- Dissertations of Note
Barsalou's dissertation in American history argues that "changing cultural concerns infuse" the Dorothy of Baum's stories with "social, cultural, and moral imperatives" which come "to dictate the content of historical stories particularly in the historiography of the Reconstruction era." Her hypothesis is housed in the context of William A. Dunning's historical work on Reconstruction, work that is contemporary with Baum's Wizard of Oz.
Bhatt examines formal and informal systems of education "in an economic framework." She finds that "library use has a positive impact on homework completion rates, but these results are not robust to geographic aggregation of the data." Similar results were found in gifted and talented programs where math scores accelerated, but the acceleration was not sustained, and only "rigorous" gifted and talented programs produced many positive results. Moreover, "participation has no effect on the quality of a child's peer group, nor on the child's self-reported interest in school."
Bories-Lu asks, "Why have certain literary texts that were originally written for adults ended up being read exclusively for children, and why have other texts written specifically for children offered a level of content that can only be destined for an adult reader?" To answer, she looks at the origins of literature for children in France, from both an historical and rhetorical perspective, focusing on literature from "de La Fontaine to the twentieth century: from his 'Le Corbeau et le Renard,' Perrault's 'Le Petit Chaperon rouge,' and d'Aulnoy's 'L'Oiseau bleu'; to Le Tour de la France par deux enfants by [G.] Bruno, and Le Petit Prince by Saint-Exupéry," as well as Rousseau's Émile which, for the first time, "introduces age . . . as a criterion for determining what kind of reading is appropriate."
Burger "critiques theories of fixed or prescriptive American myth, instead of developing a theory of American myth" and, by doing so, brings "children's literature, film, popular fiction, theatre, and music together in a theoretically multifaceted approach to The Wizard of Oz narrative, its many transformations, and its lasting significance within American culture." She looks specifically at five themes that have been central to establishing the national identity of the citizen throughout American history. The themes' "popular representations tend to reflect the values espoused by the surrounding culture at the time of creation."
In 1876 Cesare Lombroso argued "that criminals possessed certain physical characteristics that distinguished them from non-criminals." Chaochuti traces this concept from Poe through the Third Reich, where "Nazi officials and anti-Semitic writers" revived the Lombrosian concept "by claiming that Jews were inherent criminals [End Page 274] whose depravity and criminality could be read on their bodies" and by "disseminating this idea in propagandistic texts such as the newspaper Der Stürmer and the children's books Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom) and Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher (The Poodle-Pug-Dachshund-Pinscher)."
Chareonbutra's dissertation "is a comparative study of gender values represented in three selected Thai tales: 'Pikool Thong' or 'The Girl of Charming Words,' 'Sno Noi Ruen Ngarm' or 'Princess and the Magical House,' and 'Kaeo Na Ma' or 'Kaeo, the Horse-Faced Girl'" from a feminist perspective, one that has rarely been applied to...