Reminder: PAMLA Forum on Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture

First day of PAMLA, everyone! 
 
Just a reminder that the special event sponsored by the NCSCL will take place tomorrow! 

As part of PAMLA, the forum discussing "Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture" will be held on Saturday, November 2 at the Bahia Hotel. This forum should be of aprticular interest and appeal to anyone who researches or just dabbles in the study of childhood, children's literature, and cultural studies more broadly.

When: Saturday, November 2, 2013 - 5:00pm - 6:40pm (Mission Bay Ballroom C) 
Chair: Cheryl Edelson, Chaminade University of Honolulu
Three fabulous talks, including:

• The Age of Beginners, by Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida
• Aging Badly: The Exemplary Case of Marlon Brando, by Katherine Kinney, University of California, Riverside
• The American Renaissance Enters the Iron Decade: Melville and Company on the Voyage of Life, by Martin Kevorkian, University of Texas, Austin

Once again, the forum is open SDSU students and faculty, with no expense. More details about the event can be found here.

And all the conference information can be read at: http://www.pamla.org/2013/

PAMLA Forum Sponsored by NCSCL - Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture

The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference (PAMLA) is less than a week away! This week we'll be highlighting some of our own that will be presenting and featured in the conference, but for now I wanted to share a special event sponsored by the National Center for the Study of Children's Literature.

In conjunction with PAMLA and Executive Director Craig Svonkin, the NCSCL is excited to sponsor a forum which should greatly appeal to anyone involved in or fascinated by the study of childhood, children's literature, and cultural studies more broadly. It's a free and open to the public too, so join us for this insightful off-campus event!

PAMLA Forum: Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture 

When: Saturday, November 2, 2013 - 5:00pm - 6:40pm (Mission Bay Ballroom C) 
Chair: Cheryl Edelson, Chaminade University of Honolulu

The Age of Beginners
Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida
The beginner has long been a dominant trope in education, literature, and popular culture, associated with the idiot/dummy, the student, and the child. The beginner may or may not be a child or child-like, thereby bringing to mind Robin Bernstein's proposed term "agequeer," used to refer to temporally non-conforming subjects. Drawing on children's literature, the children's philosophy movement, and select theory, this paper explores the "age of the beginner"—both an era and a developmental conceit.

Aging Badly: The Exemplary Case of Marlon Brando
Katherine Kinney, University of California, Riverside
Marlon Brando presaged the youthful rebellion that came to exemplify the culture of the baby-boomers. As his icon thrived in the 1960s, Brando began to age badly. His successes and failures over the next three decades tell us much about post-WWII narratives of masculine identity, maturity, success, and the richer pathos of failure.

The American Renaissance Enters the Iron Decade: Melville and Company on the Voyage of Life
Martin Kevorkian, University of Texas, Austin
As the major authors of the American Renaissance embarked upon their sixth decades, their writing took a turn away from the prophetic confidence that characterized their greatest hits. Focusing upon Melville, along with Stowe, Longfellow, Emerson, and Hawthorne, this presentation explores these authors's late fascination with both preaching and silence.

Once again, the forum is open to everyone, including SDSU students and faculty, with no expense. In fact, all the conference sessions are free for those interested in visiting and listening. So, come! Drop by! Attend! Keep in mind that presenters and chairs still have to pay the registration fees.

All the conference information is here: http://www.pamla.org/2013/

Kidd Talk Canceled

The National Center for the Study of Children's Literature regrets to announce that Professor Kenneth Kidd will not be speaking at the SDSU campus tomorrow (Thursday April 11th, 5 pm). 

We apologize for any inconvenience this cancellation may cause. There will be no alternative program. Hopefully he will be able to visit in the future, but for now we don't have any set plans.

Once again, many apologies for having to cancel tomorrow's event.

Reminder: Kenneth Kidd Event this Thursday April 11

In case it slipped your mind or you just happened to miss the announcement last week, this Thursday the National Center for the Study of Children's Literature in conjunction with the Department of English and Comparative Literature is hosting a lecture session with University of Florida's Dr. Kenneth Kidd. His lecture, "Philosophy for Children" will be followed by a question-and-answer period, so plan to attend and invite anyone you think would be interested. The Event is open to the public.

