Jill Rudd

Torsten Schmiedeknecht

Emma Hayward

Children are the future architects, clients and users of our buildings. The kinds of architectural worlds they are exposed to in picturebooks during their formative years may be assumed to influence how they regard such architecture as adults. Contemporary urban environments the world over represent the various stages of modernism in architecture. This book reads that history through picturebooks and considers the kinds of national identities and histories they construct. Twelve specialist essays from international scholars address questions such as: Is modern architecture used to construct specific narratives of childhood? Is it taken to support ‘negative’ narratives of alienation on the one hand and ‘positive’ narratives of happiness on the other? Do images of modern architecture support ideas of ‘community’? Reinforce ‘family values’? If so, what kinds of architecture, community and family? How is modern architecture placed vis-à-vis the promotion of diversity (ethnic, religious, gender etc.)? How might the use of architecture in comic strips or the presence of specific kinds of building in fiction aimed at younger adults be related to the groundwork laid in picturebooks for younger readers? This book reveals what stories are told about modern architecture and shows how those stories affect future attitudes towards and expectations of the built environment.

The Representation of Architecture and Modernity in Picturebooks

Building Children’s Worlds

Val Gough

In 1890 a poem entitled Similar Cases appeared in the USA in The Nationalist. In it, one of that country's best-known utopian writers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, propounded the over-arching theme that was to concern her until she died in 1935: that mankind and the world can be changed for the better. The poem earned her much praise in nationalist circles and marked the beginning of a reformist career which was to last for 45 years, during which time Gilman established a national reputation as a speaker on women's issues and socialism, writing extensively in these areas while at the same time continuing to write poetry, short stories and novels.

Studies on the Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A Very Different Story

“These essays exemplify all the virtues of interdisciplinarity in consideration of that most multidisciplined of writers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The contributors simultaneously clarify and complicate our understanding of some of the more vexed areas of Gilman's work by engaging saliently with her theories of ethnicity, class, prostitution, and the dynamics of gender; posing difficult questions to contemporary feminist scholars; and providing sensitive and insightful guidance to a well-chosen and wide range of texts.”—Janet Beer, author of Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction

Jill Rudd

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