Children’s Literature and Comics/Graphic Novels at MLA 2017

Thursday, 5 January, 12:00 noon—1:15 p.m., 102B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

A special session

Presiding: Nancy C. Backes, Cardinal Stritch Univ.

1. “Austen and Adolescence,” Shawn Lisa Maurer, Coll. of the Holy Cross
2. “Adultescents, Kidults, and Rejuveniles: Children’s Literature for Adults and Remapping the Boundaries of Age and Audience,” Michelle Ann Abate, Ohio State Univ., Columbus
3. “The Inertia of Male Adolescence,” David Bleich, Univ. of Rochester

Thursday, 5 January, 12:00 noon—1:15 p.m., 111B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

Program arranged by the forums GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature and TC Religion and Literature

Presiding: Lisa M. Gordis, Barnard Coll.; Karin E. Westman, Kansas State Univ.

1. “Intertwining Histories: Catechisms and the Emergence of Eighteenth-Century Children’s Literature,”Gabrielle Owen, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln
2. “Christian Science Children’s Fiction, 1900—10,” Anne Stiles, St. Louis Univ.
3. “Nazi Children’s Literature and the Formation of the Holy Reich,” Michael Lackey, Univ. of Minnesota, Morris
4. “Characterizing Religion: The Lives and Afterlives of Stock Religious Characters in Japanese Picturebooks from the 1950s to the Present,” Heather Blair, Indiana Univ., Bloomington

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Children’s Literature

Keywords:

• religion, religious, children’s literature, sacred

Friday, 6 January, 8:30—9:45 a.m., 111B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

A special session

Presiding: Andrew Hoberek, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia

Speakers: Olivia Badoi, Fordham Univ.; Sheila Liming, Univ. of North Dakota; Ben Novotny Owen, Ohio State Univ., Columbus; John Paul Riquelme, Boston Univ.; Janine M. Utell, Widener Univ.

Responding: David M. Ball, Dickinson Coll.

Session Description:

Participants examine graphic narrative and modernism from a critical stance shaped by emphasis on comics as formal container for responses to modernity. We pay attention to narrative and its devices; print technology, artistic medium, and their relation to aesthetics; and memory and the conceptual.

Subjects:

• Genre, Theory, Method — History of the Book, Reception Theory, Comparison with Other Media, and Performance
• Genre, Theory, Method — Literary Criticism and Theory

Friday, 6 January, 8:30—9:45 a.m., 410, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the forum LLC Luso-Brazilian

Presiding: Cesar Braga-Pinto, Northwestern Univ.

1. “Superbacana: Songs, Graphic Narratives, and Social Tension in the Late 1960s in Brazil,” Carlos Pires, Universidade de São Paulo
2. “Comics Poetry and Poema/Processo,” Jonathan R. Bass, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick
3. “Brazilian Quadrinistas and the Franco-Belgian Market of Science Fiction and Fantasy Graphic Novels: A Marriage of Convenience,” Henri-Simon Blanc-Hoang, Defense Language Inst.
4. “Graphic Spaces of Rights,” Leila Maria Lehnen, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Subject:

• Portuguese, Luso-Brazilian, and Lusophone Literatures

Keywords:

• lusophone, graphic, avant-garde, brazil, comics

Friday, 6 January, 10:15—11:30 a.m., 305-306, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the forum GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Presiding: Peter Kunze, Univ. of Texas, Austin

1. “Pat, Press, and Spot: Translating Tactility between Traditional and Technological Books,” Emily Brooks, Univ. of Florida
2. “Young Adult Literature and the Queer Politics of Artistic Fan Production,” Angel Matos, Bowdoin Coll.
3. “The Hero of Time: Shigeru Miyamoto’s The Legend of Zelda as Children’s Literature,” Chamutal Noimann, Borough of Manhattan Community Coll., City Univ. of New York

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Children’s Literature

Keywords:

• remediation, digital, video games, participatory culture, apps

Friday, 6 January, 12:00 noon—1:15 p.m., 112A, Pennsylvania Convention Center

Program arranged by the American Psychoanalytic Association

Presiding: Vera J. Camden, Kent State Univ., Kent

Speakers: Frederik Byrn Køhlert, Univ. of Calgary; Jimenez Lai, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Nick Sousanis, San Francisco State Univ.; Jon Yoder, Kent State Univ., Kent

Session Description:

Once considered pure pulp, comics now prevail in architecture studios, psychoanalytic institutes, and university classrooms, as well as in myriad public spaces. This session represents architecture, psychoanalysis, educational psychology, and literature to consider the ways that comics “bound” over disciplinary silos to capture buildings, bodies, and minds in lived environments.

