Tuesday, June 28, 2011
China Children's Lit
Professor Wang Quangen,
Beijing Normal University's School of
Chinese Language and Literature and Alida Allison, SDSU, June 14, 2011; China Children's Literature edited by Prof. Wang
Ni Hao! (Hello) from the new director of our SDSU Center for the Study of Children's Literature---- that would be me above, with Professor Wang.
Wang Quangen has done remarkable things for children's literature in China.With Maria Nikolajeva and board members of IBBY (International Board of Books for Youth), I'd met Quangen ten years earlier at BNU, and the fruits of his decades' endeavors are apparent. Several of his former students now teach or work as editors in the thriving Chinese publishing world, for example as editorial staff for China Children's Press Publishing Group (CCPPG) in Beijing. Wang Mei, Dr. Wang's daughter, is now herself a professor of children's literature at Beijing's Capitol Normal University, and his latest journal edition, China Children's Literature 2010, is an eye-catching, substantial volume (above).Thus, it was a double pleasure to see him again and to also see how well his teaching and writing have evolved.
His and Dr. Wang Lei's graduate students were the audience at BNU for my talk on Fantasy and Fantasizing June 14, along with editors/students from CCPPG whom I'd met the day before at their editorial offices and soon-to-be-opened spectacular kids' bookstore in Beijing (next blog...).
I came back from China with a lot to ponder and a lot to read; problem with the latter, though, is I don't read Chinese. If you're a current SDSU student who can translate or know someone who can, get in touch with me.
Registration Link for Joy Chu's UCSD Extension course on Illustrating Kids' Books
Here is the link to further information, and registration for the class:
http://extension.ucsd.edu/
Sept 23 to Oct 2: 2011 Bath Festival of Children's Lit in UK
Of growing importance in the U.K. is the Bath Festival of Children's Literature. Numerous talks and events over a nine-day period, including visits by Roddy Doyle, Eoin Colfer, David Almond, and others.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bath-childrens-literature/8601085/Bath-Festival-Of-Childrens-Literature-2011-programme-Sunday-25-September.html
Monday, June 27, 2011
Alida Allison Takes Over as Director of SDSU's Children's Lit Program
Author of books on Isaac Bashevis Singer and Russell Hoban, Dr. Allison is known for her international initiatives (particularly in India and China) and for her work founding and running the National Children's Book Review Service. Griswold joins the program's other emeritus professors: Peter Neumeyer, Lois Kuznets, and Carole Scott.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
San Diego Students to Australian Conference
The International Research Society for Children's Literature will have their biannual congress in Brisbane, Australia, July 4-8. http://irscl2011.com/
Two San Diego graduate students will be offering papers there. Kate Slater will be presenting a paper called "No Safe Place: Terrors of Liminality in the Scary Stories Series." Mariel Romero will present a paper titled "The Anguished Immigrant Child in Chicana/o Children’s Literature" where she explores how the authors of the picture book Gabriela’s Song: How Do I Adapt to a New Place? (2007) and the YA novel La Línea (2006) advocate for storytelling as therapeutic treatment that will help expat children and adolescents confront and overcome a traumatic migrant experience.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
2011: The Summer of Mary Galbraith
My summer is devoted to reading literature in the present tense. I have been asked to lecture next year on the stylistic and structural implications of novels being narrated in the present tense, so this summer I’m steeping myself in this style as practiced in English, supplemented with examples translated from German, Russian, and French. I’ll also be getting up to date on the relevant theoretical discussion in narratology and cognitive poetics.
