As someone deeply invested in exploring genre and its limits, I was excited to read Westman’s article. From what I could gather, her main argument is that as children’s literature scholars, we need to consider how our field can speak to and illuminate conversations happening about genre and periodization in literary studies more generally. Westman starts by emphasizing is that genre is a performative, not material or static, category that changes depending on audience and context. As such, children’s literary has a unique potential to extend outside of its traditional subfield to inform other areas of literary studies.
In terms of critical approach, I think Westman certainly falls under the broad category of “historicist” because she believes that context is crucial in understanding a text. More specifically, Westman draws on reception theory and book history—she’s interested, for instance, in the publishing and re-publishing of Goodnight Moon and how the work has been read by audiences over time. I also see Westman implicitly relying on poststructuralist thinkers (such as Foucault) in that her piece examines how the seemingly stable structures we use to categorize things like literature—in this case, periodization and genre—are not only arbitrary but historically mediated.
In reading the article, I was initially captivated by Westman’s call to arms of sorts, that as students in this field we have the potential to rethink large-scale structural problems in literary studies more generally. At the same time, I felt that Westman failed to discuss the institutional barriers within academia that might make this type of cross-disciplinary work challenging. If children’s literary studies has been somewhat segregated from English scholarship, how can we collaborate with literature critics to create these sorts of more inclusive, comprehensive analyses? And how can scholars publish non-traditional, genre-bending articles if literary journals tend to be periodized as well? Periodization seems like a deeply entrenched institutional issue, as well as an epistemological one. That’s not to say that moving beyond issues of genre isn’t possible, only that I think it will be more challenging than Westman lets on.
However, Westman’s article was originally read aloud as a “manifesto” at a couple of literary conferences (Notes, pg 468), so I can understand that the context might not have allowed her to delve into specific solutions to the problems she addresses. In any case, this article left me with a lot to think about as I begin writing my paper for this course—especially that I should look into scholarly conversations outside of children’s literary studies even while studying children’s literature.
– Anna Zeemont
