Dissertations of Note
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Batten's dissertation examines "family environment and selected societal values in popular young adult literature in order to determine the differences between current works and works popular in the 50s." Her goal is to identify specific works that "engender and enhance moral and social values." She finds that societal values varied widely between the 1950s and the present.
While applying feminist theory to the seven Ramona books, Benson finds that there are considerable conflicts between implicit and explicit depictions of gender. "The conclusion provides a discussion of constructivist composition theory that suggests pedagogical strategies by which students may interrogate ideological constructs which position them as subjects within the dominate hegemony."
Berger examines how Barrie used characters, themes, and motifs "of Greek mythology to create a magical, imaginary world in which his contemporary counterparts of the gods reenact the Greek myths in contemporary guise." He notes that Kenneth Grahame and Edith Nesbit also "idealized and glorified childhood"; analyzes the Spielberg film based on Peter Pan; and concludes with a discussion of passages from childhood to adulthood based on a comparison of the authors with Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker), Mozart (The Magic Flute), and Strauss (Die Frau ohne Schatten).
Using semiotics and culture studies as a framework, Bongco identifies comics as a product of popular culture and focuses on the superhero comic book. Although it is commonly held that "popular culture enforces the values of some dominant ideology," she finds that "the presence and polarity of superheroes and the superhero genre involve a critique rather than a celebration of a given society's judicial system . . . ; many recent comicbooks portray justice and law as provisional, incomplete and virtually unenforceable by a state increasingly incapable of understanding its complexity."
Boyle discusses the production of the guide she published with Facets, which evaluates "violence and gender bias" in video, film, and television. Eight hundred and fifty titles are listed in the guide, which includes a "significant listing of multicultural videos, representing thirty cultures." [End Page 239]
Brown questions how librarians develop a collection of multicultural materials and literature and what selection procedures they use. She finds that the ethnic background of a community has "a great effect" on selection and that librarians generally use the same criteria for building a multicultural children's collection as they use for other collections. She concludes that there is a continuing "need for staff development training."
Cadden is concerned with "the degrees and kinds of narrative and ideological authority" Le Guin employs in both children's and adult literature and with "the ways narrative can construct or confute authority." He believes that Le Guin's "unique use of genre as a type of audience . . . has implications for the ways we think about children's literature in relation to 'adult literature,' and for the ways we think about writers who 'cross-over' any genre boundaries." He concludes with suggestions for applying his theory to the teaching of children's literature.