Charles Dickens: Bleak House—1853
Virginia Woolf: Jacob’s Room --1922
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying -- 1930
Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies --1951 (French), 1956 (English)
John Updike: Rabbit, Run—1960
Margaret Atwood: Surfacing--1972
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow--1973
J M Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians –1980
Ian McEwan: Saturday--2005
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall--2009
Commentary on Charlotte's Web
SDSU folks pay attention to work about E.B. White's Charlotte's Web because of the scholarship of Peter Neumeyer (emeritus professor) on this classic--especially Peter's Annotated Charlotte's Web: http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Charlottes-Web-B-White/dp/0060882603/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308999961&sr=1-1
Now comes word of a new book by Michael Sims called The Story of Charlotte's Web: http://www.amazon.com/Story-Charlottes-Web-Eccentric-American/dp/0802777546/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309000122&sr=1-1
Reviews have appeared in
- The Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0624/Editor-s-choice-The-Story-of-Charlotte-s-Web
- The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/monica-edinger/charlottes-web-book_b_880418.html
Thursday, June 23, 2011
SDSU at the ChLA Convention (Virginia, June 2011)
A number of SDSU faculty, alums, and friends will be there. Please see the list below. And if there are others, please let us know: childlit@mail.sdsu.edu
- I'll be at the conference, tuckered into Chandra's panel on Octavian Nothing. The official title of the paper is "Writing the Child: Composition and Consciousness in Octavian Nothing ” --Martin Woodside
- I'm going to ChLA, presenting a paper on the show "Glee." --Naomi Lesley
- I'll be presenting a paper at ChLA titled "Redress, Rupture and Rememory in Laurie Halse Anderson's Chains."--Kate Slater
- I will be presenting a piece of his in-progress book on "Shel Silverstein, 'The Devil's Favorite Pet': Shel Silverstein, an American Iconoclast" as a part of a panel on Silverstein featuring Michael Heyman and Kevin Shortsleeve, co-editors of the forthcoming Anthology of World Nonsense. My paper is titled, “About Nineteen or so Minutes on the Subjects of Shel Silverstein, 'The Freak', & Freaking Out.” --Joseph Thomas.
- My paper is: “Keeping the Faith: Religious and Ethnic Affiliation as Resistance in Jewish Children’s and YA Literature.” It's on a special Diversity Panel with special topic of “Resisting Americanization.” --June Cummins
- Mary Auxier and I put together an Octavian Nothing Panel and my paper is called "The Rhetoric of Resistance in The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. --Chandra Howard
- My presentation will be on reflections of the communist movement in Engelbert Humperdinck's German opera, Hansel und Gretel. I know the Roanoke area reasonably well, since I went to school there for several summers, and I may be able to recommend some good eats out there if we decide to have some kind of rendezvous. The Hollins crowd seemed to prefer dive bars and karaoke joints for drinking, so I can only recommend those establishments for drinks! --Ellen Malven
- Sean Printz is presenting a paper on how procedural rhetoric in video games generate mythic strictures and narratives.
- NaToya Faughnder is presenting a paper on the bias of modernity in the theory of and history of the child.
Sept 30: 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards
The 2011 winners of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards are:
- PICTURE BOOKS: Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes (Houghton) by Salley Mavor
- FICTION: Blink & Caution (Candlewick) by Tim Wynne-Jones
- NONFICTION: The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, &
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/home/891084-312/2011_boston_globe-horn_book_award.html.csp
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Essays solicited for collection on Materialist Readings of Children’s Literature and Culture
CFP
Materialist Readings of Children’s Literature and Culture:
Classic and Contemporary Essays
Call for papers for an edited collection tentatively titled Materialist Readings of Children’s Literature and Culture: Classic and Contemporary Essays. This collection will consist primarily of new analyses, but will also include previously published essays in order to chart the development of materialist criticism of children’s and young adult literature, culture, and film. The aim of the collection is to demonstrate the significance of historical materialist approaches to children's literature and culture (i.e. Marx, Lukacs, Williams, Eagleton, Jameson, Ariel Dorfman, Jack Zipes, Ian Wojick Andrews, Gayatri Spivak, etc.).
