Global Childhood Ecologies RFG

Global Childhood Ecologies RFG

  1. Events
  2. Global Childhood Ecologies RFG

Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

Research Focus Group Talk: Transnational Jewish Tradition and Memory in the Landscapes of Maurice Sendak

Zoom

This talk examines the role of Jewish folk traditions and memory in the picture books of the late Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), with special attention to Sendak’s handling of landscape and natural elements. Sendak’s own biography reflects a move in the 1970s from the urban spaces of Brooklyn and Manhattan to the forested landscape of Ridgefield, Connecticut. His work speaks to the experience of first-generation children of immigrants in early twentieth-century America, drawing on a Yiddish-inflected ...

Research Focus Group Talk: Leah Goldberg’s Psychogeographical Mapping of Hebrew Children’s Culture

Zoom

This talk examines the comparative representations of the Mizrahi immigrant and the Holocaust refugee through the motif of the child immigrant to Israel in the mid-20th century through the work of Leah Goldberg (1911-1970). A prolific modernist poet, author, playwright, literary translator, and comparative literary critic who chaired the Department of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Goldberg's focus upon dislocation and language in her work for both adults and children is informed ...

Research Focus Group Talk: The Trials and Tribulations of Bambi and the Inscrutable Felix Salten, Lover of Animals

Zoom

This talk follows Jack Zipes' recent publication of his new translation of Felix Salten's Bambi (1923). Zipes' research for this book demonstrates that Bambi was essentially a Jew, as were all the animals in the forest, and that he and they had to spend their lives avoiding pogroms in the forest and learning to deal with loneliness. Salten wrote other books, such as Fifteen Rabbits (1928) and Bambi's Children: The Story of a Forest Family ...

Research Focus Group Symposium: Through Young Eyes: Undergraduate Research Showcase

6320 Phelps and Zoom

Through Young Eyes is an undergraduate research showcase sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Research Focus Group on Global Childhood Ecologies, as well as the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies and Comparative Literature Program. It features multidisciplinary presentations of thesis research related to childhood by senior majors Victoria Korotchenko in Russian and East European Studies, Nicole Smirnoff in Comparative Literature, and Zoie Orth in English. The panel of presentations and subsequent discussion will focus ...

Research Focus Group Talk: Are the Chornobyl Books Nature-Oriented?: Ukrainian Children’s Literature in Memory Dimensions

Zoom

The war in Ukraine raises the issue of a new nuclear threat, as five nuclear power plants are located there. Although the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the north of Ukraine is non-functional, the level of radiation is still very high. Moreover, the largest nuclear plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the south of Ukraine, is threatened with a new nuclear catastrophe and radiation pollution since the Russian military invasion (Joint Statement ...

2023 IRSCL Congress: Ecologies of Childhood

University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA

The 26th biennial Congress of the International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL) will be hosted at the University of California, Santa Barbara on August 12-17, 2023 and will be devoted to the theme "Ecologies of Childhood." This is the first time the IRSCL Congress will be held in the United States. The interdisciplinary 2023 IRSCL Congress is co-organized by Sara Pankenier Weld of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Dafna Zur of Stanford ...

Research Focus Group Talk: Between and Beyond Images and Words: A Multimodal Stylistic Study of Children’s Picturebooks

Zoom

A multimodal approach to children’s picturebooks focuses on how images and words (and their interactions) collaboratively make meaning. Narrative theory enriches picturebook studies by demonstrating how paratextual elements (book cover, author’s note, afterword, etc.) complement the body text. Drawing on Gérard Genette’s (1997) distinction of “peritext” and “epitext” and Nina Nørgaard’s (2018) multimodal stylistics of the novel, this talk treats another multimodal dimension of “quasi-textual” elements or features (such as typography, layout, page-turn, gutter, blank ...

Research Focus Group Talk: Alice in Wonderland as a Fairytale and a Resource Book in China

Zoom

This talk focuses on some semiotic aspects of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its unrivaled reception in China with special reference to the first Chinese translation by Y. R. Chao in 1922. In view of the complex addresser-addressee relationships in “children’s literature,” which denotes literature of, for, and in some cases, by children, this study distinguishes Charles Dodgson the man who wrote as a child for the Liddell Sisters and Charles Dodgson ...

RFG Talk: Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children

Zoom

Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children (NYU Press, 2023) argues that immigrant children are not passive in the face of the challenges presented by U.S. anti-immigrant policies. Based on ten years of work with immigrant children in two different border states—Arizona and California—Drawing Deportation gives readers a glimpse into the lives of immigrant children and their families. Through an analysis of 300 children’s drawings, theater performances, and family interviews, this book, at once ...

RFG Talk: Fractured Fairy Tales and Subversion: Red Ridin’ in the Hood and Other Cuentos by Patricia Marcantonio

Zoom

Inside a cardboard box, Mama packed a tin of chicken soup, heavy on cilantro, along with a jar of peppermint tea, peppers from our garden, and a hunk of white goat cheese that smelled like Uncle Jose's feet. That meant one thing. "Roja, your abuelita is not feeling well," Mama told me. "I want you to take this food to her." “But Mama, me and Lupe Maldonado are going to the movies," I replied, but ...

RFG Talk: Images of War for Children in Ukrainian Picturebooks: Aesthetic, Political, and Emotional Strategies

Zoom

Parents and authors across the world are dealing with the question of how to talk to children about war. Ukrainian writers and illustrators in particular have to find narrative and visual techniques to address children who are growing up under circumstances of war and displacement. In this talk, Svetlana Efimova will analyze Ukrainian picturebooks created during two stages of war: since 2014 and especially since 2022. First, she will focus on the relationship between representation ...

RFG Symposium: Intergenerational Dynamics: Undergraduate Research Showcase

6320 Phelps and Zoom

Intergenerational Dynamics is the second annual undergraduate research showcase sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center's Research Focus Group on Global Childhood Ecologies. It features multidisciplinary presentations of undergraduate research related to childhood, including senior honors thesis research in Comparative Literature by senior major Daian Martinez and research on Education by Lakshmi Garcia in the College of Creative Studies. The panel of presentations and subsequent discussion on the theme Intergenerational Dynamics will focus on dynamics between ...

RFG Talk: Narrating Nemo: Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland and the Evolution of the Comic Strip

Zoom

As one of the pioneers of the animation medium as well as the comics medium, Winsor McCay's cultural significance is rivaled by few. However, the scholarly scrutiny of his works has yet to match his historical prominence. His most well-known creation, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which ran from 1905 to 1927, was the first comic strip with an ongoing, open-ended serialized narrative. Yet, it only started off as a regular Sunday strip and over its ...