This essay explores the intersections between Fandom Studies and Children's Literature, showcasing some of the ways in which "fan" as a keyword can illuminate both problems and potential solutions in children's media and education. Although children have historically been excluded from much of fan-organized fandom, the idea of…

Investigating children's pop cultures that rely on myth-making provide understandings about how children are active agents in the socialization into cultural and moral practices in their everyday lives. An annual visit to Santa Claus is important in children's pop culture in the Western world, however, the social practices associated with the…

Since the early 1940s, superheroes have been used by educators and clinicians to instill community and confidence; resiliency and courage; tolerance and sharing among children. Through superhero play, the early childhood classroom has become a laboratory filled with capes and costumes. In the therapist's milieu, the empowered superhero provides a…

This article argues that the denial of development can be a productive space and a liberating time for children in the current outcomes-driven times. The author offers an alternative reading of childhood, considering children's development differently through various philosophical theorizations of events, which emerge through utilizing philosophy…

This paper argues that the revival of the Gothic as an expression of contemporary tensions and issues has significance for our views of childhood and, as a consequence, for literacy and literacy education. While the ways in which Gothic literature and other Gothic popular culture forms are used to speak to these tensions have shifted across time…

In this article, the author combines multicultural feminist critical theories with the voices of Black and Latina/Latino young spiritual children to extend culturally responsive teaching. The author illuminates how children use their hip-hop writing to construct themselves as people who communicate with God, choose spiritual content for their…

This article explores political ambiguities surrounding the mutual implication between technology and subjectivity, through the analysis of recent cultural texts about childhood. These ambiguities are shown to rely upon the mobilisation of memory and assume specific gendered forms. The appeal to the past figured by the child is also shown to…

This issue of "Bank Street Occasional Papers" explores the value of time outside of school. Educators have given relatively little scholarly attention to young people's nonschool lives. Ignored or valorized, nonschool spaces show up in educational research only as a backdrop, implying that school learning is the yardstick by which to…

This paper examines Vygotsky's conception of play as a leading activity in the contexts of children's contemporary play worlds. Commencing with an examination of the relationship between leading activities and the development of psychological functions, the paper moves into a consideration of the relationship between imagination and reality as a…

The authors investigate the nearly ubiquitous cultural icon for girls' play, the princess. They survey historical instances of princess play from the beginning of the American republic to the New Millennium, look at the literature concerning princesses in various periods, and discuss the individual recollections about princess play of a number of…

Based on four years of experience teaching computers to 8-12 year olds, media scholar Ellen Seiter offers parents and educators practical advice on what children need to know about the Internet and when they need to know it. "The Internet Playground" argues that, contrary to the promises of technology boosters, teaching with computers is…

A teacher's observations on the marked contrast between the development and behavior of elementary school children in Tennessee's Cumberland plateau and their counterparts in New York City's Greenwich Village vividly demonstrate the regional basis that still accounts for a variety of cultural variations. And yet, place of upbringing is just one of…

This article reviews recent UK-based research that has prioritised children's accounts of their experiences of their daily lives, and focuses on gender differences in these accounts of family life, friendships, use of public space, use of out-of-school care, popular culture and consumption, and children's views of gender differences--drawing…

The Walt Disney Company's shift in ideology from conservatism to liberal multiculturalism is examined, focusing on corporate history, Disney's hegemonic dealings with Latin American and U.S. Hispanic communities, and Disney's role as cultural producer and facilitator of multiculturalism. Analysis of The Lion King points out its contributions to…

We inhabit a social world in which identity is complex, no longer closely tied to place or territory, delineated by nationhood, nor simply created, as psychology suggests, through acts of identification. Instead, it is argued, identity is produced through action and performance. Popular digital culture provides a rich context for identity play and…