“Golden Compasses as Moral Compasses: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Fairy Tales and Fantasy” is a four-week school teacher seminar for sixteen participants on fantasy and fairy tales and their impact on the development of imagination and moral sense in children. The project director observes that, since John Newbery established the first press for children’s books in the eighteenth century, print culture for children has flourished. The seminar engages teachers in the analysis of imaginative literature for children alongside secondary sources by “historians, psychologists, and literary critics on the genesis, dissemination, and meaning” of works including Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, classic fairy tales, A Thousand and One Nights, and recent works by Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass) and J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). The sequencing of texts is chronological and also ranges purposefully through elements such as genre and gender (week one focusing on fairy tales with girls as protagonists, followed by boys in week two). At Harvard’s Houghton Library teachers examine illustrated fairy tale anthologies from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Teachers participate in seminar discussions and small group work; movies related to the readings (Finding Neverland, for example) are also shown. Director Maria Tatar (Germanic Languages and Literature, Harvard University) is joined by visiting scholars Jerry Griswold (San Diego State University) and Donald Haase (Wayne State University). Participation by teachers in grades K-8 and graduate students focusing on early education is particularly encouraged.
