_Postmodernism_ literally means “after modernism.” But the dates don’t work. While modernism is said to have ended, variously, in 1939, 1945, or 1950, _postmodernism_ first emerged in 1870, when English painter John Watkins Chapman applied it to art that (he claimed) was more avant-garde than French impressionism (Storey 2005). Despite its anomalous dating, _postmodernism_ by the 1940s defined a new period in literature or architecture. Though the term gained wider currency in the 1960s, its arrival depended on where you lived. Postmodernism in Japan began somewhere between the late 1970s and mid-1980s and in China and Romania in the 1980s (Shaoyang 2013; Dirlik and Xudong 1997; Schneider 2014). It appears at different times because the onset and nature of postmodernity (the historical condition to which it responds) varies by location. Romanian censors delayed postmodernism’s arrival and changed its flavor; in its precapitalist economics, China’s postmodernism appeared more as “aesthetic expectation” and less as symptom of (or challenge to) late capitalism (Schneider 2014; Dirlik and Xudong 1997, 9). Even more confusingly, _postmodern_ (a stylistic designation) is often conflated with _postmodernity_ (a historical condition or cultural logic). Though geography predicts which meanings the term might encompass, two formal postmodernisms became popular in...

> We organize information on maps in order to see our knowledge in a new way. As a result, maps suggest explanations; and while explanations reassure us, they also inspire us to ask more questions, consider other possibilities. > > To ask for a map is to say, “Tell me a story.” —Peter Turchi, _Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer_ Depending on their field, readers and scholars of children’s literature may see the word _keyword_ as a search term, or a designation for the limited-vocabulary words of a British reading primer from the 1960s, or perhaps an entry in a scholarly dictionary. The word _keyword_ is itself a keyword in Raymond Williams’s sense: a commonly used term that people assume has a shared meaning but in fact lacks this shared meaning. Because they are words about which there is some debate, keywords reveal conflicts. They are words that, in Williams’s phrase, “involve ideas and values” (1983b, 17). The essays in _Keywords for Children’s Literature_ offer a cartography of fissures in meaning and the etymological and ideological tensions they produce. Each keywords essay explains where a critical idea came from, what it means, and why its meanings shift. It...

Thanks to all of our contributors for sharing their expertise via the keywords essay, one of the most demanding critical genres, requiring a balance of etymologies, literary and cultural histories, and representative examples from different countries and traditions—all succinctly organized in about eight paragraphs. Your hard work makes this book possible. For inspiring the second edition of _Keywords for Children’s Literature_, thanks to the Norwegian Institute for Children’s Books and its director, Kristin Ørjasæter, for hosting the August 2012 Oslo conference Nordic Children’s Literature—a New Research Question? (Nordisk barnelitteratur—et nytt kunstforskningsspørsmål?). Thanks to Glenn Hendler, whose presentation at the 2007 Futures of American Studies Institute inspired the first edition. Indeed, thanks to both him and Bruce Burgett for the model they provide in their _Keywords for American Cultural Studies_ (now in its third edition). For offering a critique of the first edition, thanks to the participants in the international roundtable discussion on _Keywords for Children’s Literature_ at the August 2013 International Research Society for Children’s Literature conference in Maastricht, including panelists Nina Alonso, Francesca Orestano, Emer O’Sullivan, and everyone in the audience. For helping the book speak to literary traditions outside of the editors’ knowledge, thanks to the Keywords for...

As we note at the end of our introduction, this book aspires to provoke questions, create dialogue, and invite collaboration. In that spirit, here are some suggestions for using the book in the classroom. While editing this second, more international edition of _Keywords for Children’s Literature_, we applied the lessons we were learning to our classroom practice. With the parameters outlined for the book’s contributors so clearly in our minds, both Lissa Paul and Phil Nel set “keywords assignments” for their students in their respective master’s level classes. Lissa’s assignment was for students in the winter 2017 session of “Introduction to Social and Cultural Contexts of Education: Developing a Critical Language”; Phil’s for the course “Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature” in spring 2017. In pedagogical terms, we both decided to give our students “problem-based learning assignments”—that is, the tasks we assigned to our students closely resembled the ones we gave to established scholars. Phil and Lissa gave similar assignments to their students, though Lissa designated hers as keywords “for education” and Phil “for children’s literature.” To avoid repetition, we have reproduced an edited version of Phil’s assignment here and are granting permission to use with appropriate credit. ## Assignment Write...

Through the 2016-17 academic year, we—Phil and Lissa—were soliciting authors for our second, more international edition of _Keywords for Children’s Literature_, co-edited with Nina Christensen and slated for publication by New York University Press in 2019. With the parameters we had outlined for the established authors we solicited so clearly in our minds, we both set “keywords” assignments for our students in our respective master’s level classes. Lissa’s assignment was for students in the winter 2017 session of EDUC 5P01: Introduction to Social and Cultural Contexts of Education: Developing a Critical Language, Phil’s for English 703: Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature in Spring 2017. In pedagogical terms, we had both decided to give our students “problem-based learning” assignments, that is the tasks we assigned to our students closely resembled the ones we gave to established scholars. Phil and Lissa gave similar assignments to their students, though Lissa designated hers as keywords “for Education,” and Phil “for Children’s Literature.” To avoid repetition, we have reproduced an edited version of Phil’s assignment here and are granting permission to use with appropriate credit: **Assignment** Write an entry for _Keywords for Children's Literature_. Your entry cannot be a word that is already in the...