{"id":669,"date":"2014-07-16T17:46:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T21:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/?p=669"},"modified":"2014-07-16T17:46:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T21:46:00","slug":"toy-stories-the-production-marketing-consumption-and-psychology-of-german-childrens-literature-and-toys-from-the-enlightenment-to-the-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/2014\/07\/16\/toy-stories-the-production-marketing-consumption-and-psychology-of-german-childrens-literature-and-toys-from-the-enlightenment-to-the-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Toy Stories: The Production, Marketing, Consumption and Psychology of German Children\u2019s Literature and Toys from the Enlightenment to the Present"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been a very busy few weeks for us in Chicago Hall (and beyond)! Our collaboration has focused on the history of German children\u2019s culture, particularly toys and children\u2019s books, one of Prof. Elliott Schreiber\u2019s key research interests. \u00a0Throughout the summer, Kristen Caccavale has assisted Prof. Schreiber with research into the psychology of children\u2019s play as depicted especially in E.T.A. Hoffmann\u2019s famous children\u2019s story, \u201cNutcracker and the King of Mice.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0This research will culminate in an article to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal in Fall 2014.<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s culture also features heavily in Vassar\u2019s year-long Beginning German sequence. \u00a0We started our summer with Kristen compiling a list of over 50 contemporary, award-winning German children\u2019s books, which we have ordered for Vassar\u2019s Thompson Memorial Library. We will be using these books in Beginning German to help students improve not only their understanding of the German language, but also of the German culture. \u00a0Students in this class write and illustrate their own children\u2019s books and read them to elementary school children at Deutsche Schule New York, located about an hour south of Vassar in White Plains. We have been working with several staff members at Academic Computing Services in order to incorporate iBooks into this project, and we will now be piloting some of the iBooks software in class next year. \u00a0\u00a0We also had a very productive trip to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York during our fifth week. There, we had access to the museum\u2019s extensive archives, where we were able to look at original editions of German pop-up books written by Lothar Meggendorfer, some of which were over 100 years old. We have ordered reproductions of these books to use in Beginning German, and they will make another excellent addition to the curriculum.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3967\"<\/a>

This scene is from the first page of the Lothar Meggendorfer pop-up book; it shows the mother and father being driven in a car on the right, and a maid on the left.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"IMG_3976\"<\/a>

This scene takes place on the fourth page of the book and shows a little girl with her cat and a maid in the kitchen.<\/p><\/div>\n

While at the Strong also discovered some extensively detailed books regarding German dolls and dollhouses, which Kristen will be using in her culminating Ford Scholar poster and presentation, as well as in a presentation she will be giving to students in Beginning German in the Fall. Kristen has decided to center her presentation on German girlhood in Imperial Germany, and has been reading several girls\u2019 memoirs from that period, as well as researching German girls\u2019 dolls, toys, dollhouses, and societal roles during this time.<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/a>

The whole book laid out at the Strong National Museum of Play Archives.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In our last few weeks, we will be preparing for our October Ford Scholar poster presentation, as well as looking through the archives in Special Collections for any rare German children\u2019s books or illustrations of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, which we will also be using to educate students in Beginning German about German art, literature, history, and culture. We can\u2019t believe that our fellowship is almost over, but we have certainly made the most of it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been a very busy few weeks for us in Chicago Hall (and beyond)! Our collaboration has focused on the history of German children\u2019s culture, particularly toys and children\u2019s books, one of Prof. Elliott Schreiber\u2019s key research interests. \u00a0Throughout the summer, Kristen Caccavale has assisted Prof. Schreiber with research into the psychology of children\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42670],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ford-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/fordscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}