Pictures of Youth: An Introduction to Children’s Visual Culture

Explore contemporary visual children’s culture with leading experts in the field

In a world where young people are surrounded by an ever increasing range of media, visual analysis of children’s culture is becoming increasingly important.

The course provides an introduction to popular types of visual culture for children and young people. By the end you will gain a deeper understanding of children’s film, television, drama, picturebooks and comics.

You will discover the wide variety of works on offer, learn to decipher these media, understand some of the ways in which they are conceived and consumed, and have a go at creating your own analysis.

With a focus on visual analysis, new media and popular culture for children, this course is ideal for anyone with an interest in contemporary educational and cultural topics, parents and those feeling nostalgia for the texts and media of their own youth.

• Picturebooks
• Introduction
• What is a picturebook?
• Word and picture relationships
• Picturebooks and literacy
• Comics
• Introduction
• Comics literacy
• Comics for children and ideology
• Comics culture and children today
• Film
• Defining ‘children’s film’
• Picturing youth with Studio Ghibli
• Analysing Ghibli’s pictures of youth
• Studio Ghibli in society and culture
• Television
• Television as sugar-coated education
• Reality television and schoolchildren
• Three examples of children's Shakespearean reality television
• Analysing children's Shakespearean reality television