Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Hablar de literatura infantil y juvenil en Latinoamérica es hablar de la historia del mestizaje, la geografía y la cultura de nuestras naciones. Las fronteras culturales latinoamericanas, con distintivos rasgos geográficos, han dado pie a la creación de una literatura para niños y una literatura juvenil permeada por la riqueza lingüística e histórica de nuestras naciones; la que, inclusive, ha llegado hasta la creación de espacios siderales en los cuales los niños puedan soñar. Latinoamérica no puede ni debe ser vista como un conglomerado homogéneo de naciones, puesto que la diversidad lingüística y cultural de los países que la conforman va mucho más allá de la idea generalizadora que se ha creado de estas naciones. Todo este conjunto de naciones heterogéneas ha creado una literatura infantil que, si bien se ha arraigado en las culturas regionales latinoamericanas, también se ha universalizado.  Por ende, no es de extrañar que en la literatura infantil se destaquen una serie de temas, que no solo se adhieren a distintos aspectos regionales, sino que asimismo se mezclan con elementos temáticos que son también parte de literaturas infantiles y juveniles mundiales. Todos estos temas son parte fundamental de los poemas y cuentos que se estudian en este trabajo, cuyas temáticas giran en torno a las imágenes de la fauna y la flora latinoamericana y viajes intergalácticos. Asimismo, los temas se interrelacionan con tópicos contemporáneos, como la sexualidad, la marginación, la destrucción del ambiente y el acoso personal; temas no muy tratados en la literatura para niños latinoamericana.

The essay focuses on the examination of a selection of children’s picture books on the theme of clothing as an element of identity and as a means of personal and social transformation. The gender stereotype has always deprived children of the freedom to imagine themselves different from the imposed social model. Modern quality literature aims to free childhood from these constraints through stories that encourage the free expression of one's personality. "Clothing and childhood" is one of the binomial in which these themes appear most evident. While developing different plots, each selected book tells a story enriched by several levels of reading, more or less evident, and this is also due to particularly accurate illustrations, capable of adding further nuances to the text. Furthermore, even if characterized by the symbolic presence of clothes,  these picture books do not make them the narrative fulcrum. In each of these case studies, clothing becomes a pretext for a journey of self-discovery and affirmation of one's individuality in the world. These case studies are a concrete example of the potential of the picture book as a vehicle of complex concepts and stratifications of complementary or parallel meanings that emerge from the dynamic relationship of the text with the image. Each double page opens multiple, free interpretative paths that can be taken at each reading, as the eye catches new aspects and the thought opens up to new discoveries. The imaginary dress is therefore one of the many parallel topics that it was possible to address through these books, with which the possible interpretations of clothing in children's literature have been explored, highlighting above all how much garments are objects charged with metasignification or with projections of a identity in formation such as the one of children.

The remarkable influence of gender studies in recent years on the Greek educational system has inevitably led to the integration of a multi-focal thematic section entitled “Gender in Literature” in the new Lyceum curriculum. This section truly captures the interest of adolescents, as it stimulates the approach of literary texts and promotes constructive discussions that often lead to further enjoyment of reading. On this base a collaboration between University of Athens and Anavryta Model Lyceum was carried out in Literature class in both institutions. This article aims to present the main stages of this cooperation on the subject of “Literary Representations of Women’s roles from traditional to modern society”, as the institutional framework for teaching literature clearly supports the historicity of texts. Besides explaining the rationale behind this educational action, we are proposing a selection of literary texts that were used in class and presenting the objectives and didactic methods practiced, the type of tasks assigned to the pupils as well as the skills developed by them. The paper insists on certain texts that are particularly valuable for this approach and offers examples of taking advantage of contextual elements. Finally, we are showing how this collaboration became a real example of extroversion for both institutions and we are attempting a comprehensive evaluation of this project and its impact within the students’ and teachers’ community.

