Professor Kate Capshaw to Speak at SDSU on April 23rd!

The National Center for the Study of Children's Literature (with a special thanks to SDSU's Instructionally Related Activities Grant) is thrilled to announce a visit from Dr. Katharine Capshaw!

Prof. Capshaw will give a talk this April titled "Freedom (and Fury) Now: Civil Rights Photographic Picture Books for Children."

Room: Leon Williams Room, Malcolm A. Love Library, SDSU
Date: Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014

Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm

Open to the Public, Students, and Faculty!

Professor Capshaw writes:

My presentation will explore the photographic picture book, Today (1965), published by the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), one of the first "Head Start" programs in the United States and the children's organization most committed to civil rights ideals in the mid-1960s. While the CDGM existed only for two years (1965-1967), it emerged at a turning point in the civil rights campaign in Mississippi; born from the Freedom Summer literacy campaign of 1964, initiated after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the CDGM aimed to train a new generation of children in the values of the movement. The presentation will then connect Today with the children's photographic books of the Black Arts Movement, including Poems by Kali (1970) and June Jordan's Dry Victories (1972), texts which imagine the child as an icon of black nationhood and express anger at civil rights failures.

Bio:

Katharine Capshaw is Associate Professor of English at UConn and Editor of Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Her forthcoming book, Civil Rights Childhood: Photo Books and Liberation (Minnesota 2014), examines texts from the 1940s to the present day. Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance (Indiana 2004), Smith's first monograph, won the Children's Literature Association's best scholarly book award.

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!