The Evolution in Gender Norms In Richard Scarry’s Classic Kids’ Book

 

I just came across this fascinating article on my Facebook feed and I thought I’d share it here just in case anyone might be interested.

25+ Changes To Your Favorite Childhood Book Show How Much Society Has Changed

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About Stefano Morello

Stefano Morello is a doctoral candidate in English with a certificate in American Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY and a Teaching Fellow at Queens College, CUNY. His academic interests include American Studies, pop culture, poetics, and digital humanities. His dissertation, “Let’s Make a Scene! East Bay Punk and Subcultural Worlding,” explores the heterotopic space of the East Bay punk scene, its modes of resistance and (dis-)association, and the clashes between its politics and aesthetics. He serves as co-chair of the Graduate Forum of the Italian Association for American Studies (AISNA) and is a founding editor of its journal, JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy). As a digital humanist, Stefano focuses on archival practices with a knack for archival pedagogy and public-facing initiatives. He created the East Bay Punk Digital Archive, an open access archive of East Bay punk-zines, and worked as a curator and consultant for Lawrence Livermore’s archive at Cornell University. He was a Wellcome Trust Transdisciplinary Fellow in 2019-2020.

2 thoughts on “The Evolution in Gender Norms In Richard Scarry’s Classic Kids’ Book

  1. Chris Vitale

    This is such a fantastic post. Thank you for this Stefano.

    This is the kind of comparative visual narrative study I am interested in discovering through advancing computer vision and natural language processing. Basically, we can achieve automated image comparisons to find unlike areas across say – children’s books first published then reprinted since the 1950s. I guarantee there is a body of malleable literature that changes in parallel to societal norms of each decade.

  2. Kristi Fleetwood

    That’s pretty interesting that they changed the book in order to stay culturally relevant (and keep selling books). I wonder if this is a popular trend across children’s books from the 1950s that are still sold today.

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