Dr Seuss and Academia

Sometimes I think we in academia might possibly take pop culture too seriously, as when we study Dr. Seuss for his political and environmental influence.  But then I remember that my co-authors and I cited The Cat In the Hat in the footnote of an article a while back (see p. 1074, fn. 181). Never mind.

Horton's Whos

Jorge L. Contreras, American University College of Law, has published No Matter How Small ... Property, Autonomy and State in Horton Hears a Who! at 58 New York Law School Law Review 603 (2014). Here is the abstract.

This essay was presented at New York Law School Law Review's 2013 Symposium "Exploring Civil Society through the Writings of Dr. Seuss". It explores property law concepts that appear in Dr. Seuss's classic children's book "Horton Hears a Who!" and analyzes their relationship to the author's personal history and the sociopolitical landscape of post-war America. 

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Dr. Seuss and Children's Rights

Jonathan Todres, Georgia State University College of Law and Sarah Higinbotham, Georgia State University, have published A Person's a Person: Children's Rights in Children's Literature. Here is the abstract.

Although the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, children’s rights are still seen in many circles as novel and quaint ideas but not serious legal theory. The reality, however, is that the realization of children’s rights is vital not only for childhood but for individuals’ entire lives. Similarly, although the books children read and have read to them are a central part of their childhood experience, so too has children’s literature been ignored as a rights-bearing discourse and a means of civic socialization. We argue that children’s literature, like all narratives that contribute to our moral sense of the world, help children construct social expectations and frame an understanding of their own specific rights and responsibilities. Arguing that literature is a source of law for children, we explore children’s literature with a view to examining what children learn about their own rights, the rights of others, and the role of rights more broadly in a democratic society. Using Dr. Seuss as a test case, this Article explores the role of children’s literature in children’s rights discourses. This Article also examines recent empirical work on the benefits of human rights education, connecting that research with law and literature perspectives. Ultimately, this Article aims to connect and build upon the fields of children’s rights law, law and literature, children’s literature criticism, human rights, and cultural studies to forge a new multidisciplinary sub-field of study: children’s rights and children’s literature.

The full text is not available from SSRN. 

Dr. Seuss, Human Rights, and Self-Knowledge

Peter Nicolas, University of Washington School of Law, is publishing The Sneetches as an Allegory for the Gay Rights Struggle: Three Prisms in the New York Law School Law Review, volume 58 (2014). Here is the abstract.

Dr. Seuss’s classic children’s story The Sneetches, with its two classes of persons — the Star-Belly Sneetches and the Plain-Belly Sneetches — has been invoked by different minority groups over the years as an allegory for discriminatory treatment by the majority against that group, with a particular focus on anti-Semitism and discrimination against African-Americans. In this essay, I seek to invoke the themes found in the story as an allegory for the modern struggle for gay rights in the United States viewed through three different prisms.
The first, and most obvious, is the battle between the heterosexual majority and the gay minority represented by the Star-Belly and Plain-Belly Sneetches, respectively. The former seek to distinguish themselves from the latter through laws regarding marriage, parenting, and service in the military, as well as access to certain other markers of social acceptance, including the ability to donate blood and membership in private organizations such as the Boy Scouts.
However, The Sneetches serves as an excellent allegory for two mis-en-abîmes in the struggle for gay rights in the United States. One of these stories-within-the- story is a struggle between two different minority groups — gays and African-Americans — with some in the latter group rejecting efforts by the former to draw analogies to their own civil rights struggle. The second is a struggle between two different sub-groups of gays and lesbians — assimilationists and non-conformists — with the latter critical of what it views as insecurity on the part of the former in seeking mere formal equality by erasing valuable differences that set gays and lesbians apart from heterosexuals. Indeed, in this second struggle, some non-conformists have come out against the rights of gays and lesbians to marry or serve in the military.
In this essay, I demonstrate that in these struggles, each of these groups — African-Americans, assimilationist gays, and non-conformist gays — simultaneously internalize the discriminatory impulses of the Star-Belly Sneetches and the insecurities of the Plain-Belly Sneetches. Relying on the insights of Social Dominance Theory, I conclude that The Sneetches is not merely a story about a struggle between two different classes of people within society, but also about a struggle within each of us as individuals.

Download the full text of the article from SSRN at the link. 

I Like To Slog/Among the Blogs

From Mental Floss Blog: Stacy Conradt entertains with 10 Stories Behind Dr. Seuss Stories. They include the little known fact that "If I Ran the Zoo, published in 1950, is the first recorded instance of the word “nerd.” On the human rights front:

Horton Hears a Who! Somehow, Geisel’s books find themselves in the middle of controversy. The line from the book, “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” has been used as a slogan for pro-life organizations for years. It’s often questioned whether that was Seuss’ intent in the first place, but I would say not: when he was still alive, he threatened to sue a pro-life group unless they removed his words from their letterhead. Karl ZoBell, the attorney for Dr. Seuss’ interests and for his widow, Audrey Geisel, says that she doesn’t like people to “hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front their own points of view.”