Dissertations of Note
Buy Issue for $35 at JHUP- Dissertations of Note
Ackerman promotes the learning of English as a second language "through the use of drama as a method of integrating physical action" with the language it represents. She has adapted forty rhymes, fairy tales or folktales specifically to be used with puppets and teaching modules for each.
Amitai describes the enthusiastic and "lively" development of amateur, professional, and commercial children's theatre in Israel and Palestine and the recent change in the nature of plays for children.
This study, directed toward the elementary teacher and librarian, does not use literature as a "purely pedagogic tool." It stresses "the enjoyment of literary works and aesthetic values inherent in them" as well as the use of entire texts to stimulate "a more holistic learning situation."
Barchers poses the question: "Does our culture's folk literature primarily portray women in roles emphasizing beauty and passivity, rather than heroism?" She concludes that for the most part it does. Examples that deviate from the norm come from a variety of cultures but few are known widely.
Barlow examines "data about personal characteristics, education, professional experience, and attitudes" of writers of children's science trade books to determine major differences among the fifty-two authors studied.
Bivona analyzes the various manifestations of the theme of imperialism in Victorian novels, drawing from the work of Disraeli, Conrad, Carroll, Kipling, and Hardy.
While surveying scholarship about Ted Hughes, Bubbers shows that the majority [End Page 241] of it is linear and chronological. She focuses "on the story Hughes tells and how he tells it." Of particular significance is her thesis that Hughes's writing for and about children "illuminates the entire body of his writings and his theories of imaginative literature," because "in his critical writings Hughes stresses the importance of mythic stories for children. In his imaginative works, he writes fairy tales, anthropomorphic fantasies, and adventure stories, all genres that are usually categorized as children's literature."
Basing her work on the assumption that "adults who have little experience with mainstream literacy practices may be at a disadvantage in the effort to achieve schooled literacy for themselves and for their children," BuchananBerrigan shows that using children's stories with them improved literacy.
Using works published between 1970 and 1983, Carruth explores the "themes of National Socialism, work, and relations between children and adults." While both literatures treated similar themes, particularly the "wrongs of Nazism," East German books "reflect the uniform, authoritarian society of the GDR, and West German children's books reflect the greater variety of ideas that are accepted in the FRG."
