Empire's nursery : children's literature and the origins of the American century / Brian Rouleau. [electronic resource]

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Rouleau, Brian, author.

Series:

• NYU scholarship online.
• NYU scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Children's literature, American--History and criticism.
• Young adult literature, American--History and criticism.
• Imperialism in literature.
• Internationalism in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2021]

Summary:

How children and children's literature helped build America's empire was not made by adults alone. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, young people became essential to its creation. Through children's literature, authors instilled the idea of America's power and the importance of its global prominence. As kids eagerly read dime novels, series fiction, pulp magazines, and comic books that dramatized the virtues of empire, they helped entrench a growing belief in America's indispensability to the international order. Empires more generally require stories to justify their existence. Children's literature seeded among young people a conviction that their country's command of a continent (and later the world) was essential to global stability.

Contents:

• Juvenile foreign relations ; or, policy at the level of popular fiction
• How the West was fun
• Serialized imperialism
• Empire's amateurs
• Internationalist impulses
• Dollar diplomacy for the price of a few nickels
• Comic book cold war
• The empire writes back.

Notes:

• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Description based on print version record.
• Also issued in print: 2021.

ISBN:

1-4798-0448-7

OCLC:

1259320374