Ravenstein Winter School: ‘S is for Scholarship: Approaches to Children’s Literature’
Where and when: Tilburg, 22-24 January 2025
Organizers: Dr Élodie Malanda (Tilburg University), Dr Vera Veldhuizen (University of Groningen)
Open to: PhDs and RMA students; OSL members have first access
Credits: 6 ECs. NB: Credits can only be awarded to humanities ReMA and PhD students from Dutch universities.
Registration will open 7 October 2024, 9am CET via this link.
Children’s and Young Adult (YA) literature is literature, but it is also visual art, an educational tool, a socialising device and more. It is literature by adults for children, but it can also be literature by children. The many complex layers behind its seemingly simple facade allow for multiple ways of reading and invite diverse methodological approaches. For instance, Max Velthuijs’ Frog series can be seen as a collection of simple stories about an anthropomorphised frog, yet deeper studies of the books show the complex way through which the image-texts together communicate and explain complex emotions like grief, xenophobia and love, and encourage empathy for children up to four years old. The very nature of the (intended) audience means that researchers must use methodologies specific to the field of children’s literature. For instance, the multimodal nature of picturebooks poses particular semiotic and cognitive challenges in their interpretation, therefore requiring specific approaches particular to the genre. The young adult-dominated digital sphere of fanfiction provides avenues of empowered franchise interactions hitherto unknown in mainstream publishing. The study of these texts, which are often written by young (and sometimes marginalised) people, raises several ethical issues that influence the choice of methodological approaches. Finally, the disagreements surrounding “appropriateness” of children’s media reveal the deep underlying adult anxieties surrounding the moral and political influences children’s stories can have.
How do we as researchers deal with these moral and political influences? How can we study their reception by children and young adults? And what role does our own ideological positionality play in our analysis of children’s and YA literature? In this Winter School, we will discuss different methodological approaches to expand on broader questions surrounding and inherent in the field of children’s literature. Over the course of three days, we will cover the three topics of: picturebooks and multimodality, literature by young people, and the socializing aspect of children’s and YA literature, particularly through the lens of children’s literature and activism. Through in-depth discussions of seminal children’s texts, we encourage a new critical understanding of this foundational genre, both regarding its very nature and the potentiality it holds in relation both to the literary arts, as well as its young audience.
Confirmed speakers: Rosalyn Borst (Tilburg University), Dr Jennifer Duggan (University of South-Eastern Norway) and Dr Farriba Schulz (Humboldt University Berlin). A full description will be shared soon.
