Looking forward, looking back : images of Eastern European Jewish migration to America in contemporary American children's literature / / Jana Pohl.

• Superior document: Studia imagologica, 19
• Author: Pohl, Jana.
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Studia imagologica ; 19.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (293 p.)
• Notes: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

How is the life-altering event of migration narrated for children, especially if it was caused by Anti-Semitism and poverty? What of the country of origin is remembered and what is forgotten, and what of the target country when the migration is imagined there a century later? Looking Forward, Looking Back examines today’s representation of Jewish mass migration from Eastern Europe to America around the turn of the last century. It explores the collective story that emerges when American authors look back at this exodus from an Eastern European home to a new one to be established in America. Focusing on children’s literature, it investigates a wide range of texts including young adult literature as well as picture books and hence sheds light on the dynamics of the verbal and the visual in generating images of the self and other, the familiar and the strange. This book is of interest to scholars in the field of imagology, children’s literature, cultural studies, American studies, Slavic studies, and Jewish studies.

Table of Contents

pt. 1. The corpus -- pt. 2. Theory : image studies -- pt. 3. The country of origin : Russia -- pt. 4. The target country : American -- pt. 5. The American dream and its poetic functions in migration narratives for children -- pt. 6. Adapting an immigrant autobiography : Mary Antin's The promised land (1912) and Rosemary Wells's Streets of gold (1999), illustrated by Dan Andreasen -- pt. 7. Conclusion -- pt. 8. References.