Topics may include but are not limited to the following:
• the way in which children’s literature supports or, conversely, challenges class hierarchies, especially as they intersect with gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity
• the “political unconscious” in works of children’s literature
• cognitive mapping
• class conflict in children’s literature and film
• depictions of the working class, labor history, socialism, and revolution
• children’s literature and the left
• materialist-feminist criticism and children’s literature and culture
• materialist analyses of post-colonial children’s literature and culture
• the political economy of children’s literature and culture
Please direct inquiries and submissions to the editor, Dr. Angela Hubler, at ahubler@ksu.edu. 500 word abstracts, brief biography, and short C.V. are due by September 18th, 2011. Complete essays must be submitted as an attachment in Microsoft Word, following MLA guidelines for citation and format, by November 18th, 2011. A potential publisher has expressed interest, and a proposal will be submitted after abstracts are received.
Editor Angela Hubler is Associate Professor in Women’s Studies at Kansas State University, where she teaches courses in feminist theory, female adolescence, and women’s writing and culture. Her recent publications analyze literary representations of collective political action in literature for children and adults. Her essays have been published in The Lion and the Unicorn, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Critical Survey, Papers on Language and Literature, Women’s Studies Quarterly, the National Women’s Studies Association Journal, and edited collections.
Angela Hubler Associate Professor Women's Studies Program Kansas State University Manhattan, KS 66506 (785)537-9008 (home phone--on sabbatical 2010-11 academic year)Tuesday, June 14, 2011
3 PhD Scholarships for Study in the UK
Sunday, June 12, 2011
2011: The Summer of Virginia Loh
Saturday, June 11, 2011
2011: The Summer of Jerry Griswold
Thursday, June 9, 2011
2011: The Summer of Jill Coste
MLA Boston Jan. 2013
Each year the Children’s Literature Assocation is guaranteed one session at the MLA and can submit proposals for up to two more.* If you would like to propose a session topic, by June 17th please send the ChLA/MLA Liaison (Philip Nel: philnel@ksu.edu): (1) a short description of your proposal idea, and, if relevant, (2) the name of an other MLA-affiliated entity (allied organization, division, or discussion group) you plan to seek as a co-sponsor. The ChLA Board will examine the proposals and select the top three (one guaranteed, plus two additional**) for submission to the 2013 MLA Convention.
*If ChLA chooses to submit two additional sessions, one of those sessions must be a collaborative session with another entity (division, discussion group, allied organization, etc.).
MLA divisions: <http://www.mla.org/danddg>
MLA allied and affiliate divisions: <http://www.mla.org/orginfo_directory>
MLA discussion groups: <http://www.mla.org/discussion_groups>
**The proposals for the two additional sessions are not guaranteed and will be reviewed by the MLA Program Committee. Please see the Procedures for Organizing Meetings on the MLA Web site (http://mla.org/conv_procedures) for further details.
Permanent link here:http://www.philnel.com/2011/06/08/chlamla/
Conference Cambridge (U.K.) Mar 30 & Apr 1 (2012)
The Child and the Book Conference 2012 that will be held in Cambridge, at the Cambridge-Homerton Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature, from 31 March to 1 April.
The conference theme is:
Towards Common Ground: Philosophical Approaches to Children's Literature
See also: The conference pages on the Centre website http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/childrensliterature/childandthebook/index.html
2011: The Summer of Brittany Candau
2011: The Summer of Philip Serrato
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
2011: The Summer of Tony Malanga
This summer, I will continue to work on my novel based on the Orpheus myth. It is a reinterpretation set in modern day Egypt and Los Angeles. I am also writing a spec script for the NBC sitcom "Community." Each fall, NBC Universal hires new staff writers for its television shows, and part of the hiring process is to present an episodic writing sample. If hired, new staff writers have the opportunity to pitch an original pilot, which I am also developing. My pilot is a half-hour apocalyptic Boccaccio's Decameron, in which seven survivors of a global pandemic unite in a Napa winery and maintain civilization by working together and by telling tales. I am also keeping my ears open for any local English teaching position. In the words of Galaxy Quest's Commander Nesmith, "Never give up!"