 It will be held on Thursday, April 11, 2013 from 5:00 - 6:30 pm in Hardy Tower room 140  (HT 140) We are all extremely excited to have him here, and you should be too! 

 

Click HERE for more details about Dr. Kidd's planned lecture.

Prof. Kenneth Kidd to Speak at SDSU on April 11th!

We here at SDSU and the National Center for the Study of Children's Literature can't get enough of the University of Florida's Dr. Kenneth Kidd. First he virtually visited us last October for an illuminating brown bag discussion session of a chapter from his book Freud in OZ. And now he will be right here with us (live! in the flesh!) to speak about his research on the Philosophy for Children movement of the 1970's and its resurgence in child-rearing and children's literature now.

Please join us on Thursday, April 11, 2013 from 5:00 - 6:30 pm in Hardy Tower room 140  (HT 140) to hear Professor Kidd's lecture followed by a question-and-answer session. We are all extremely excited to have him here, and you should be too! 

Professor Kidd kindly wrote up an introductory piece to acquaint us with his talk, so here we go:

On Thursday, March 27, 2013, the NPR blog written by Robert Krulwich featured a story with the title "Socrates (In the Form of a 9-Year-Old) Shows Up in a Suburban Backyard in Washington." The entry describes how Washington, D. C. based musician, blogger, and camera man Zia Hassan, visiting his fiance during a babysitting gig, comes across a young boy with an interest in cosmology. Teasingly Hassan asks the boy about dark matter, and is stunned to hear the boy's nuanced, careful answer. The ensuing discussion, taped with the boy's permission, is now on YouTube with a million and a half views so far. The boy is not named, but simply referred to as The Philosopher. "Where," asks Krulwich, "did he learn about multiverses, free will, the odds of intelligent life in the universe? How does he manage to be so aware of what he doesn't know?" (Meanwhile, the Philosopher's young brother talks just as philosophically about baseball). The piece is a meditation on the curiosity and wisdom of children, and on the importance of parental encouragement. Krulwich quotes Hassan: "I think there are a lot of kids who think about interesting things. It's my guess no one really asks them about it." The moral seems to be that if adults were less afraid of what their children might think or say, their children might think or say pretty deep things.

Such was a core assumption of the Philosophy for Children movement, or P4C for short. In 1970, inspired by 1960s social activism and eager to promote critical thinking in young people, philosophy professor Matthew Lipman published his philosophical novel for children, Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery, which was used for teaching purposes in the Montclair public school system of New Jersey. Its success in the classroom alongside positive media attention helped lead to the establishment of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC), headquartered at Montclair State College where Lipman was appointed. Students involved in IAPC programs ostensibly saw significant improvements in their reading and critical thinking skills. Under Lipman, the IAPC devoted itself to producing pedagogical materials, beginning with additional novels written by Lipman and accompanying teacher workbooks. Lipman also designed graduate level programs in the field of Philosophy for Children and in 1979 founded Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children, which folded in 2011. Other universities as well as various institutes also undertook work with public school students. Wikipedia reports that “Before the Department of Education cut funding for such programs in the early 1990s, there were over 5,000 programs in K-12 schools nationwide which engaged young people in philosophical reflection or critical thinking, more generally. This number has dropped substantially.”

While support for P4C programs has faded, the idea that children are natural philosophers persists, and lately we've seen a resurgence of this notion, in child-rearing literature, in writing for children and young adults, and in how-to volumes such as Dr. Seuss and Philosophy. This presentation focuses on the P4C movement, and on ongoing claims to the child as exemplary philosopher. Special attention is given to the place of children's and young adult literature, and also to the connections between P4C and a related enterprise, "theory for beginners."

Mark Your Calendar: Prof. Kenneth Kidd to give talk on April 11

We enjoyed a fantastic virtual visit with the University of Florida's Kenneth Kidd back in October, and come April, we'll get to see him in person! Kenneth Kidd will be visiting SDSU's Center for the Study of Children's Literature on Thursday, April 11, to give a talk called "Philosophy for Children." It'll be amazing. Guaranteed.

The talk will begin at 5 p.m. Stay tuned for details on the location.

