Module Specifications..
Current Academic Year 2024 - 2025
Please note that this information is subject to change.
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Description Beverly Lyon Clark says school stories “lend themselves to didacticism because they are about schooling” and “schooling is, in part, a metaphor for the effect that the book is supposed to have, whether it endorses traditional schooling or tries to school us in subversion” (1996, 7). This module explores how school stories frequently reflect/challenge/help shape the values and attitudes of the culture producing them, thereby demonstrating what that culture expects of young readers as they mature. Students will trace how the school story genre has evolved between the mid-nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries and will be introduced to a diverse range of texts for children and young adults, which can be classed as school stories. These include those considered to be ‘canonical’, those that modify conventions through their representations of gender, sexuality, religion, class and/or race and ethnicity, and those that revise the school story genre by combining it with other genres, such as realism underpinned by fairytale or lore, and dystopia. Across the British boys’ and girls’ school stories and the young adult stories set in a variety of school settings this module explores, there is a central focus on issues of power and social control; students will explore how child and/or young adult protagonists navigate social power structures as well as broader hegemonic power structures in the texts under discussion. Students will be encouraged to consider how school stories illustrate child/young-adult-adult power dynamics and the permeable boundaries of children’s and young-adult literature concerning both genres and intended audiences. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Learning Outcomes 1. 1. Demonstrate an understanding of the history, development and key characteristics of school stories. 2. 2. Demonstrate an appreciation of how contemporary school stories employ and/or depart from the conventions of the genre. 3. 3. Contextualise readings of children’s and young adult texts under discussion within the context of cultural and literary debates and in light of the related theoretical and critical frameworks introduced and explored on the module. 4. 4. Demonstrate an appreciation of how portrayals of child/adolescent identity in the texts under discussion may be linked to emerging notions of childhood/adolescence or, more specifically, to emerging notions of gender, sexuality, religion, class and/or race and ethnicity during the periods under discussion. 5. 5. Appreciate how the works raise issues relating to child/young-adult-adult power-dynamics and to audience. 6. 6. Communicate viewpoints effectively on the topic in the areas studied. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml |
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Indicative Content and Learning Activities
Lecture Title Brief DescriptionIntroduction: Traditions of the school story and gender roles School Stories About Boys: Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1856) School Stories About Boys:Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co. (1899, 1921) E.F. Benson, David Blaize (1916) School Stories about Girls: Antonia White, Frost in May (1933) School Stories about Girls:Antonia Forest, Autumn Term (1948), End of Term (1959) Contemporary YA School Stories: Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak (1999) Contemporary YA School Stories: Isabel Quintero, Gabi, a Girl in Pieces (2014) Contemporary YA School Stories: Louise O’Neill, Only Ever Yours (2014) Contemporary YA School Stories: Caroline O’Donoghue, All Our Hidden Gifts (2021) ConclusionIndicative Secondary Sources: * lecturers will suggest additional relevant secondary sources in lecturers and on Loop*Aitchison, David. The School Story: Young Adult Narratives in the Age of Neoliberalism. Edinburgh University Press, 2022. Clark, Beverly Lyon. Regendering the School Story: Sassy Sissies and Tattling Tomboys. New York: Garland, 1996. Gathorne-Hardy, Jonathan. The Public School Phenomenon. London. Sydney. Auckland & Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977. Hollowell, Clare. “For the Honour of the School: Class in the Girls’ School Story.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 45, no. 4, 2014, pp. 310–23. Hunt, Peter. Children’s Literature. Blackwell, 2001. Mooney, Jennifer. “Only Ever Yours” , Feminist Discourse in Irish Literature: Gender and Power in Louise O’Neill’s Young Adult Fiction. New York and London: Routledge, 2022, pp. 69-92. Musgrave, P. W. From Brown to Bunter : The Life and Death of the School Story / P. W. Musgrave. Routledge, 1985. Nodelman, Perry. “Text as Teacher: The Beginning of Charlotte’s Web.” Children’s Literature, vol. 13, 1985, pp.109–27. Pearson, Lucy with Peter Hunt. Children’s Literature, London: York press, 2011, pp. 90-111. Pesold, Ulrike. The Other in the School Stories A Phenomenon in British Children’s Literature. Boston: Brill, 2017. Quigley, Isobel. The Heirs of Tom Brown: The English School Story. London: Chatto & Windus, 1982. Ray, Sheila. “School Stories.” International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, 2nd ed., vol. 1, Routledge, 2004, pp. 467–80. Reimer, Mavis. “Traditions of the School Story” in Grenby, M.O. and Andrea Immel (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature.’ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Simons, Judy. “Gender Roles in Children’s Fiction” in M.O. and Andrea Immel (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Indicative Reading List
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Other Resources None | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Programme or List of Programmes
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