Cambridge University archive slaps 'trigger warnings' on classic children's books

Classic children’s books held in a Cambridge University archive are to be labelled with ‘trigger warnings’ for ‘harmful content relating to slavery, colonialism and racism’.

The project is being paid for by a £80,633 grant from the taxpayer-funded UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Researchers are reviewing more than 10,000 books and magazines to expose authors who have been ‘offensive to historically enslaved, colonised or denigrated people’.

Offending authors include Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote Little House On The Prairie, for her ‘stereotypical depictions of Native Americans’.

  

  

The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley’s 1863 children’s classic about a young chimney sweep, is described as having the potential to ‘harm readers without warning’ for comments about Irish and black people. 

  

  

L Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, is also cited for ‘white supremacy’ in his Bandit Jim Crow, written under the pen name of Laura Bancroft.

  

   

The archive at Cambridge’s Homerton College is being reviewed as part of a move to upload texts to a digital library.

  

The college aims to make the digital collection ‘less harmful in the context of a canonical literary heritage that is shaped by, and continues, a history of oppression’. It says it would be ‘a dereliction of our duty as gatekeepers to allow such casual racism to go unchecked’.

 

Funding bid documents for the project say: ‘Problems are encountered continually with respect to the history of demeaning terms associated with disability and indigenous cultures, as well as the immigrants who have shaped modern America and Britain.

  

‘Trigger warnings, with indications of harmful content for intersectional identities, will protect researchers, children, and general readers from offensiveness or hurt that can emerge in otherwise safe search queries or acts of browsing.’

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