Dr. Naomi Hamer's Talk "Enter Through the Gift Shop"

Hello scholars!

We are so excited to invite you to Dr. Naomi Hamer’s talk, “Enter through the Gift Shop: Transmedia Storytelling and the Picture Book from Mobile Apps to Museums”.  Dr. Hamer’s talk will be February 19, 2020 4:00 to 5:30pm in Love Library 430. We are always so grateful for such insightful talks, and we know this one will be no different!

Dr. Naomi Hamer is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Ryerson University. Her current research and publications examine the cross-media adaptation of children's literature with a focus on picture books, mobile apps, and children’s museums. She is the co-editor of More Words About Pictures: Current Research on Picture Books and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People (eds. Hamer, Nodelman and Reimer, 2017), and The Routledge Companion of Fairy-tale Cultures and Media (eds. Greenhill, Rudy, Hamer, and Bosc, 2018). Her current research project (Curating the Story Museum) has been awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant.

This lecture presents highlights from her ongoing research on the adaptation, remediation, and commodification of picture books. This work focuses on how transmedia storytelling offers opportunities for counterpoint and disruptive narratives by authors and readers of picture books while also addressing the limitations of interactive and mobile technologies. Framed by cross-disciplinary work on transmedia storytelling and digital cultures, cross-media case studies of canonical picture books reveal the absences and omissions in the texts chosen by publishing houses, entertainment companies, and children's museums for adaptations and exhibitions focused on picture books. The lives and experiences of Indigenous youth, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, and young people of color (and their families) are only recently featured as central to picture books, and tend to be less likely the focus for dominant cross-media franchises. This lecture particularly explores the development of the Pism Finds her Miskanow story app (2019) as well as select examples from picture book exhibitions as venues for dialogue and play with picture book narratives.

Leading up to the talk you can find Dr. Hamer on Twitter @naomihamertime to get to know her!

We look forward to seeing you there!

-(SS)