This course examines cinematic and literary portrayals of childhood. It will take advantage of the recent boom in Israeli filmmaking. While Israeli works constitute more then half of the course's material, European film and fiction play important comparative roles. Many of the works are placed, and therefore discussed, against a backdrop of national, collective, or historical conflicts. Nonetheless, private traumas (such as madness, abuse, or loss) or an adult’s longing for an idealized time are often the central foci of the stories. These personal issues and the nature of individual memory will be discussed from a psychological point of view. The course analyzes how the media of film, poetry and prose use their respective languages in their effort to reconstruct the image of childhood, retrieve fragments of past events and penetrate the psyche of a child. There will be six film screenings; the films will also be placed on reserve at the library for those students unable to attend the screenings. The content of this course changes from year to year, and therefore, students may take it for credit more than once.