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Literature and Other Arts, Humanities, Law, Psychology, Science, and Sociology

Keywords:

• Comics, Psychoanalysis, Architecture, Graphic Novel, Narrative

Friday, 6 January, 12:00 noon—1:15 p.m., 106B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

Program arranged by the Children’s Literature Association

Presiding: Michelle Hite, Spelman Coll.

1. “Postracial, but Not Postracism: The Romanticization of the Plantation South and the Whitewashing of History in Raina Telgemeier’s Drama,” Michelle Ann Abate, Ohio State Univ., Columbus
2. “The Promise and Challenge of History: Reckoning with Racism in Out of Darkness,” Ashley Pérez, Ohio State Univ., Columbus
3. “Runoff: Young African Americans with Disabilities in Landscapes of Sacrifice,” Elizabeth Anne Wheeler, Univ. of Oregon
4. “Brown Girls Dreaming: Violence, Narrative, and the Politics of the Interior,” Samira Abdur-Rahman, Univ. of Rochester

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Children’s Literature

Keywords:

• children’s literature, race, racism, justice, black lives matter

Friday, 6 January, 12:00 noon—1:15 p.m., 203B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

A special session

Presiding: David Kazanjian, Univ. of Pennsylvania

1. “The Scientific Roots/Routes of Black Speculative Fiction,” Britt Rusert, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst
2. “The Little Bushman, New York City’s Colored Orphan Asylum, and the Logic of the Specimen,” Anna Mae Duane, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
3. “Apes, Children, Race, and Kinship in Du Chaillu’s Gorilla Country,” Brigitte Fielder, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
4. “Flights toward Social Life: Afro-Speculation as Genre and Modality in post-1965 Black American Literature,” Michelle Commander, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville

For abstracts, write to amduane1@gmail.com after 30 Nov.

Subjects:

• American Literature — General
• American Literature — Before 1900

Keywords:

• African American Literature, Speculative Literature, Science,

Friday, 6 January, 3:30—4:45 p.m., Franklin 11, Philadelphia Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Katherine Fusco, Univ. of Nevada, Reno

Speakers:Jacquelyn Ardam, Colby Coll.; Katherine Fusco; Donal Harris, Univ. of Memphis; Andrew Hoberek, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia; Heather A. Love, Univ. of South Dakota; Carter Neal, Indiana Univ., Bloomington

Responding: David M. Ball, Dickinson Coll.

Session Description:

The presentations query how historical moments give rise to the episodic or serial forms they need (or deserve?). With topics including modernist drama, Dada art exhibitions, children’s films, comic books, and the realist novel, the panelists use a PechaKucha format of automatically advancing slides–an innovative style fitting for a session on series and episodes.

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — History of the Book, Reception Theory, Comparison with Other Media, and Performance

Keywords:

• Seriality, Media Studies, Narrative, the Novel, Book History

Saturday, 7 January, 10:15—11:30 a.m., 104A, Pennsylvania Convention Center

Program arranged by the forum LLC 20th- and 21st-Century American

Presiding: Amy Hungerford, Yale Univ.

1. “Illusions of Progress: Visualization and the Politics of Stylized Time,” Ed Finn, Arizona State Univ.
2. “Excavating the Present: Richard McGuire’s Here and the Wayback Machine,” Alexander Manshel, Stanford Univ.
3. “Chris Ware and R. Crumb: From Data to Disgust,” Rebecca Clark, Univ. of California, Berkeley
4. “The Visual Universalism of Bing Xu’s Book from the Ground,” Lee Konstantinou, Univ. of Maryland, College Park

Subject:

• American Literature — Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

Keywords:

• graphic narrative, computational analysis, digital humanities; comics, digital literatures

Saturday, 7 January, 12:00 noon—1:15 p.m., 106B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

Program arranged by the Children’s Literature Association

Presiding: David Aitchison, North Central Coll.

