Introduction to Literature: Personal Accounts (II)

For this installment of my Introduction to Literature Series, I will be featuring Sequoia Stone. She is a second-year M.A. student in SDSU's English and Comparative Literature department, with a specialization in Children's Literature. This is her first semester teaching and her English 220 course is entitled "Reimagining Canon: Literary Confrontations, Adaptations, and Subversions." The following entries are from Sequoia herself!

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I'd had the idea for my syllabus knocking around in my head for a while, ever since I'd read one of my course texts (The Song of Achilles, a queer re-telling of The Illiad) right after reading The Illiad in a course during my senior year of college. While I knew I would have enjoyed The Song of Achilles on its own, reading it on the heel of The Illiad was a deeply illuminating experience. I understood The Illiad better (I read TSOA in six hours the night before my midterm or the course--whoops!), and I was able to approach The Song of Achilles with the tradition and history of The Illiad informing my reading. As I thought about becoming a professor in the far-off future, I thought I'd love the chance to put The Illiad and The Song of Achilles in conversation for my students. When I was presented with the opportunity to teach 220 here at SDSU, I took this initial parting and poured over the books in my library and memories of my undergraduate years in order to create my syllabus based around the idea of reading a "canon" book with a "non-canon" one. Some of these pairings were direct adaptations, while others were simply two texts that echoed similar themes and ideas.

1. What Children's and young adult books or texts were included in the reading list for your course? How were these texts received by the students?

I have eight course texts, four canon and four non-canon. All of my non-canon books are young adult novels: Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, Libba Bray's Beauty Queens, Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, and Scott Westerfeld's Uglies. I have gotten mostly a positive response to these books, and they are often just as intellectually challenging to my students as the more dense canon texts. Something I would hear often is that reading the YA companion book made things we discussed in the canon text more accessible, as students were able to use more "relatable" texts as a way to retroactively understand things that might have been more austere in older novels.

2. What other texts lended themselves to discuss childhood and adolescence in nuanced ways that were either unexpected or surprising? 

Something that was surprising and delightful to me in my course was how concerned my students were with the interiority or backstory of a character. When reading Lord of the Flies, a student proposed that maybe Jack was so violence because he had a childhood, or was abused. Similarly, in Great Expectations in my class wondered if the villainous figure of Mrs. Joe was more so a product of her upbringing than anything else. While I like to steer these observations back into textual analysis, I enjoyed seeing my students approach these characters as so three-dimensional that they asked themselves, why are they the way they are? It seems that the importance of childhood, the impact of how one is raised, was at the forefront of my student's minds even when we were reading texts not specifically aimed at children or young adults.

3. How does your class's theme carry over to the matters of childhood and adolescence?

Something my class has emphasized throughout our semester has been the importance of familial bonds, and how the family unit impacts the way one grows. Many of our main characters have had abusive parents or families that encourage negativity, and a lot of our discussion has been based around following these characters as they navigate the repercussions of abuse, of cruelty, or of neglect. We have also talked a lot about found families, the family one creates that provides support or love, and how this constructed family illustrates the importance of things like kindness, generosity, and loyalty. As we've moved through our texts, we've also looked at the various ways in which society pressures children and young adults to conform. Whether this manifests as discouraging queerness, encouraging apathy, or dictating beauty standards, my class has talked extensively about the different ways the characters in our novels face crushing dominant ideologies, as well the ways in which it is possible to resist them.

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Thank you so much to Sequoia Stone for the robust commentary and amazing engagement with themes of childhood and adolescence!

-A. Elliott

Conference: Canon Constitution and Change in Children's Literature

Canon Constitution and Canon Change in Children's Literature
International Conference at the University of Tübingen, 11-13 September 2014

Whereas children's classics and their adaptations and transformations into other media have been widely discussed, the history of canonization processes in children's literature in general and the development of a canonical theory of children's literature in particular still need further exploration. Althouth several scholars have already investigated how national canons of children's literature have developed, such historical approaches have mostly focused on aesthetic matters or on changing concepts of childhood. The impact of cultural concepts that are constitutive for the construction of cultural identities (so-called social imaginaries) on canon formation has, on the other hand, been widely neglected. The same applies to a transnational perspective on canon constitution, which transcends national boundaries and instead locates children's literature in a more comprehensive communicative space.

Issues that might be investigated in this respect are the presentations of children's literature in literary histories, the historical contingency of the status of canonicity, the impact of social institutions and awards on the appreciation of certain types of children's literature, the possible reasons for excluding or including particular children's books from/into the canon, the conceptual shifts in the acknowledgement of children's literature in national canons, the influence of genre preferences for canon constitution and the perception of a canon of children's literature as a transnational phenomenon.


More Information
Program

CFP: Canon Conference at the University of Tübingen, Germany

Call for Papers: Canon Constitution and Canon Change in Children’s Literature

International Conference at the University of Tübingen, Germany, 11-13 September 2014

Although several scholars have investigated how national canons of children’s literature have developed, such historical approaches have mostly focused on aesthetic matters or on changing concepts of childhood. The impact of cultural concepts that are constitutive for the construction of cultural identities (so-called social imaginaries) on canon-formation has, on the other hand, been widely neglected. The same applies to a transnational perspective on canon constitution, which transcends national boundaries and instead locates children’s literature in a more comprehensive communicative space.

Issues that might be investigated in this respect are the presentation of children’s literature in literary histories, the historical contingency of the status of canonicity, the impact of social institutions and awards on the appreciation of certain types of children’s literature, the possible reasons for excluding or including particular children’s books from/into the canon, the conceptual shifts in the acknowledgement of children’s literature in national canons, the influence of genre preferences for canon constitution and the perception of a canon of children’s literature as a transnational phenomenon.

The purpose of this international conference is to bring together scholars of children’s literature from different countries who are especially interested in the topic of canon formation in children’s literature. We particularly invite papers dealing with one or several of the following topics:

• National vs. transnational canons;
• Paul Hazard and the idea of a “World Literature for Children”;
• Divergent canon concepts (Western Canon, European Canon, Global Canon, Multicultural Canon, Postcolonial Canon);
• The concept of the “Golden Age” and its impact on the canon of children’s literature;
• Genre preferences in canonization processes;
• The impact of institutions (e.g. libraries, museums, schools, literary societies, awards) on the development of the canon;
• Canons and social imaginaries;
• Reasons for inclusion or exclusion in literary histories; 
• Falling out of the canon: the challenges of forgotten children’s books; 
• Interfaces between the canons of children’s and adults’ literature; 
• Changing criteria for canonicity.

Contributions from academics interested in the close relationship between historical and theoretical perspectives of canon research in the realm of children’s literature are particularly welcome. The proceedings of the conference will be published in book form.

Deadline for proposals: 31 July 2013.

Please send abstracts of c. 300 words (for a twenty-minute paper) and a short biographical note (c. 100 words) as e-mail attachments (Word format please) to both convenors, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer: bettina.kuemmerling-meibauer@uni-tuebingen.de and Anja Müller: am.englit-si@muelleranja.eu

Notification whether proposals have been accepted will be made by 31 August 2013.

The conference venue is Schloss Hohentübingen, a beautiful 16th-century castle in the picturesque university town of Tübingen (close to Stuttgart international airport). For details, visit http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/museum-schloss/schloss.html