Children’s Culture and Ideological Formation

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Children’s literature, film, and culture form an understudied subfield of Jewish Studies. In addition, since children’s culture has typically been associated with the “innocence” of children, the idea of children as political actors, or children’s literature and television as having political content, has not been a central focus of studies of children’s culture. This panel proposes to examine three very different loci of children’s culture related to Jewish themes, in English, Hebrew and Arabic, and Yiddish, to determine the ways that literature, television, and film for children participate in various political discourses either overtly or inadvertently. Considering the disparate contexts and media of American film, Israeli television, and Yiddish leisure reading materials will allow the panelists to draw conclusions about the way that politics and ideology operate in and through children’s culture.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Literature and Culture

Chair

• Jodi Eichler-Levine, Lehigh University

Individual Presentations

• “This is Your Bar Mitzvah, Goldberg!: Jewish Losers, White Gentile Male Saviors, and ‘Unthreatening’ Egalitarianism in The Mighty Ducks Trilogy.” - Jonathan Branfman, Stanford university

• Hope is a Thing for Children: National Identity in "Madrasa" - Melissa Weininger, California State University Northridge

• A World Safe to Wander: The Adventures of the Yiddish “New Girl” - Miriam Udel, Emory University

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 10