An original and lucid study of the figure of the child as it is presented in the rapidly expanding field of criticism of children's literature, this book argues that this body of criticism reveals the realm of childhood as constructed by the adult reader. Karin Lesnik-Oberstein demonstrates that both the criticism and the texts it studies are underpinned by the narratives of the liberal arts' educational ideals and their attendant socio-political and personal ideologies. The author places literary discussion into the wider current debates about childhood in psychology and psychotherapy. This...

Children's Literature: New Approaches is a guide for graduate and upper-level undergraduate students of children's literature. It is structured through critics reading individual texts to bring out wider issues that are current in the field. Includes chronology of key events and publications, a selective guide to further reading and a list of Web-based resources.

Karin Lesnik-Oberstein explores the debates and decisions around the uses of reproductive technologies, specifically in relation to childhood and the having of children.

Even books ostensibly devoted to the topic of why people want children and the reasons for using reproductive technologies tend to start with the assumption that this is either simply a biological drive to reproduce, or a socially instilled desire. This book uses psychoanalysis not to provide an answer in its own right, but as an analytic tool to probe more deeply the problems of these assumptions. In doing so,...

This is the first academic book ever written on women and body hair, which has been seen until now as too trivial, ridiculous or revolting to write about. Even feminist writers or researchers on the body have found remarkably little to say about body hair, usually ignoring it completely. It would appear that the only texts to elaborate on body hair are guides on how to remove it, medical texts on 'hirsutism', or fetishistic pornography on 'hairy' women. The last taboo also questions how and why any particular issue can become defined as 'self-evidently' too silly or too mad to write about....

Drawing from work in a wide range of fields, this book presents novel approaches to key debates in thinking about and defining disability. Differing from other works in Critical Disability Studies, it crucially demonstrates the consequences of radically rethinking the roles of language and perspective in constructing identities.