Professor Kidd works primarily in children’s literature studies, but his research interests span nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and cultural studies. He is the author of two books: Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale (University of Minnesota, 2004), and Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children's Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

With Sidney I. Dobrin he coedited the anthology Wild Things: Children’s Culture and Ecocriticism (Wayne State University Press, 2004), and with Michelle Ann Abate he coedited Over the Rainbow: Queer Children's and Young Adult Literature (University of Michigan Press, 2011).

Professor Kidd has published in a number of children’s literature journals as well as American Imago and PMLA. Since 2004 he has served as Associate Editor of Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. He is current at work on a new book about the children’s literary classic. Learn more about him here and here, and mark your calendars for April 11!

Kenneth Kidd Brown Bag Session Recap!

University of Florida professor of children's literature Kenneth Kidd virtually joined a group of graduate students and faculty yesterday for a discussion about his book Freud in Oz, among other topics. SDSU Children's Literature faculty Joseph Thomas, June Cummins, Phillip Serrato, and Mary Galbraith eagerly asked questions of their UF colleague Kidd, who answered with eloquence and the occasional self-effacing humor.

Belying his modesty, though, is Kidd's work itself, which takes a thoughtful look at children's literature through a psychoanalytic lens. The chapter under discussion, "Child Analysis, Play, and Pooh," progresses chronologically through the early stages of psychoanalytic research into children's behavior, from Freud to his daughter Anna to Melanie Klein to D.W. Winnicott, and looks at the links between child psychoanalysis and the inherent themes of children's literature. Kidd aligns these links with "Poohology," which he describes as "a form of popular psychology and child analysis and literary criticism and theory"that "refashions the children's classic into a plaything for adults, supporting the interiorization of childhood and of childhood's forms." As Kidd describes, Winnie the Pooh, with its straightforward narration and its playful themes, is an ideal backdrop for examining how play shapes childhood.

Specific questions that came up during the brown bag session with Kidd focused largely on Kidd's treatment of Frederick Crews' The Pooh Perplex, which satirizes the intensity of literary criticism while also highlighting the promise of what literary criticism can uncover. The discussion with Kidd unearthed how Crews' work leans toward sarcasm and in fact shut the door on literary criticism of Pooh for years, but conversely may also have paved the way for analysis of children's literature. By illuminating the shortcomings of taking children's literature too seriously, Crews also may have inadvertently proposed a way of looking at children's literature with both intellectual rigor and self-awareness.

Also up for discussion was the idea of the "inner child" and how much of that is extended adolescence or performative adolescence. The group talked about how contemporary young adult authors in particular seem to be both adult and adolescent at once. Kidd discussed the later chapters in his book that trace the American fascination with adolescence from the 1950s onward and try to explicate a broader history of what we now call the YA novel. Kidd described YA authors as potentially "both therapists and an older young adult," an identity that makes them adept at writing for a teen audience.

In addition to fielding scholarly questions, Kidd also discussed the PhD program at the University of Florida (where a student can specifically focus on graduate work in children's literature) and the job prospects for nascent scholars in the field. While job openings specifically recruiting children's literature scholars are relatively scarce, Kidd pointed out that children's literature PhDs coming out of UF are also well-positioned to talk about their research in broader terms. His assertion supports what we all discover when studying children's literature: the themes and ideas that we analyze may start in children's literature, but they translate to numerous other genres within literature. And as the group also discussed in the brown bag session, we were all children once.

Overall this was an engaging and enlightening discussion with one of the premier scholars in the field of children's literature. Thanks to Kenneth Kidd for joining us via Face Time, and thanks to Joseph Thomas for arranging this brown bag session!

Addendum: An actual corporeal visit from Kenneth Kidd is tentatively planned for the Spring 2013 semester. Stay tuned for more details!

Reminder: Brown Bag with Kenneth Kidd tomorrow!

Don't forget! Tomorrow, October 31, we are holding our brown bag discussion event  with Professor Kenneth Kidd of the University of Florida. The event will be held at 12 p.m. in room 105 of the Arts and Letters Building and we encourage all interested folks to join. Professor Kidd will lead a discussion of Chapter II of his book, Freud in OZ: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature.

If you still need a copy of this chapter, please email Professor Joseph Thomas and he will share the document with you. 

