Children’s Literature, Comics/Graphic Novels, and Childhood Studies at MLA 2020

With thanks to Ramona Caponegro for creating the initial document, here are the panels devoted to Children’s Literature, Comics/Graphic Novels, or Childhood Studies at the 2020 Modern Language Association Convention in Seattle. Hope to see you there!

Also, if anything is missing, please alert me and I will add it. Thank you!


080. Diverse Destinies: Envisioning Futures for Youth of Color

3:30 PM—4:45 PM Thursday, Jan 9, 2020

WSCC – Skagit 5

Presentations

1: The Best of All Worlds: Empowered Multiracial Characters in Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Aleisha Smith, U of Minnesota, Twin Cities

2: Black Feminist Mythmaking and New Girlhood

Alvin Henry, St. Lawrence U

3: Kin-Making in Laurence Yep’s Early Science Fiction

Kai Hang Cheang, U of California, Riverside

Presider

Kaylee Mootz, U of Connecticut, Storrs

Sponsored by the Children’s Literature Association and MELUS: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States

Session Information


120. Gothic Childhood

5:15 PM—6:30 PM Thursday, Jan 9, 2020

Sheraton – Willow A

Presentations

1: Gothic Pedagogies and Adolescent Development in Victorian Children’s Stories

Christie Harner, Dartmouth C

2: ‘The Stain Was Gone’: Taming the Gothic in Young Adult Literature

Maude Hines, Portland State U

3: ‘The Rest Is Confetti’: The Gothic in Family Therapy and The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

Michael Harwick, Georgetown U

Presider

Katherine Renee Henninger, Louisiana State U, Baton Rouge

Special Session

Session Information


315. Humanizing the Young Trans Body

1:45 PM—3:00 PM Friday, Jan 10, 2020

WSCC – Skagit 3

Presentations

1: ‘Take Advantage of the Pleasures’: Youthful Desire, Transness, and Seduction in Les Garçons Sauvages

Jacob Breslow, London School of Economics

2: Toward a Theory of the Human in #OwnVoices Trans Young Adult Literature

Gabrielle Owen, U of Nebraska, Lincoln

3: Transgender Girlhood and Fairyland Form

Annie Sansonetti, New York U

4: The Possibilities and Limits of Normalization in I Am Jazz

Mary Zaborskis, U of Pittsburgh

Presider

Julian Gill-Peterson, U of Pittsburgh

Sponsored by the MLA GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature Forum

Session Information


325. Webcomics and/as Digital Culture

1:45 PM—3:00 PM Friday, Jan 10, 2020

Sheraton – Willow A

Presentations

1: Webcomics in India: Dissenting Voices at the Time of Hypernationalism

Debanjana Nayek, Presidency U

2: Player versus Player? Redefining Gamer Identity through Thirty Years of Webcomics

Anastasia Salter, U of Central Florida

3: Stonetossingjuice: Iterability, the Alt-Right, and the Webcomics of Online Culture War

Bren Ram, Rice U

4: Connecting Queerly: Queer Webcomics and the Alternate Archive

Misha Grifka-Wander, Ohio State U, Columbus

Presider

Leah Misemer, U of Wisconsin, Madison

Sponsored by the MLA GS Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum

Session Information


348. Futures and Pasts in Indigenous Comics and Graphic Novels

3:30 PM—4:45 PM, Friday 10 Jan. 2020

WSCC – 211

Presentations

1: Deer Woman Regenerations: Reactivating First Beings and Rearming Sisterhoods of Survivance in Deer Woman: An Anthology

Joshua Anderson, Ohio State U, Columbus

2: Indigenous Futurisms and Graphic Narratives: Jeffrey Veregge’s Janus 1

Carrie Louise Sheffield, U of Tennessee, Knoxville

3: The When and Where of Haida Art: Time and Place in Michael Yahgulanaas’s Red: A Haida Manga

Jeremy Carnes, U of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Presider

Jeremy Carnes, U of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Respondent

Becca Gercken, U of Minnesota, Morris

Session Information


408. Bodies, Borders, and Boundaries: Embodiments of Multicultural and Transnational Children

5:15 PM—6:30 PM Friday, Jan 10, 2020

WSCC – Chelan 4

Presentations

1: Constructing Bicultural Identity through Comics and Cuisine: Quan Zhou Wu’s Gazpacho agridulce (‘Sweet and Sour Gazpacho’)

