Childhood and Culture in Japan

Catalog description

This seminar offers students an interdisciplinary look at how children became central to social life in modern Japan. What set of historical and philosophical conditions made childhood newly visible in the late 19th century? How has the relationship between the marketplace and childhood evolved over the past hundred years? How have class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality inflected the ways childhood has been experienced? Students will analyze different cultural texts for and about children (early fairy tales, comic books, propaganda, film) in relation to critical essays drawn from a variety of disciplines.