Welcome to the final project for our LIT 4930 course: 

Cradle and Grave: Childhood and Death in the Baldwin Collection 


                                                      


 This digital collection showcases materials in the Baldwin Archive of Historical Children's Literature from the Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. This project was designed and supervised by Kristen Gregory, a PhD candidate in English and the instructor of this course. The exhibits were entirely constructed by University of Florida students enrolled in Gregory's Spring 2016 LIT 4930 course, which focuses on the presence of death in literature for and about children.

Both childhood and death are fraught concepts entangled in shifting ideologies and pervasive cultural anxieties. Literary explorations of these subjects offer us valuable insights into not only our history but also our contemporary society. It is our hope that these exhibits will offer visitors a chance to reflect on the powerful effects of death and childhood on the cultural imagination and explore the role that children's literature plays in the formation, critique, continuation, and revision of our ever-shifting values and anxieties.