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The Child on Screen: Youth, Adaptation, and Film

Exploring how cultural knowledge becomes “translated” as it moves from the societies in which it circulates to the big screen, this panel will seek to understand how filmmakers approach children and childhood. It will inspect animated films in order to ask how canonical works for adults such as Swan Lake are adapted for young viewers, analyze the differences between children’s stories and the films they are adapted into via much-loved classics like The Jungle Book, while also scrutinizing how the presence of children in movements like the Sanctuary Movement become translated or erased through documentaries like El Norte.

Film translates high culture and cultural knowledge into low culture

Presentations

Using Animation as a Bridge to Translate High Culture into Children’s Popular Culture

Presenters

Sheila Sandapen

“I Wan’Na Be Like You”: Comparing The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling to The Jungle Book (1967)

Presenters

Abigail McMahon

Traveling North: National Trauma, Children, and Migration

Presenters

Bethany Sharpe

Session chairs

Sheila Sandapen