This course builds on the foundations in literary studies you received in your BA programme, applying them to the particular field of children's and young adult literature.
In a first theoretical section, we are going to examine ideologies of childhood, the history of children's literature and theories of child development. Moreover, we shall explore how to approach children's and young adult literature through the lenses of current literary and cultural theories. In a second step, the main part of the course will explore the peculiarities of various genres of children's and young adult literature, including poetry, picture books, folk tales, drama, film, new media and, of course, realistic as well as fantastic narratives.
The course will be based on The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature (ed. Karen Coats; Bloomsbury, 2018), which contains theoretical texts as well as interviews, tasks and reflections. Since we will use this book as a textbook for our course, each participant must buy their own copy before the beginning of the term. Primary texts will be provided in class as needed.
Ideally, you take this course together with the course "More than light-hearted easy reads with happy endings: the dark and tough side of children's literature" (Monday 12-14, immediately following this course). Both courses complement each other and give students in the MA Lehramt study programmes the opportunity to complete a full module with a coherent topic in one term. This is why students who register for both courses with the intention to participate in both will be given preference. Please use the commentary function of Unisono to indicate whether you would like to take both courses in this term.
Students of Lehramt Grundschule, who only need to take one course, might find this course here more suitable to their school type, because the texts in the other course are targeted at older readers.
- Dozent/in: Anja Müller