From the contents: Sandra BECKETT: Babes in the woods: today's riding hoods go to granny's. - Lewis SEIFERT: Madame Le Prince de Beaumont and the infantilization of the fairy tale. - Michael O'RILEY: La Bete est morte!': Mending images and narratives of ethnicity and national identity in post-World War II France. - Eileen HOFT-MARCH: Child Survivors and Narratives of Hope: Georges Perec's W ou le souvenir d'enfance'. - Alioune SOW: L'enfance metisse ou l'enfance entre les eaux: Le chercheur d'Afriques' de Henri Lopes. - Cheryl TOMAN: Writing Childhood: Reflection of a nation in a village voice in Marie-Claire Matip's Ngond'. - Julie BAKER: The childhood of the epic hero: representation of the child protagonist in the Old French Enfances' texts. - Mary EKMAN: Destinataire et/ou heritier du texte': figuring the child in early modern French memoirs."

The essays in this volume provide an overview and critical account of prevalent trends and theoretical arguments informing current investigations into literary treatments of motherhood and aging. They explore how two key stages in women’s lives—maternity and old age—are narrated and defined in fictions and autobiographical writings by contemporary French and francophone women. Through close readings of Maryse Condé, Hélène Cixous, Zahia Rahmani, Linda Lê, Pierrette Fleutieux, and Michèle Sarde, among others, these essays examine related topics such as dispossession, female friendship, and women’s relationships with their mothers. By adopting a broad, synthetic approach to these two distinct and defining stages in women’s lives, this volume elucidates how these significant transitional moments set the stage for women’s evolving definitions (and interrogations) of their identities and roles.

This volume collects papers presented at the annual French Literature Conference, sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of the University of South Carolina.

This volume shares significant contemporary "Francophone" contributions to developmental psychology outside geographic and intellectual borders of French-speaking countries. Except for the spread of Piagetian theory after World War II into Anglophone psychology, these new publications have not become so well known worldwide as progress in Francophone developmental psychology warrants. However, the work of a new generation of developmental theorists and experimentalists continues to shape important and original lines of thinking and research in France, Canada, and in other French-speaking countries. This work also contributes uniquely to issues such as sensori-motor development, perception, language acquisition, social interaction, and the growth and induction of cognitive mechanisms. Scientific concepts are not only embedded in a paradigm, but also in a culture and a language. Instead of writing about Francophone developmental psychology from "outside," this volume brings together original English-language contributions written by researchers working in different Francophone countries. Chapters summarize and interpret research on a given topic, making explicit the context of philosophical and theoretical traditions in which the empirical advances are embedded. Original essays are accompanied by editorial commentaries from eminent scientists working on the same topics in other parts of the world -- topics that are closely related to Francophone streams of thought and themes of study. Together, these essays fully and faithfully represent modern scientific perspectives toward understanding many facets of mental growth and development of the young child.

A nameless young man lives in the housing projects outside of Paris. When he was a child, his parents moved with him from the Congo to France, hoping in vain to escape poverty and violence. His best friend, Drissa, is in a psychiatric hospital and now Mireille, his girlfriend, the woman with whom he has shared his childhood and hopes, has left him to reconnect with her Jewish roots in Israel. During a night out to drown the pain of his heartache, there is a fight with a policeman, the policeman dies, and the young man is arrested and taken to jail. Between police beatings and abrupt interrogations, his memory becomes his sole ally to escape from the exiguous space in which he is confined. Half-conscious and delirious, he reflects on his journey from the land of his ancestors to his life in the projects with Drissa and Mireille. In The Heart of the Leopard Children, N'Sondé explores the themes of love and pain, belonging and uprooting, desire and fear—all with an implacable and irresistible accuracy. Wilfried N'Sondé's first novel awakens the reader with an urban symphony of desire and lost love, attuned to the violence that accompanies the struggle for social ascension and a sense of belonging, and the paralyzing sentiment of betrayal that inhabits a young man caught between traditions and cultures. Awarded the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Senghor for the originality of his work, the author captures the sounds, rhythms and pleas of a young man who pulls on the alarm from his prison cell to warn against the multiple barriers of confinement that risk the future of certain sectors of French youth today.

Kids Those Days is a collection of interdisciplinary research into medieval childhood. Contributors investigate abandonment and abuse, fosterage and guardianship, criminal behavior and child-rearing, child bishops and sainthood, disabilities and miracles, and a wide variety of other subjects related to medieval children.

"Highly recommended" by Choice While crossover books such as Rowling's Harry Potter series have enjoyed enormous sales and media attention, critical analysis of crossover fiction has not kept pace with the growing popularity of this new category of writing and reading. Falconer remedies this lack with close readings of six major British works of crossover fiction, and a wide-ranging analysis of the social and cultural implications of the global crossover phenomenon. A uniquely in-depth study of the crossover novel, Falconer engages with a ground-breaking range of sources, from primary texts, to child and adult reader responses, to cultural and critical theory.