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Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies
Producing Children

Producing Children

Critical Studies in Childhood Creativity

Edited by Peter C. Kunze and Victoria Ford Smith

Contributions by Katharine Slater, Rachel Conrad, Brianna Anderson, Brigitte Fielder, Maggie E. Morris Davis, Cristina Rhodes, Peter C. Kunze, Ivy Linton Stabell, Victoria Ford Smith, Marah Gubar and Trevor Boffone

Published by: Rutgers University Press

Series: Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

Imprint: Rutgers University Press

226 Pages, 156.00 × 235.00 × 18.00 mm, 22 B-W images

Paperback
9781978842311
Published: April 2025

£28.99

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Hardcover
9781978842328
Published: April 2025

£108.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Producing Children imagines the possibility, indeed the inevitability, of a creative relation between children as producers and consumers by revising the long-established, hierarchical relation between adults and children. The chapters in this collection reveal that studying child-produced culture complicates our received understandings of children’s culture as culture by adults, for children, about children. They also underscore “children’s literature” as a cultural phenomenon that moves across and beyond genres, forms, and media. As a whole, this collection reveals that attention to child-produced culture invites dialogue and collaboration across fields and disciplines invested in the critical understanding of children as embodied beings and childhood as both a stage of development and discursive construct with social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions and influence. With the ongoing vibrancy of childhood studies as a multidisciplinary area of inquiry, studies of child-produced culture provide scholars with an exciting opportunity to complicate, enrich, and expand theorization of childhood creativity, children’s culture, and even children themselves.

Introduction
PETER C. KUNZE AND VICTORIA FORD SMITH

PART ONE
Authorship

1 Daisy Ashford and the Child Writer’s Use of Scale
KATHARINE SLATER

2 “I didn’t die and felt the Earth”: Nature and the Urgency of Perception for Young Black Poets in The Voice of the Children Workshop
RACHEL CONRAD

3 Representations of Youth Environmental Activism and Agency in Aika Tsubota’s Secrets of the Earth
BRIANNA ANDERSON

PART TWO
Performance and Play

4 Phillis Wheatley’s Image and the Creative Black Child
BRIGITTE FIELDER

5 “When he saw the pencil put to paper”: The Meaning-Making of Children’s Language in Depression-Era Harlem
MAGGIE E. MORRIS DAVIS

6 Creative Testimonio as Activism: A Case Study of Sophie Cruz and Sarai Gonzalez
CRISTINA RHODES

7 Acting Up: Child Actors as Authors and Collaborators in Contemporary World Cinema
PETER C. KUNZE

PART THREE
Collaboration and Cocreation

8 “Mostly Written By”: A Cookbook Model for Reading Children’s Art
IVY LINTON STABELL

9 Negotiating Nightmares: Improvising with Children in Arthur Tress’s The Dream Collector
VICTORIA FORD SMITH

10 Choreographing Kinship: The Adult-Child Pas de Deux in Day on Earth and Lineage
MARAH GUBAR

11 Charli, Charlie, and Me: An Autoethnographic Study of TikTok Dance and Child/Adult Collaborations
TREVOR BOFFONE

Notes on Contributors
Index

PETER C. KUNZE is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the author of Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance (Rutgers University Press).

VICTORIA FORD SMITH is an associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. She is the author of Between Generations: Collaborative Authorship in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature.

"A welcome and eye-opening collection of richly contextualized, multidisciplinary studies that push us to think more seriously about children as cultural producers. This timely anthology moves forward in exciting ways important conversations about children's cultural agency, creativity, and collaborations with adults." - Mary Celeste Kearney (author of Girls Make Media) "Producing Children brings together rich, interdisciplinary perspectives to offer fresh insight on children's role in cultural production. The case studies explored in this collection reinforce the urgency of centering children's voices, experiences, and agency in how we understand the definitions and operations of culture." - Ashleigh Greene Wade (author of Black Girl Autopoetics: Agency in Everyday Digital Practice)