New Book: New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales edited by Christa Jones and Claudia Schwabe

New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales edited by Christa Jones and Claudia Schwabe was released in August.

First of all this is not a text book. It is a collection of articles about different methods of teaching folklore in the classroom. The contributors share their experiences in the classroom, sometimes including the syllabi for the classes they have designed.

The articles are wide ranging in their approaches, including but not strictly limited to political, linguistic, and gender studies. They are valuable because they offer perspectives from real world experiences from professors who have used these approaches. One of the themes I found most fascinating was the discussion about choice of translations and adaptations to share in the classroom, including Christine A. Jones' course that studies the translation of French tales.

In the end, the articles make you wish to be a student again--if you aren't now--with the ability to take all of these classes (since they are scattered at various universities around the globe) and participate in the classroom discussions, to see and feel how these materials spark inspiration and understanding of folklore and dare I say the world, too, for the students.

Book description:

New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales provides invaluable hands-on materials and pedagogical tools from an international group of scholars who share their experiences in teaching folk- and fairy-tale texts and films in a wide range of academic settings.

This interdisciplinary collection introduces scholarly perspectives on how to teach fairy tales in a variety of courses and academic disciplines, including anthropology, creative writing, children’s literature, cultural studies, queer studies, film studies, linguistics, second language acquisition, translation studies, and women and gender studies, and points the way to other intermedial and intertextual approaches. Challenging the fairy-tale canon as represented by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, and Walt Disney, contributors reveal an astonishingly diverse fairy-tale landscape.

The book offers instructors a plethora of fresh ideas, teaching materials, and outside-the-box teaching strategies for classroom use as well as new and adaptable pedagogical models that invite students to engage with class materials in intellectually stimulating ways. A cutting-edge volume that acknowledges the continued interest in university courses on fairy tales, New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales enables instructors to introduce their students to a new, critical understanding of the fairy tale as well as to a host of new tales, traditions, and adaptations in a range of media.

Contributors: Anne E. Duggan, Cyrille François, Lisa Gabbert, Pauline Greenhill, Donald Haase, Christa C. Jones, Christine A. Jones, Jeana Jorgensen, Armando Maggi, Doris McGonagill, Jennifer Orme, Christina Phillips Mattson, Claudia Schwabe, Anissa Talahite-Moodley, Maria Tatar, Francisco Vaz da Silva, Juliette Wood

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Donald Haase

Introduction by Christa C. Jones and Claudia Schwabe

Fairy tales, myth, and fantasy by Cristina Phillips Mattson and Maria Tatar

Teaching fairy tales in folklore classes by Lisa Gabbert

At the bottom of a well: teaching the otherworld as a folktale environment by Juliette Wood

The fairy-tale forest as memory site: romantic imagination, cultural construction, and a hybrid approach to teaching the Grimms' fairy tales and the environment by Doris McGonagill

Grimms' fairy tales in a political context: teaching East German fairy-tale films by Claudia Schwabe

Teaching Charles Perrault's histoires, ou, contes du temps passé in the literary and historical context of the Sun King's reign by Christa C. Jones

Lessons from Shahrazad: teaching about cultural dialogism by Anissa Talahite-Moodley

The significance of translation by Christine A. Jones

Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales in the hands of the Brothers Grimm by Armando Maggi

Teaching Hans Christian Andersen's tales: a linguistic approach by Cyrille François

Teaching symbolism in "Little Red Riding Hood" by Francisco Gentil Vaz da Silva

Binary outlaws: queering the classical tale in François Ozon's Criminal lovers and Catherine Breillat's The sleeping beauty by Anne E. Duggan

Teaching "Gender in fairy tale films and cinematic folklore" online negotiating between needs and wants by Pauline Greenhill and Jennifer Orme

Intertextuality, creativity, and sexuality: group exercises in the fairy-tale/gender studies classroom by Jeana Jorgensen