This article explores the question of how to assess children’s literature as feminist. Drawing upon a revision of the concept of postfeminism as a gendered neoliberalism that cultivates the ‘right’ disposition for succeeding in a neoliberal society, I bring together two possible objects of study upon which I outline some problematic aspects. I begin by focusing on a publishing phenomenon of the last few years: the biography compilations, such as the crowdfunded Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, that, in a more or less explicit manner, aim to provide younger generations with new repertoires of gendered agencies. Then I analyze two picturebooks that have been recommended by reading promotion agencies and praised for their anti-sexist values: Tirititesa and La bella Griselda. In both these picturebooks, we find two protagonists tran sgressing gender norms and heteronormative ideals of romantic love. Yet, I argue that they reproduce systems of exclusions that are quite problematic if read from feminist intersectionality. The texts analyzed  are modeled by a postfeminist sensibility in which a celebratory “girl power” is put forward, while obscuring how (gendered) exclusions work.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo presentar un estudio sobre la presencia de la mujer y del personaje femenino en cuentos palestino-jordanos de tradición oral. Para ello, partimos de la investigación etnográfica realizada por Asensio (2015) y el corpus de cuentos por esta recopilados. Así, mostraremos, por un lado, el papel que ocupa la mujer dentro del marco de la narración oral como depositaria activa de dicha tradición siguiendo la terminología de Sydow (1965) y, por el otro, ofreceremos un estudio sobre el personaje femenino teniendo en cuenta el corpus mencionado. Estos datos servirán para dar a conocer nuevos contextos literarios para la construcción de un canon literario de LIJ intercultural, etnopluricultural y coeducativo para docentes de Educación Infantil y Primaria.

This study explores literal and metaphorical narrations of age by looking closely at two picturebooks published at the turn of the twenty-first century. The evolutionary Western understanding of the child, childhood and children’s literature is briefly periodized as a tension between pragmatic and philosophical concerns. Representations of age are taken to be embedded in socio-cultural positions that implicate historical periods, geographic locations, and economic structures. Ethnicity and gender are similarly discussed as immanent features. Age is presented as much a biological phenomenon as a performative social act of a given culture. The ideas, feelings and events depicted in each picturebook are approached from a structuralist and a postmodernist perspective with the aim of providing a complementary analysis of child representations in alignment with the adult presence, and not necessarily through the lens of aetonomativity. My analysis points to possible applications of the design of age narrations to current and future literacies.

The starting point for the making of this current issue were some fundamental questions about the intersection of Feminist Criticism and Gender Theory with Education: What might it mean to read and teach literature through the prism of feminist criticism and/or gender theory? In which texts, ways and methods can we integrate a balanced gender approach into literary didactics? How and in which teaching approaches can we produce some powerful feminist readings of the literary texts, whether they are texts long established by tradition, or contemporary and multimodal ones, belonging to popular culture? And how can these concerns about feminism and gender be adequately addressed and embedded into the literature classroom? Although we knew that all the previous questions could not be effectively addressed in one single issue, we still envisaged a publication with insightful contributions to the overall theme of Feminism and Gender in Literary Education.

The definition of the social role of women in Western European culture, during the 19th and 20th centuries, derives both from permanence —such as the Christian heritage— and from novels ideologicals proposals of the Contemporaneity, such as Liberalism and Marxism. Its contrast, combat and setting has a very important historical turning point: the events of May '68 and the culture derived from that milestone in Western history. This article analyzes its consequences until the first decades of the 21st century in the field of redefining the feminine function and essence.

This work presents a synthesis with the most notorious characteristics of the expulsions of Jews (1492) and Moors (1609) from Spain, compiling the main motivations ‒political, economic, social, religious, cultural‒ that historiography has pointed out in this respect. In a final epigraph, a reflection on these motivations is carried out.

Jacinto Benavente, like so many other Spanish writers, struggled all his life to reconcile the conflict between a deeply felt calling and his University studies, towards which he was pushed by family and social pressures. In his case a precocious passion for the theatre had to compete with Engineering and Law studies. He persisted longest with the latter, but nerver completed his studies of either. The present article  proposes to examine, using the writer’s own reflections, his personal experience of this oft repeated conflict.