1. “Adolescent Fiction as a Boundary Condition: Exploring the Meaning of Reading in a Transitional Genre,”Elisabeth Rose Gruner, Univ. of Richmond
2. “Smart Equals Queer: The Intellectual Child in Sex Is a Funny Word,” Gabrielle Owen, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln
3. “Unbounded Time, Unbounded Intellect: A Teenage ‘Song of Myself’ in John Green’s Paper Towns,” Susan Leary, Univ. of Miami

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Children’s Literature

Keywords:

• children’s literature, childhood, education, intellect, literacy

Saturday, 7 January, 12:00 noon—1:15 p.m., 110B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

Program arranged by the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture

Presiding: Marina Fedosik, Princeton Univ.

1. “Adoption Drama in Drama; or, Why Theater Is Adoption’s Most Congenial Genre,” Peggy Phelan, Stanford Univ.
2. “Psyches Going Solo: Transnational Adoption in Recent Plays from the Twin Cities,” Josephine Lee, Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities
3. “Seeing into Being: Dis-affiliated Children in Naomi Wallace’s English Plays,” Beth Cleary, Macalester Coll.
4. “A Cyborg That Explodes Adoption Dualities: Rolin Jones’s Most Intelligent Design,” Martha G. Satz, Southern Methodist Univ.

For abstracts, write to mfedosik@princeton.edu.

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Cultural Studies, Folklore, and Popular Culture

Keywords:

• adoption, theater, performance, drama, kinship

Saturday, 7 January, 1:45—3:00 p.m., Franklin 13, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the forum GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Presiding: Nina Christensen, Aarhus Univ.; Philip Nel, Kansas State Univ.

1. “Child Migrants of Another Sort: The Dark Side of British World War II Evacuation Literature,” Lee A. Talley, Rowan Univ.
2. “Andrij Chaikivsij’s Za Sestroyu, The Ukrainian Weekly, and the Role of Children’s Literature in Negotiations of Diasporic Identity,” Anastasia Ulanowicz, Univ. of Florida
3. “Hawai‘i’s Unbecoming Children,” Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo, Univ. of Hawai’i, West O’ahu

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Children’s Literature

Keywords:

• migrants, children’s & YA Literature, refugees, diaspora

Saturday, 7 January, 1:45—3:00 p.m., 401-403, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the forums GS Comics and Graphic Narratives and GS Speculative Fiction

Presiding: Aaron Kashtan, Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte

1. “Don’t Let Them Touch and Despair You: World Construction in the World of The Wrenchies and It Will All Hurt,” Phoebe Salzman-Cohen, Penn State Univ., University Park
2. “‘This Is How an Idea Becomes Real’: Bodies in Saga,” Daniel John Pinti, Niagara Univ.
3. “‘I’m Getting Too Good to Ignore’: The Feminist Politics of Sharon Ruhdal’s Dystopian Comics,” Margaret Galvan, New York Univ.
4. “Feeling The Puma Blues: The Dilution of Science Fiction and the Decline of the Creator within Independent Comics’ Golden Age,” Keith McCleary, Univ. of California, San Diego

For abstracts, visit graphicnarratives.org after 15 Dec.

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Cultural Studies, Folklore, and Popular Culture

Keywords:

• comics, speculative, science fiction, alterity

Saturday, 7 January, 3:30—4:45 p.m., Franklin 12, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the forum LLC Luso-Brazilian

Presiding: Leila Maria Lehnen, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque

1. “Imagining Another Subjectivity: Childhood and Disability in Cristóvão Tezza’s O filho eterno,” Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira-Monte, Vanderbilt Univ.
2. “We Are the Children: Youth and Social Criticism in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema,” Antonio Luciano Tosta, Univ. of Kansas
3. “A infância fragmentada em Dois Irmãos de Milton Hatoum: Searching for an Answer to the Question ‘Se Deus é brasileiro, todos somos brasileiros?,'” Mónica Ayala-Martinez, Denison Univ.

