by Joseph T. Thomas, Jr.

About Joseph T. Thomas, Jr.

Joseph T. Thomas, Jr., is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. He is the author of Strong Measures and Poetry’s Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children’s Poetry, which was named a 2007 Honor Book by the Children’s Literature Association.

Aesthetics

book Keywords for Children's Literature

The neglect of sustained, theoretical inquiry into the aesthetics of children’s literature is a symptom of our discipline’s history. As it developed in North America, the academic discipline of children’s literature emerged in the context of the canon-busting and -expanding cultural studies movements of the 1960s and ’70s, a theoretical milieu newly suspicious of objective claims of aesthetic value. In recent years, however, the global field has seen renewed interest in aesthetics as “sensuous knowledge,” a mode of apprehension inextricably bound to both history and ideology.