Jennifer Nagtegaal, U of British Columbia, Vancouver

2: Out of Time: Aetotemporalities and Hawaiian Young Adult Literature

Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo, U of Hawai‘i, West O‘ahu

3: ‘[S]he No Longer Recognized [Her Hands] as Her Own’: Bodily Transformation as Resistance in Latinx Youth Literature

Cristina Rhodes, Shippensburg U

Presider

Nithya Sivashankar, Ohio State U, Columbus

Tharini Viswanath, Illinois State U

Sponsored by the Children’s Literature Association

Session Information


431. Vision and Sight in Children’s Literature and Culture

8:30 AM—9:45 AM Saturday, Jan 11, 2020

WSCC – Skagit 5

Presentations

1: Angelic Instruments: Child Mediums and the Contradictions of Children’s Vision

Victoria Ford Smith, U of Connecticut, Storrs

2: Blindness as a Denial of Difference: Color-Blind Racial Ideology in Theodore Taylor’s The Cay

Yvonne Medina, U of Florida

3: Activism and the Hegemony’s Gaze: Visibility in Two Illustrated Texts by Duncan Tonatiuh

Cristina Rhodes, Shippensburg U

4: The Appreciative Documenting Child Gaze in Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family

Amanda M. Greenwell, Central Connecticut State U

Presider

Kate Slater, Rowan U

Sponsored by the MLA GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature Forum

Session Information


447. Political Imagination in Iberian and Latin American Graphic Narratives

8:30 AM—9:45 AM, Saturday, Jan 11, 2020

WSCC – 203

Speakers

On Memory à la Spiegelman (or Not): A Millennial Reading of the Palace of Justice Massacre

Héctor Fernández-L’Hoeste, Georgia State U

Dystopian Steampunk: Politics and Intermediality in the Graphic Novel Policía del Karma

Eduardo Ledesma, U of Illinois, Urbana

Antonio Altarriba’s El ala rota and Ana Penyas’s Estamos todas bien: A Gender Approach to Historical Memory

Esther Claudio, U of California, Los Angeles

Presider

Xavier Dapena, U of Pennsylvania

Session Information


GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature Forum: Business Meeting

10:15 AM—11:30 AM Saturday, Jan 11, 2020

Fremont Room of the Sheraton


519. Childhood and Violence in Latin America

12:00 PM—1:15 PM Saturday, Jan 11, 2020

WSCC — 212

Session Information

Description: The forced separation of children and families at the United States border has opened the question about how violence against children has been normalized. Panelists examine film, literature, and other cultural practices concerned with the roots of violence in Latin America embedded in colonialism, practices of extractivism and neoliberal accumulation, and link their effects to present-day cultures of violence. 

Speakers

Nadia Celis, Bowdoin C

Alberto Fonseca, North Central C

Tatjana Gajic, U of Illinois, Chicago

Ana Puga, Ohio State U, Columbus

Presider

Pablo Dominguez, Princeton U

Sponsored by the MLA LLC 20th- and 21st- Century Latin American Literature Forum

528. Graphic Narratives and Multiple Marginalities

12:00 PM—1:15PM, Saturday, 11 Jan. 2020

WSCC – Skagit 5

Description

Lately, perhaps following the success of the culturally and critically renowned Maus and Persepolis, the comics scene has seen a rise of intimate graphic memoirs that deal with diaspora, war, disability, and queerness. This panel is dedicated to graphic narratives that address such marginalized identities. What makes graphic memoirs and the image-textual form conducive to articulating complex liminal positions of their subjects?

For related material, write to sohini.kumar@stonybrook.edu

Speakers

Esra Mirze Santesso, U of Georgia

Susan Jacobowitz, Queensborough Community C, City U of New York

Martha Greene Eads, Eastern Mennonite U

Chase Gregory, Bucknell U

Helis Sikk, U of South Florida, Tampa

Tesla Cariani, Emory U

Sayanti Mondal, Illinois State U

Janene G. B. Lewis, U of Mary Hardin-Baylor

Mike Lehman, Emory U

Session Information


567. Critical Childhood Studies and Intersectionality: The State of the Field

1:45 PM—3:00 PM Saturday, Jan 11, 2020

WSCC – 619

Description: Panelists explore the current state of the field of critical childhood studies (CCS). Why is intersectionality so central to CCS? What kinds of generative possibilities emerge when we foreground childhood in literary and cultural studies? In what new directions is the field moving, and how might an articulation of its history and future trajectory invigorate conversations between CCS and such fields as queer studies, temporality studies, critical race studies, and disability studies? 

