1st Edition
Teaching Equity through Children’s Literature in Undergraduate Classrooms
Children's literature has been taught in undergraduate classrooms since the mid-1960s and has grown to become a staple of English literature, library science, and education programs. Children's literature classes are typically among the most popular course offerings at any institution. It is easy to understand why; children's literature classes promise students the opportunity to revisit familiar works with fresh eyes. With the growth of the children’s publishing industry and the celebration of recent scholarly interventions in the field, the popularity of the discipline is unlikely to abate. A central question of current children’s literature scholarship and practice is how to effectively address contemporary questions of social justice. This collection offers a series of interventions for the practice of teaching equity through children's literature in undergraduate classrooms. It is intended for individuals who teach, or who are interested in teaching, children’s literature to undergraduates. It includes contributions from practitioners from a range of institutional affiliations, disciplinary backgrounds, nationalities, and career stages. Furthermore, this volume includes contributions from scholars who belong to groups which are often underrepresented within academia, due to race, nationality, ethnicity, gender identity, disability, or other protected characteristics.
Editors’ Introduction: Children’s Literature beyond the Golden Age?
Gayatri Devi, Philip Smith, and Stephanie J. Weaver
Part I Theoretical Approaches to Teaching Children’s Literature
Chapter 1 The Pedagogical Potential of Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Why All English Studies Professors Should Teach Children’s and Young Adult Texts
Erika Romero
Chapter 2 Censoring the "N-Word": Issues When Teaching Early African American Children’s Folktales
Lashon Daley
Chapter 3 Engaged Pedagogy as Empowerment: Teaching Embodiment of Gender and Sexuality in the Adolescent Literature Classroom
Tharini Viswanath
Chapter 4 The Power of Diverse Perspectives and Inclusive Voices in Contemporary Young Adult Literature
Elizabeth Laura Yomantas
Part II Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching Children’s Literature
Chapter 5 And Now for a Story: The Critical and Emotional Benefits of Reading Aloud When Teaching Children’s Literature
B.J. (Epstein) Woodstein
Chapter 6 Teaching LGBTQ+ Picture Books in First-Year Writing
Noah Mullens
Chapter 7 Reading Decolonially in a Children’s Literature Classroom in the Philippines
Gabriela Lee
Chapter 8 Teaching Guide: Children’s Literature Resource File for Teaching Children’s Literature to Undergraduates
Laura Lemanski, Sara K. Sterner and Megan Van Deventer
Biography
Gayatri Devi is a Professor of English at Savannah College of Art and Design. She co-edited Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema (2014), Myths Shattered and Restored (2016), and the special issue on transnationalism (2017) for the North Dakota Quarterly, where she serves as a contributing editor. Fluently trilingual in English, Malayalam, and Hindi, she does translation and subtitling work for Indian films and literary translation from Malayalam to English. Her articles and book chapters on South Asian, Middle Eastern, and indigenous literatures and films have been published both in the US and India.
Philip Smith is the author of Reading Art Spiegelman (Routledge, 2015), Shakespeare in Singapore (Routledge, 2020), and co-author of Printing Terror: American Horror Comics as Cold War Commentary and Critique (Manchester UP, 2021). He served as co-director of the Shakespeare Behind Bars program at The Correctional Facility at Fox Hill, Nassau, Bahamas; fight choreographer for the Shakespeare in Paradise festival; and executive board member for the Comics Studies Society. He is Chair of Liberal Arts and Professor of English at Savannah College of Art and Design. He is editor-in-chief of Literature Compass. He is level 47 in Pokémon Go and has a perfect Mewtwo (which, if you play Pokémon Go, you will know is pretty impressive).
Stephanie J. Weaver is the Associate Director for Academics at the Forman School in Litchfield, Connecticut, and an Adjunct Professor at St. John's University in New York. Her most recent publication is an essay in Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene, published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2022. She is currently working on developing an anthology on teaching fantasy literature based on her various experiences in education.
