Pedagogical discourses of gender, peace, and equality: Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards

Abstract

This article discusses a feminist critical discourse analysis research project of award-winning books of the Jane Addams Peace Association. Children’s books carry societal messages that are gendered, raced, and classed, with award-winning books carrying an additional message of exceptionality as they are viewed as deserving of attention. Thus, the discourses they circulate are important points of analysis. This research, using data from the Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards (focusing on books for older children – young adult literature), takes a feminist antimilitarist perspective to explore the sociocultural implications of children’s literature for education and learning. I examine research with respect to award-winning literature, define my theoretical framework of feminist antimilitarism, explain my methodology of feminist discourse analysis, and detail my findings. I conclude that the awards as a whole function pedagogically to define conflict in ways that privilege colonial discourses, with women represented in essentialist ways and inequality perceived as absent in the contemporary West.

Keywords:

• children’s literature
• Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards
• feminist antimilitarism
• feminist discourse analysis
• peace

Acknowledgment

A preliminary version of this article was presented at the Canadian Association for the Study of Women in Education (CASWE) 2013 conference.

Notes

1. There was some difference between my perspective on which books addressed which questions, particularly with respect to gender, which I explore below.

2. Bat 6 (1999 award-winner by Virginia Euwer Wolff) is about a grade 6 girls’ baseball team that participates in an annual tournament with a neighboring community in order to promote understanding and relationships.

3. There are some exceptions in the form of children's picture books, from before the awards were split into categories for different age groups.

4. Habibi (1998 winner by Naomi Shihab) is an exception. Although still historical fiction, the book explores the need for understanding, exploring, and accepting the situations of others. It casts the Israeli-Palestinean conflict in complex ways, with 'good' people on both sides.

5. Of note, the 2013 award-winner, announced after this research was completed, is yet again about segregation in American history, with a focus on the Birmingham Children’s March, an event detailed in past JACBA award-winners.

6. Slavery does still exist today, as evidenced by human trafficking in general as well as a recent case of three women who spent 30 years in a situation of 'forced labor and servitude' in the United Kingdom (Waldie 2013, A19). However, in the JACBA, slavery is represented as only occurring in the past with reference to African-Americans.