Related Material: For related material, visit www.ccsproject.org after 16 Dec.

Speakers

Sarah E. Chinn, Hunter C, City U of New York

Brigitte Fielder, U of Wisconsin, Madison

Maude Hines, Portland State U

Kenneth Byron Kidd, U of Florida

Carol J. Singley, Rutgers U, Camden

Courtney Weikle-Mills, U of Pittsburgh

Presider

Allison Giffen, Western Washington U

Lucia Hodgson, independent scholar

Session Information


587. A Decade in Comics

3:30 PM—4:45 PM Saturday, Jan 11, 2020

Sheraton – Willow A

Description: On the tenth anniversary of panels sponsored by the MLA Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives, established and emerging scholars reflect on the history, the present, and the future of the field of comics studies. 

Speakers

Jonathan W. Gray, John Jay C of Criminal Justice, City U of New York

Charles Hatfield, California State U, Northridge

Joshua Kopin, U of Texas, Austin

Martha B. Kuhlman, Bryant U

Rachel Kunert-Graf, Antioch U

Valentino Zullo, Kent State U

Presider

Margaret Galvan, U of Florida

Susan E. Kirtley, Portland State U

Sponsored by the MLA GS Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum

Session Information


659. Comics and the Digital Humanities

8:30 AM—9:45 AM, Sunday, Jan 12, 2020

Sheraton – Willow A

Presentations

Which Came First, Comics or Film or . . . ? A Media Archaeology of Comic Book Sequentiality

Roger Whitson, Washington State U

Comics Architected: Translation Augmentation with Structural Integrity

Madeline Gangnes, U of Florida

‘I’ll Figure It Out on the “Page”’: The Digitization of a Comics Methodology

Nicholas Brown, Texas Christian U

Born-Digital Comics in Academic Archives

Kathryn Manis, Washington State U, Pullman

Presider

Aaron Kashtan, U of North Carolina, Charlotte

Respondent

Patrick Jagoda, U of Chicago

Session Information


737. Here We Are Now: Grunge and the Humanities, Thirty Years On

12:00 PM—1:15 PM, Sunday, Jan 12, 2020

WSCC – Skagit 2

Presentations

1: From Grunge to Public Radio: Pedagogies of Authenticity in the Nineties

Douglas G. Dowland, Ohio Northern U

2: My Own Private Aberdeen: Grunge Celebrity and Gen-X Politics in the Films of Gus Van Sant

Mike Miley, Loyola U, New Orleans

3: Rebel Girls and Grunge Groupies: Feminist Activism in Young Adult Novels

Jill Coste, U of Florida

4: Black Lives and Dead White Guys

Deanna Koretsky, Spelman C

Presider

Alexandra L. Milsom, Hostos Community C, City U of New York

Special Session

Session Information


740. Romanticism and Idealism

12:00 PM—1:15 PM Sunday, Jan 12, 2020

WSCC – Chelan 5

Presentations

1: Natura Naturans: Restoring Nature in Literature and Philosophy

Steven Lydon, Durham U

2: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Philosophical Poetics of Childhood

Lauren Stone, U of Colorado, Boulder

3: Emerson’s Radical Empiricism

Austin Bailey, Graduate Center, City U of New York

4: Literary Mechanology

Andrew Barbour, U of California, Berkeley

Presider

Lauren Stone, U of Colorado, Boulder

Sponsored by the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism

Session Information


766. Transmedia Storytelling in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

1:45 PM—3:00 PM Sunday, Jan 12, 2020

WSCC – Skagit 1

Presentations

1: Is There a Text (Message) in This Book? Premediation and the Digital Potentialities of Contemporary Kid Lit

Scott Diffrient, Colorado State U

2: Follow Me: Youth Participation in Transmedia Life Writing

Rachel Rickard Rebellino, Ohio State U, Columbus

3: Exploding the Canon for Fun and Profit: Fan Communities and Disney’s Transmedia Empires

Niall Nance-Carroll, U of Southern Indiana

Presider

Carrie Sickmann, Indiana U—Purdue U, Indianapolis

Sponsored by the MLA GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature Forum

Session Information

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