Consuming Childhood: Disney as a Curriculum of Consumption

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

As Steinberg and Kincheloe (2004) note, corporations like Disney have used fantasy and desire to develop a worldview that “melds with business ideologies and free-market values” (p. 16). Steinberg and Kincheloe recommend a form of critical media literacy that works to expose the social and political effects of the corporate curriculum. The papers in this panel take up that call by exploring how Disney operates to shape the ways we understand children as consumers of products, images, and experiences. The authors will examine how the experience of childhood is appropriated for corporate profit and investigate formal and informal sites of youth and childhood cultural consumption.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education

Chair

• Julie C. Garlen, Georgia Southern University

Papers

• Peter Pan Parenting: Disney and the Magical Imperative - Julie C. Garlen, Georgia Southern University; Jennifer April Sandlin, Arizona State University

• "How Many Do You Have?" Disney English (as a) Language (of) Acquisition - Laura Rychly, Augusta University; Stacie Kae Pettit, Augusta University

• Seeing White: Animated Disney Films as Racial Pedagogy - Jessica Baker Kee, The Pennsylvania State University

• Gaia Taking Back Disneyland: Rewilding Childhood - Marna Hauk, Ph.D., Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies and Prescott College