The Drinking Curriculum
A Cultural History of Childhood and Alcohol
Elizabeth Marshall
- 176 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Drinking Curriculum
A Cultural History of Childhood and Alcohol
Elizabeth Marshall
About This Book
A lively exploration into America's preoccupation with childhood innocence and its corruption In The Drinking Curriculum, Elizabeth Marshall brings the taboo topic of alcohol and childhood into the limelight. Marshall coins the term "the drinking curriculum" to describe how a paradoxical set of cultural lessons about childhood are fueled by adult anxieties and preoccupations. By analyzing popular and widely accessible texts in visual cultureâtemperance tracts, cartoons, film, advertiseÂments, and public-service announcementsâMarshall demonstrates how youth are targets of mixed messages about intoxication. Those messages range from the overtly violent to the humorous, the moralistic to the profane. Offering a critical and, at times, irreverent analysis of dominant protecÂtionist paradigms that sanctify childhood as implicitly innocent, The Drinking Curriculum centers the graphic narratives our culture uses to teach about alcohol, the roots of these pictorial tales in the nineteenth century, and the discursive hangover we nurse into the twenty-first.