Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg

Adrian Schoberserves on the editorial board of Red Feather: An International Journal of Children’s Popular Culture.Debbie Olson is lecturer at the University of Texas at Arlington, and for Dallas County Community College District.

• Introduction: Adrian Schober Chapter 1: Spielberg and the Kidult, Noel BrownChapter 2: Unconditional Love, Hysterical Motherhood and the Lost/Possessed Child: Steven Spielberg’s Something Evil, Adrian SchoberChapter 3: Ambiguous Loss: The Depiction of Child Abduction in Spielberg’s Early Films, James KendrickChapter 4: “I’ll be right here!” Dealing with Emotional Trauma in and through E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Peter KrämerChapter 5: Children, Innocence and Agency in the Films of Steven Spielberg, Ingrid E. CastroChapter 6: Childhood, Race, and the Politics of Dirt in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple, Debbie OlsonChapter 7: Betwixt-and-Between: Reclaiming Childhood in Hook, Jen BakerChapter 8: Hooked on Happy Thoughts: New Sincerity and Spielberg’s Troubled Nostalgia for Mythic Childhood, Jessica Balanzategui and Gabrielle Kristjanson Chapter 9: Bipolar Boys: Spielberg's Manic-Depressive Children, Andrew M. GordonChapter 10: Trauma, Loss, Anxiety: Spielberg’s Missing Children in Minority Report, Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds, Fran Pheasant-KellyChapter 11: Body Consciousness and Adolescence in The Adventures ofTintin: The Secret of The Unicorn, Leonie Rutherford

A stimulating and original collection. A range of distinguished scholars have been assembled to reflect on the representation of childhood in Spielberg's work, and collectively they challenge the frequent critical accusations of sentimentality, illuminating instead the sensibility of a director whose work has always shown an unusual sensitivity to the traumas and dangers of childhood and how children (and adults) cope with this sense of anxiety and loss. An important contribution to Spielberg studies.