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The Child’s Part in American Studies: A Global Perspective

Fri, November 7, 8:00 to 9:45am, Westin Bonaventure, Floor: Level 1, Santa Anita A (L1)

Abstract

In 1989, the United Nations (UN) passed the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), thus setting a precedent for children’s rights. The document contained 54 articles, including one guaranteeing the child’s right “to rest and leisure, [and] to engage in play.” While the CRC was the UN’s attempt to expand international humanitarian efforts, especially in relation to child labor, the CRC also renewed conversations about the meaning of childhood. What does it mean to be a child in a global era, and how might we begin to define childhood in a way that respects both local and global experiences? This paper will consider how these conversations about childhood in a global era might likewise direct the recent initiative to “globalize” American studies.

While the desire to define childhood from a global perspective might seem unrelated to the current concerns in the field of American studies, it in fact dovetails with the more recent demand for a global approach to American studies. Edited collections such as Donald Pease’s The Futures of American Studies (2002) and especially Brian T. Edwards and Dilip Parameshwar Goankar’s Globalizing American Studies (2010) propose models for future studies of the United States that will address the global networks that facilitate the exchange of material goods and ideas across national borders. As the case of the CRC demonstrates, children are often the source of hope and anxiety when it comes to these exchanges. They are both the ones meant to play with material goods that circulate within these networks, while also the ones most at risk to be completely consumed by this system—sometimes literally as in instances such as Pakistan’s rug industry or the diamond mines in Sierra Leone.

Using a case study of Chang Ta-Chun’s bestselling Taiwanese children’s novel, Wild Child (1996), I will outline ways that American studies scholars can benefit from an engagement with the social, political, and economic forces that shape childhood. In Wild Child, for example, the adventures of protagonist Hou Shichun directly parallel the relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan during the Cold War. For example, Shichun’s consumption of U.S. commodities (e.g., a Chicago Bull’s T-shirt) and his preoccupation with the commercialization of Taiwanese society are each markers of Taiwan’s economic relationship with the U.S. This relationship began when the U.S. determined to invest in the growth of non-aligned Asian nations in an effort to combat the spread of Communism. While Taiwan is one of the greatest successes of this political experiment, Chang’s novel suggests that economic success and pleasure do not necessarily go hand in hand.

Wild Child provides a vivid depiction of the way that children often serve as icons of national—and now global—citizenship. As Chang’s novel underscores, children’s experiences of globalization and the ideas about childhood that emerge as a result of these experiences provide a rich source of study for those interested in locating a method for American studies in a global era.

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