Reminder: Brown Bag Session with Prof. Kenneth Kidd on October 31

One week from today at noon in Arts and Letters room 105, the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, in collaboration with the Department of English & Comparative Literature, will be holding a brown bag discussion session with University of Florida Professor (and Friend of the Department!) Kenneth Kidd. We’ll be reading Chapter II of his fabulous book, Freud in OZ: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature (“Child Analysis, Play, and the Golden Age of Pooh”). Read more about Professor Kidd and this event here.

If you are interested in joining us and would like a copy of Chapter II, please email Professor Joseph Thomas and he will share the document with you. 

Brown Bag Session with Prof. Kenneth Kidd on October 31

On Wednesday, Oct. 31 at noon (location to be announced) the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, in collaboration with the Department of English & Comparative Literature, will be holding a brown bag discussion session with University of Florida Professor (and Friend of the Department!) Kenneth Kidd. We’ll be reading Chapter II of his fabulous book, Freud in OZ: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature (“Child Analysis, Play, and the Golden Age of Pooh”). We’ll make the chapter available to those who are interested next week: details to be announced! (Or go out and buy a copy of the whole book: it’s super duper totes great!)

The Center asked Professor Kidd to write up a little introductory piece, and he kindly obliged us! So we’ll turn things over to the dear doctor K: 

A Few Words by Kenneth Kidd on Kenneth Kidd

In graduate school I had no idea one could specialize in children's literature, so I started out as a nineteenth-century Americanist with side interests in gender/queer studies. I wrote my dissertation on (mostly American) discourses of boyhood from the nineteenth century forward, and that eventually became my first book, Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale (U of Minnesota Press, 2004). The book explores how the pseudo-science of "boyology" intersects with and draws energy from what I call the "feral tale", the story of a "wild child" raised by animals or otherwise away from human culture. By that point I had gotten active with the Children's Literature Association and also the MLA's Division on Children's Literature. I had also moved from my first faculty appointment at Eastern Michigan University to the University of Florida, where I now teach. Both universities have excellent programs in children's literature and so I've had the benefit of interacting with other like-minded scholars locally as well as through my professional networks. I've published on a number of topics, and have coedited two essay collections that reflect particular interests – Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism (Wayne State U Press, 2004) and more recently Over the Rainbow: Queer Children's and Young Adult Literature (U of Minnesota Press, 2012). Both are the first such collections on their respective topics.

My most recent book is Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children's Literature, a portion of which I've suggested as reading for the brown bag session (we’ll be reading chapter two, “Child Analysis, Play, and the Golden Age of Pooh”). I had a lot of fun researching and writing this project, which I would describe as intellectual and cultural history rather than literary criticism. It is most definitely not applied psychoanalytic criticism; rather, it's a study of the many relays and exchanges between psychoanalysis and children's literature. Freud in Oz continues some themes and emphases from Making American Boys but is more comprehensively concerned with children's literature. Both projects are basically "history of ideas" scholarship.

I chose the second chapter for our brown bag discussion for several reasons. First, it showcases my general strategy in the book, namely to historicize the relation between psychoanalysis and children's literature while also theorizing new ways of thinking about both. I suggest that the attention of child analysts to the play and "forms" of childhood amounts to a kind of "children's literature" all its own. The chapter makes clear my fascination with the play of tropes (including the trope of play) across multiple discourses and professional registers. Also, the chapter is concerned with a canonical children's book, one of the so-called classics of the so-called Golden Age of Anglo-American children's literature. I'm interested in the uses to which such books are put, how they are mobilized in service of various aims and ends. Finally, Chapter 2 is connected to two book projects now in progress, The Children's Classic, and Philosophy, Theory, and Childhood. The former explores the children's literary classic as a cultural formation and fantasy; the second takes up theory "for beginners" and philosophy "for children," making the case that philosophy and theory depend upon childhood and children's literature more than has been recognized. I'll be reading from a chapter in progress from Philosophy, Theory, and Childhood when I visit next Spring,and I'm very much looking forward to that visit, and to the brown bag discussion on Halloween!

Kenneth's Book Picks (with the understanding, of course, that there's no such thing as Essential Books):

Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read

Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism

Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am

James F. English, The Culture of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value

Emer O'Sullivan, Comparative Children's Literature

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity

Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection