"The Kindergarten of New Consciousness": Gwendolyn Brooks and the Social Construction of Childhood

‘My future doesn’t know ME’: Time and subjectivity in poetry by young people

“…Prout (2005: 145) has argued for 'the need to intensify the interdisciplinarity of childhood studies', and the integration of the humanities and arts with social analytic approaches can be important means of doing so. Children's literature has been an active area of relevant scholarship in recent years, producing interesting work exploring adult writers' conceptions of childhood in fiction for young readers (Clark, 2003;Nodelman, 2008) and poetry for adult and child audiences (Flynn, 1990(Flynn, , 2000, and there have been a few studies of representations of youth in poetry for adults (Burt, 2007;Flynn, 1999). Children's literature has been an active area of relevant scholarship in recent years, producing interesting work exploring adult writers' conceptions of childhood in fiction for young readers (Clark, 2003;Nodelman, 2008) and poetry for adult and child audiences (Flynn, 1990(Flynn, , 2000, and there have been a few studies of representations of youth in poetry for adults (Burt, 2007;Flynn, 1999).…”

“…While there has been valuable work integrating historical and literary perspectives on childhood (Sanchez-Eppler, 2005;Steedman, 1995), integration of literary analysis with social studies of childhood has not yet been much attempted. Children's literature has been an active area of relevant scholarship in recent years, producing interesting work exploring adult writers' conceptions of childhood in fiction for young readers (Clark, 2003;Nodelman, 2008) and poetry for adult and child audiences (Flynn, 1990(Flynn, , 2000, and there have been a few studies of representations of youth in poetry for adults (Burt, 2007;Flynn, 1999).…”