Class Description
Explore in-depth Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series from multiple angles, including their settings, authorship and publication, adaptations, translations, and continued legacy. How does the series present American history and American girlhood? What do the books reveal about society, ideology, and America in their historical time... and what time is “theirs” in the first place? Are they autobiographies or fiction? Who actually wrote them and does “Laura Ingalls Wilder” exist? How do the Little House books and their perspectives of America fit in twenty-first century contexts, if at all?
This six-week course is structured around a chronological reading of the Little House series, with additional works by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane individually. Each class will explore in detail the text’s and Ingalls family’s historical and literary contexts, including revisions, misrepresentations, and erasures.
Content warning: course materials/illustrations will also include troubling images, problematic language, discussion of racism and misrepresentation, and discussion of abuse and trauma.
Dawn Sardella-Ayres received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2016. She was the L.M. Montgomery Institute Research Associate for 2022-2023, and specializes in girls’ literature and the girls’ Bildungsroman/Kunstlerroman. Her publications include articles on Alcott, Montgomery, Johnston, and Wilder.
All virtual classes are recorded and made available on a password-protected basis to participants registered in the class. These recordings are available for up to two weeks after the class ends.
Materials List
Required
- Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Little House Books Boxed Set. Harper & Row, 1971. ISBN: 9780064400404 (Please Note: We are unable to stock the books in our store, but copies are available at the Chicago Public Library. You can also find used copies for sale at online stores like AbeBooks.)
Or, individually:
- Little House in the Big Woods
- Farmer Boy
- Little House on the Prairie
- On the Banks of Plum Creek
- By the Shores of Silver Lake
- The Long Winter
- Little Town on the Prairie
- These Happy Golden Years
- The First Four Years
- Rose Wilder Lane, Young Pioneers. Harper Collins, 1998. ISBN: 9780064406987 (Please Note: We are unable to stock the book in our store, but you can buy it directly from the publisher or find used copies for sale at online stores like AbeBooks.)
- Other Instructor-Distributed Materials
Recommended
- Laura Ingalls Wilder, ed. Pamela Smith Hill, Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography. South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780984504176
First Reading
- Please read Little House in the Big Woods (1932) before the first class.
Cost and Registration
This class is full, but you can still register for the waitlist on Learning Stream.
6 Sessions, $270 ($243 for Newberry members, seniors, and students). Learn about becoming a member.
We now offer our classes at three different price options: Regular ($270), Community Supported ($255), and Sponsor ($285). Following the models of other institutions, we want to ensure that our classes are accessible to a wider audience while continuing to support our instructors. You may choose the price that best fits your situation when registering through Learning Stream.
To register multiple people for this class, please go through the course calendar in Learning Stream, our registration platform. When you select the course and register, you’ll be prompted to add another registrant.
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