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Slavery on Their Minds: Representing the Institution in Children's Picture Books

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Slavery on Their Minds: Representing the Institution in Children's Picture Books University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses August 2015 Slavery on Their Minds: Representing the Institution in Children's Picture Books Raphael E. Rogers University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the African American Studies Commons, Art Education Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, and the Elementary Education and Teaching Commons Recommended Citation Rogers, Raphael E., "Slavery on Their Minds: Representing the Institution in Children's Picture Books" (2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 396. https://doi.org/10.7275/6956840.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/396 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Slavery on Their Minds: Representing the Institution in Children’s Picture Books A Dissertation Presented by RAPHAEL E. ROGERS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION May 2015 College of Education © Copyright by Raphael E. Rogers 2015 All Rights Reserved Slavery on Their Minds: Representing the Institution in Children’s Picture Books A Dissertation Presented by RAPHAEL E. ROGERS Approved as to style and content by: _______________________________ Maria José Botelho, Chairperson _______________________________ Denise K. Ives, Member _______________________________ William Moebius, Member ______________________________ Christine B. McCormick, Dean College of Education \ DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my family and ancestors. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee members, Maria José Botelho, Masha Rudman, William Moebius, and Denise Ives. Their attentiveness, guidance, and support made this dissertation possible. I am deeply grateful to Maria José Botelho and Masha Rudman. They were truly giving with their time and knowledge. This project exists because of the countless hours that Maria José Botelho and Masha Rudman dedicated to it. I was blessed to have them as the directors of this dissertation and as mentors. I also express a great deal of gratitude to William Moebius and Denise Ives for the insightful and informative commentary that they both provided me after spending a significant amount of time reviewing my work. I also wish to express my appreciation to Education Department at the University of Massachusetts for providing me with teaching opportunities and guidance as I made my way through graduate school. The kind words and support that I received from professors Theresa Austin, Kathleen Gagne, Sally Galman, Meg Gebhard, Marie-Christine Polizzi, K.C. Nat Turner, Laura Valdiviezo, and Jerri Willet was certainly significant in helping me to complete my dissertation. I also wish to thank the many Language, Literacy, and Culture graduate students who also encouraged and supported me as I worked on my dissertation. Last, but certainly not least, I thank my wife Xiomara and daughter Mia for also providing so much guidance and support throughout the dissertation process. Without them, there is no way that this project would have been completed. v ABSTRACT SLAVERY ON THEIR MINDS: REPRESENTING THE INSTITUTION IN PICTURE BOOKS ABOUT SLAVERY MAY 2015 RAPHAEL E. ROGERS, B.A., CLARK UNIVERSITY M.Ed., NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY Ed.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Maria José Botelho This study examines how slavery is represented in contemporary children’s picture books. Given that many primary and secondary school teachers are committed to using picture book fiction to teach students about slavery, it is necessary to explore how slavery is depicted in these texts. One of the goals of this study is to contribute to the discussion about how the featured picture books engage with and respond to the early historiography of slavery, which asserted that Black slave were content and docile and that slave owners were kind and paternalistic. This study seeks to analyze how the picture books that make up my text collection respond to these claims. Another goal of this study is to present a rich analysis of how race, gender, and class are rendered in these texts using the theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that draw on critical race theory, critical race feminism, critical multicultural analysis, and intertextuality. The findings show that the picture books in my text collection recast racial violence to reject proslavery stereotypes and counter historical claims of slave contentment by representing Black resistance against slavery. These texts complicate the slave experience by showing the various ways that race, gender, and class shaped the experiences of those who lived vi during the antebellum period. These reconstructed representations of slavery showcase multiple perspectives and complicate power relations of this social institution. This study also offers a new approach for reading neo-slave narratives for children, which can inform classroom teaching of these texts, encourage readers to reconsider issues connected to noteworthy debates in the historiography of slavery, and show how class, gender, and race work together in these children’s books. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that children’s literature about slavery continues to perform important cultural work. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER I. SLAVERY ON THEIR MINDS: AN INTRODUCTION ...............................................1 Statement of the Problem .........................................................................................2 Purpose of the Study ................................................................................................5 Personal Connections and Contemplations: Researcher’s Background ..................6 Research Questions ................................................................................................13 Significance of the Study .......................................................................................14 Defining the Neo-Slave Narrative .........................................................................15 Neo-Slave Narratives for Youth ............................................................................17 Historical Discourses about Slavery ......................................................................19 Definition of Key Terms ........................................................................................29 Summary of Dissertation Chapters ........................................................................33 II. A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...........................................................................36 The Importance of Multicultural Literature ...........................................................37 The History of African American Children’s Literature .......................................52 The Representation of Slavery in Children’s Literature ........................................67 Theoretical Framework ..........................................................................................82 Critical Race Theory ..............................................................................................83 Critical Race Feminism..........................................................................................88 Critical Multicultural Analysis ..............................................................................92 Intertextuality .........................................................................................................97 III. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ........................................................................101 Introduction ..........................................................................................................101 Research Purpose Restated ..................................................................................101 Methodological Approach ...................................................................................102 Critical Race Methodology: Reading Race..........................................................103 Critical Race Feminist Methodology: Reading Race, Gender, and Class ...........110 Critical Multicultural Analysis: Reading How Power is Exercised.....................114 Picture Book Codes: Reading Images..................................................................120 Historical Fiction .................................................................................................125 Poetry ...................................................................................................................128 Biography .............................................................................................................130 Nonfiction ............................................................................................................132
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