Subjectivity in Asian Children’s Literature and Film

<p><strong>Winner of the Children’s Literature Association Honor Book Award</strong></p><p>This volume establishes a dialogue between East and West in children’s literature scholarship. In all cultures, children’s literature shows a concern to depict identity and individual development, so that character and theme pivot on questions of agency and the circumstances that frame an individual’s decisions and capacities to make choices and act upon them. Such issues of selfhood fall under the heading subjectivity. Attention to the representation of subjectivity in literature enables us to consider how values are formed and changed, how emotions are cultivated, and how maturation is experienced. Because subjectivities emerge in social contexts, they vary from place to place. This book brings together essays by scholars from several Asian countries — Japan, India, Pakistan, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Australia, Thailand, and The Philippines — to address subjectivities in fiction and film within frameworks that include social change, multiculturalism, post-colonialism, globalization, and glocalization. Few scholars of western children's literature have a ready understanding of what subjectivity entails in children’s literature and film from Asian countries, especially where Buddhist or Confucian thought remains influential. This volume will impact scholarship and pedagogy both within the countries represented and in countries with established traditions in teaching and research, offering a major contribution to the flow of ideas between different academic and educational cultures.</p> <p><em>Series Editor’s Foreword</em> 1. Introduction: The Politics of Identity: a Transcultural Perspective on Subjectivity in Writing for Children <i>John Stephens </i>2. Metamorphosis: The Emergence of Glocal Subjectivities in the Blend of Global, Local, East and West <i>Anna Katrina Gutierrez </i>3. The Muslima within American Children’s Literature: Female Identity and Subjectivity in Novels about Pakistani-Muslim Characters <i>Seemi Aziz </i>4. Cooperation and Negotiation—Formation of Subjectivity in Japanese and Australian Picture Books <i>Miyuki Hisaoka </i>5. Subjectivity and Culture Consciousness in Chinese Children’s Literature <i>Lifang Li </i>6. "How Can I Be the Protagonist of My Own Life?": Intimations of Hope for Teen Subjectivities in Korean Fiction and Film <i>Sung-Ae Lee </i>7. Contingent Subjectivity and Masculinity in Japanese Film for Young People <i>Christie Barber </i>8. Strong Is Beautiful: A <i>Thai-Thai</i> Happiness <i>Salinee Antarasena </i>9. Subjectivity and Ethnicity in Vietnamese Folktales with Metamorphosed Heroes <i>Tran Quynh Ngoc Bui </i>10. All is Relative, Nothing is Reliable: <i>Inuyasha</i> and Japanese Subjectivities <i>Mio Bryce </i>11. Strategic empowerment: a study of subjectivity in contemporary Indian English children’s fiction <i>Suchismita Banerjee </i>12. Subjectivity without Identity: Huang Chunming’s Fiction in Postcolonial Vein <i>Suh Shan Chen and Ming Cherng Duh </i>13. Scrivener's Progeny: Writing the Subject<i> Robyn McCallum</i></p>