November 2018 – Philip Nel

Fight Stupidity; Keep Reading: A Dispatch from the Internationale Jugendbibliothek (on KSU English blog)

November 30, 2018Philip NelChildren's Literature, Friendship, Germany, Internationale Jugendbibliothek, Race, TravelChildren's Literature, Friendship, Germany, Internationale Jugendbibliothek, Race, Travel

Over at Kansas State University’s English Department blog, I have a post on my three months at the Internationale Jugendbibliothek in Munich. I’ll excerpt a little bit here (the first paragraph, and the conclusion) but go over there to read the whole thing (and to see more photos). Since the first of September I have

Context, Privilege, and Pain

Last month, there was some on-line discussion about this quote (from me) in a CNN.com article: But Nel argues that the answer isn’t simply removing “problematic” children’s classics like Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which uses the N-word 219 times, from school reading lists. Such stories, “if used carefully, appropriately and in context can