Nancy Canepa’s thoughtful compendium of teaching practices and insights advances the field of fairy-tale studies theoretically even as it offers practical classroom ideas. Although the book is written primarily for college and university instructors, teachers at all levels will find course outlines, discussion topics, reading assignments, and learning activities to apply and adapt straight out of the book.
More than a Pinterest board of dream activities, Teaching Fairy Tales historicizes fairy-tale studies over the past decades through Canepa’s detailed introduction and the opening section. An astute editorial move opens the book with “Foundations of Fairy-Tale Studies,” overtly addressing definitional, pre-historical, evolutionary, and canonical issues with thought-provoking essays by four of the field’s founders. Maria Tatar’s “What Is A Fairy Tale” should become a course standard. These chapters will refresh ideas for some instructors while providing a solid base for those new to the field, including students themselves.
Key elements in the emergence and development of fairy-tale studies appear in the Teaching and Learning with Fairy Tales section as well. Some of these concepts identified by Lewis Seifert involve organizing courses as surveys, as adaptation and media studies, and by special topics. Pedagogical activities include establishing definitions, doing close readings, considering childhood experiences, assessing the genre’s popularity, conducting comparative readings, and completing collaborative and creative projects.
The book presents the teaching practices, and the results, of actual courses taught by prominent fairy-tale studies scholars and others from related fields. Overall, the book includes twenty-seven contributors. The various chapters address case studies on specific tales, contexts, new scholarly approaches, foreign-language classrooms, and project-oriented teaching. Complete syllabi from eleven contributors provide further context.
I am delighted our library has ebook access with multiple copies. In addition to the foundation section, teachers could recommend specific essays to undergraduate, and graduate, students interested in distinctive aspects of fairy-tale studies such as Allison Stedman’s focus on the civilizing process; Cristina Bacchilega’s work with versions, adaptations, and translations; Maria Nikolajeva’s “Cognitive-Affective Approaches to Fairy Tales,” and Maria Kaliambou’s emphasis on foreign-language teaching. Faculty may be drawn to Julie L. J. Koehler’s essay on creating an online course, or the chapter on storytelling with two essays to enhance student participation with fairy tales.
If you have wished to see your favorite conference presenters at work in the classroom, these chapters offer a tantalizing glimpse into what happens on the first day of class and during key moments of the semester. No doubt encouraged by an attentive editor, the contributors honestly share successes, missteps, and revisions. For example, Bacchilega includes how she knows her courses have worked, such as when most students approach tales as “sociohistorically and ideologically situated and networked” and see themselves as active participants in fairy-tale webs (221, 224).
Many authors share their course-design research and thought processes, discussing their selection of topics, reading assignments, and learning projects. Writing about teaching brings out layers of detail that deepen our understanding of central questions and concerns in fairy-tale studies: the relationship of the fantastic with the real; the socializing impact of fairy tales; and the capacity to empathize with others through encountering and engaging with traditional stories as representative of, and contrasting with, multiple languages and cultures.
Given Canepa’s specialization and scholarship on Italian tales, it is not surprising that the essays emphasize European history, literature, and languages. Some important issues in fairy-tale studies are addressed in some of the courses but are harder to find in the book. Queer studies is indexed, but indigenous studies remains embedded in issues of fairy-tale collection, canonization, and translation mentioned in essays by Jack Zipes, Donald Haase, Bacchilega, and Jennifer Schacker.
Organizing the book with two main sections, but dividing the second section into chapters that include essays by different contributors, seems unusual. The ample appendices and bibliographies will be a boon to teachers. And the overall design makes the book a delight to read and use. The cover image recurs with each essay along with some beautiful full-color reproductions included by design at the most useful spot for readers. L. Frank Baum’s “Introduction” appears just as readers encounter Schacker’s adept analysis. These succinct, readable essays give teachers time to ponder applications and draw out pedagogical possibilities.
This book joins New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales, published by Utah State University Press in 2016. Although Canepa’s book was published second, it serves as the best introduction because of the foundation section, the accessible tone, and engaging classroom details. However, the new-approaches schema of editors Christa L. Jones and Claudia Schwabe enriches the cross-disciplinary and international range of teaching the fairy tale by including issues of semantics, fantastic environments, as well as gender and media.
Canepa organized a symposium on the book’s topic a decade preceding its publication. Teaching Fairy Tales will assist teachers at many educational levels in guiding students to defamiliarize popular tales, conduct critical readings, enjoy creative intellectual projects, and contextualize fairy tales in their sociohistorical, ideological, and cognitive conflicts and contributions to society. But don’t take my word for it. Put it to use and enjoy it for yourself.
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[Review length: 845 words • Review posted on November 7, 2019]