Producing Children
Critical Studies in Childhood Creativity
A welcome and eye-opening collection of richly contextualized, multidisciplinary studies that push us to think more seriously about children as cultural producers. This timely anthology moves forward in exciting ways important conversations about children's cultural agency, creativity, and collaborations with adults.
'Producing Children brings together rich, interdisciplinary perspectives to offer fresh insight on children's role in cultural production. The case studies explored in this collection reinforce the urgency of centering children's voices, experiences, and agency in how we understand the definitions and operations of culture.'
VICTORIA FORD SMITH is an associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. She is the author of Between Generations: Collaborative Authorship in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature.
Introduction
PETER C. KUNZE AND VICTORIA FORD SMITH
PART ONE
Authorship
1 Daisy Ashford and the Child Writer’s Use of Scale
KATHARINE SLATER
2 “I didn’t die and felt the Earth”: Nature and the Urgency of Perception for Young Black Poets in The Voice of the Children Workshop
RACHEL CONRAD
3 Representations of Youth Environmental Activism and Agency in Aika Tsubota’s Secrets of the Earth
BRIANNA ANDERSON
PART TWO
Performance and Play
4 Phillis Wheatley’s Image and the Creative Black Child
BRIGITTE FIELDER
5 “When he saw the pencil put to paper”: The Meaning-Making of Children’s Language in Depression-Era Harlem
MAGGIE E. MORRIS DAVIS
6 Creative Testimonio as Activism: A Case Study of Sophie Cruz and Sarai Gonzalez
CRISTINA RHODES
7 Acting Up: Child Actors as Authors and Collaborators in Contemporary World Cinema
PETER C. KUNZE
PART THREE
Collaboration and Cocreation
8 “Mostly Written By”: A Cookbook Model for Reading Children’s Art
IVY LINTON STABELL
9 Negotiating Nightmares: Improvising with Children in Arthur Tress’s The Dream Collector
VICTORIA FORD SMITH
10 Choreographing Kinship: The Adult-Child Pas de Deux in Day on Earth and Lineage
MARAH GUBAR
11 Charli, Charlie, and Me: An Autoethnographic Study of TikTok Dance and Child/Adult Collaborations
TREVOR BOFFONE
Notes on Contributors
Index