan, Comparative Children's
Literature
Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect,
Pedagogy, Performativity
Susan
Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the
Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection
