Karín Lesnik-Oberstein – författare

Children's Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child is an original and lucid study of the figure of the `child' as it is presented in the rapidly expanding field of the criticism of children's literature. The book argues that in fact, this same body of criticism - through often contradictory versions of the `child' - revels the realm of `childhood' as one constructed by the adult reader. Karin Lesnik-Oberstein demonstrates that both this criticism and the texts it studies are underpinned by the narratives of the liberal arts' educational ideals and their attendant socio-political and personal ideologies.The author places literary discussion into the current wider debates about childhood in psychology and psychotherapy. This lively polemic represents a significant re-thinking of `childhood' and approaches to children's literature.

How are ideas of genetics, 'blood', the family, and relatedness created and consumed? This is the first book ever to consider in depth why people want children, and specifically why people want children produced by reproductive technologies (such as IVF, ICSI etc). As the book demonstrates, even books ostensibly devoted to the topic of why people w

This is the first academic book ever written on women and body hair, which has been seen until now as too trivial, ridiculous or revolting to write about. Even feminist writers or researchers on the body have found remarkably little to say about body hair, usually ignoring it completely. It would appear that the only texts to elaborate on body hair are guides on how to remove it, medical texts on ‘hirsutism’, or fetishistic pornography on ‘hairy’ women. The last taboo also questions how and why any particular issue can become defined as ‘self-evidently’ too silly or too mad to write about. Using a wide range of thinking from gender theory, queer theory, critical and literary theory, history, art history, anthropology and psychology, the contributors argue that in fact body hair plays a central role in constructing masculinity and femininity and sexual and cultural identities. It is sure to provide many academic researchers with a completely fresh perspective on all of the fields mentioned above.

Children's Literature: New Approaches is a guide for graduate and upper-level undergraduate students of children's literature. It is structured through critics reading individual texts to bring out wider issues that are current in the field. Includes chronology of key events and publications, a selective guide to further reading and a list of Web-based resources. DANIELA CASELLI Lecturer in English Literature, University of Salford, UK NEIL COCKS Head of English, Southeast Essex College, Southend-on-Sea, UK LILA MARZ HARPER Instructor, Central Washington University, USA JACQUELINE LAZU Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Latin American and Latino Studies, DePaul University, USA J HILLIS MILLER UCI Distinguished Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California at Irvine, USA SARAH SPOONER Teaches at the University of Reading, UK CHRISTINE SUTPHIN Professor of English, Central Washington University, USA STEPHEN THOMSON Lecturer in English, American and Children's Literature, University of Reading, UK SUE WALSH Lecturer in Children's Literature and American Literature, University of Reading, UK