English Research Seminar --- Dr Shawna McDermott (University of St Andrews) Innocence and Absence: National Identity in American and Scottish Children's Literature

School of English research seminar featuring Dr Shawna McDermott, Lecturer in American Literature.

In a letter published in Scribner's Magazine in 1973 to advertise the new children's magazine St. Nicholas Magazine for Young Folks, editor Mary Mapes Dodge describes the ideal American children's magazine as a “pleasure-ground,” separate from the concerns addressed by “adult” magazines of the era and, indeed, protected from them. Her letter further indicates that Dodged believed that the children of America suffered without a magazine like St. Nicholas, writing that “A good magazine for little ones was never so much needed, and much harm is done by nearly all that are published. In England, especially, the so-called juvenile periodicals are precisely what they ought not to be.”

This presentation, “Innocence and Absence: National Identity in American and Scottish Children's Literature,” explores conceptions of children's literature as an imaginary space in which children can be protected from national, political, and social problems. However, readings of St. Nicholas, Our Young Folks, and Babyland demonstrate that this presumed innocence of children's literature veils the ways that these magazines subtly promote scientific racism and ask their child readers to participate in systems of white supremacy.

In this short talk, I will present these arguments from my first book, Visualizing the Future: Childhood, Race, and Imperialism in American Children's Magazines 1873-1934, which is currently under consideration at New York University Press. I will also demonstrate how these arguments engage thematically with my future project on national identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Scottish children's literature.