Discuss about sustained feminist critiques of Disney animated films and other media, this project asks us to create children’s media that does not affirm interlocking systems of oppression. These projects may be created individually – for example, a brief collection of poems that trouble racialized, femme antagonistic depictions of Disney villains with an intended audience of children ages 6 to 8 – or in collaboration with other students – for example, a zine made by 4 students with an intended audience of children ages 8 to 12 that offers concrete approaches to media literacy.
Collaborative Projects: If you plan to create a collaborative project, please reach out to Cassandra by the start of Week Nine (Monday, November 22nd) to discuss the distribution of labor within your collective and expectations. Students are invited to discuss potential collaborations within the Children’s Media Project Community Space as is useful.
Children’s Media Project: While the particular form and focus of your work will vary, your children’s media project include or attend to the following elements:
Media intended for a specific audience that includes children for a particular purpose. Informed by our course themes and approaches, this media should trouble interlocking systems of oppression and their normalization within children’s media
Your audience might include a broader intended audience – for example, children from 7 to 9 years old – or a more particular intended audience – for example, queer children from 12 to 16 years old who live in rural Oregon.
Your purpose may vary based upon your interests, investments, and community affiliations. For example, you might create a children’s book that includes Indigenous people in the present and future. This work’s purpose is to refute settler colonial narratives of erasure by disrupting settler colonial stories that position Indigenous peoples as relics of the past and illuminating decolonial futures.
Guiding Letter: Your media will be supported by a brief (250 words) guiding letter that describes your intended audience, purpose, the rhetorical strategies that you engaged in creating your media, and any frameworks, methods, or content that informed your approach. This guiding letter should reflect college-level writing practices and conventions, including proper citational (MLA) practices where appropriate. You are encouraged to engage OSU’s Writing Center as is useful to you.
Additional Supports
Potential projects include …
A zine that clarifies a feminist/anti-racist/queer/other anti-oppression frameworks for an audience including children
A children’s story that relates to systems of oppression and resistance to them
A YouTube video that troubles a dominant historical narrative and attends to its ongoing implications in the present
A body-positive infographic for children ages 9-13
Childhood Revisited Instagram – Archive of previous projects
Adrian’s Calling – Sample Project
My Brother Bren – Sample Project
Disney Spirit of Change – Sample Project
Last Completed Projects
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