Last updated 14 December 2016

Subject:

• Portuguese, Luso-Brazilian, and Lusophone Literatures

Keywords:

• childhood, social justice, race, class, gender

Saturday, 7 January, 5:15—6:30 p.m., Independence Ballroom Salon III, Philadelphia Marriott

Program arranged by the forum TC Women’s and Gender Studies

Presiding: Pamela Brown, Univ. of Connecticut, Stamford

1. “Cuba My Revolution: Una novela gráfica e histórica para mejor cumplir las políticas del mercado,” Mabel Cuesta, Univ. of Houston, University Park
2. “The Latent Image: Biopolitics and Diegetic Levels in Lila Quintero-Weaver’s Graphic Novel Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White, in an Aesthetics and Human Rights Course,” Karina Elizabeth Vázquez, Univ. of Richmond
3. “Transnational Bodies and Gendered Representations in Operación Bolívar, by Edgar Clément, and La perdida, by Jessica Abel,” Tania Pérez-Cano, Univ. of Pittsburgh

For abstracts, write to pambrown12@gmail.com.

Subjects:

• Genre, Theory, Method — History of the Book, Reception Theory, Comparison with Other Media, and Performance
• Genre, Theory, Method — Literary Criticism and Theory

Keywords:

• graphic novel, gender, nation, race, queer

Saturday, 7 January, 5:15—6:30 p.m., Grand Ballroom Salon I, Philadelphia Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Jessica Gross, St. Louis Coll. of Pharmacy; Leah Misemer, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison

Speakers: Jeanine Ashforth, Univ. of South Florida; Elizabeth J. Donaldson, New York Inst. of Tech., Old Westbury; Keegan Lannon, Dominican Univ.; Claire Latxague, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3

Session Description:

Panelists explore how the visual medium of comics paradoxically explores invisible mental illnesses by depicting internal emotional and mental states. They also consider the historical relation between comics and mental illness and discuss how comics can create communities of people who feel–or are–invisible within society at large.

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Literature and Other Arts, Humanities, Law, Psychology, Science, and Sociology

Keywords:

• medical humanities, comics and graphic novels, visual studies, disability studies, mental illness

Saturday, 7 January, 5:15—6:30 p.m., 203B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

Program arranged by the forum GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Presiding: Marah Gubar, Massachusetts Inst. of Tech.

Speakers: Ellis Hanson, Cornell Univ.; Natasha Hurley, Univ. of Alberta; Kenneth Byron Kidd, Univ. of Florida; Derritt Mason, Univ. of Calgary; Carol Mavor, Univ. of Manchester

Responding: James R. Kincaid, Univ. of Southern California

Session Description:

Scholars working in Victorian studies, art history, queer theory, film studies, and children’s literature and childhood studies discuss how the controversial work of James R. Kincaid has transformed their fields.

Subject:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Children’s Literature

Keywords:

• Childhood Studies, Cultural Studies, Queer Theory, Theory and Criticism, Visual Culture

Saturday, 7 January, 7:00—8:15 p.m., Franklin 4, Philadelphia Marriott

Sunday, 8 January, 1:45—3:00 p.m., 102B, Pennsylvania Convention Center

A special session

Presiding: Shun Kiang, Stetson Univ.

1. “Soulless Innocents: Dolls and Their Girls,” Amy Murray Twyning, Univ. of Pittsburgh
2. “Good Neighbours, Beasties, and Bogles: Celebrating Nonhumans in Scottish Children’s Literature,”Maureen Farrell, Univ. of Glasgow
3. “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Medieval Bestiary and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,”Kathryn Walton, York Univ., Keele

Subjects:

• Genre, Theory, Method — Children’s Literature
• British Literature — Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

Keywords:

• Nonhuman, More-than-human, Animal-human studies, Children’s literature, British literature

787. Graphic Narrative, Comics, and Temporality