Children’s Literature and Comics/Graphic Novels at MLA 2018

It is time again to gather ’round

in fluorescent rooms, adjust the sound

(“can you hear me?”), smile, and present

to all four or fifty-seven

who found the right room, the right day.

Coffee! Insecurity! MLA!

January 3rd through 7th is the Modern Language Association’s annual conference, held this year (2018) in New York City. (The year’s Presidential Theme is “States of Insecurity.”)  As I do each year, I’m posting here all panels devoted to children’s literature, young adult literature, and comics/graphic novels. There will be many other panels of interest, I’m sure. So, do peruse the program for full details. And if I’ve omitted a panel on any of these subjects, please let me know and I will add it ASAP.

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18: Calling Dumbledore’s Army: Activist Children’s Literature

Thursday, January 04, 2018, 12:00 PM – 01:15 PM. Hilton: Clinton

Presider

• Philip Nel, Kansas State U

Presentations

• Agents of Change: Pupils, Parents, and Publishers Moving toward Enlightenment in Denmark, 1780—1850, Charlotte Appel and Nina Christensen, Aarhus U
• Guiding White Tears: Looking to Abolitionist Children’s Literature, Brigitte Fielder, U of Wisconsin, Madison
• Brujas, Revolutionaries, and Warriors: The Emergence of Radical Queerness in Contemporary Youth Literature, Angel Daniel Matos, San Diego State U
• Harry Potter and the Nazis: Myth, Text, Social Change, Ika Willis, U of Wollongong

Session Information

• Forum: GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature
• Program: Forum Sessions
• Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Children’s Literature, British Literature – Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

• Day: Thursday, January 04, 2018

• Related to the Presidential Theme: Yes

Keywords

• children’s literature, activism, resistance, history, Trumpism

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34: Narrativizing Insecurity in Indian Comics

Thursday, January 04, 2018, 12:00 PM – 01:15 PM. Sheraton: Sutton Place

For Related Material: amadan@ksu.edu after 30 Nov.

Presider

• Anuja Madan, Kansas State U

Presentations

• Endangered Species: Exploring the Animacy Hierarchy in Malik Sajad’s Munnu, Amit Baishya, U of Oklahoma
• Mythological Superhero Comics of Counterviolence, Sharmila Mukherjee, Bronx Community C, City U of New York
• Class Inequity and Water Racism in Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri, Anuja Madan, Kansas State U

Session Information

• Program: Special Sessions
• Subject: Asian Literatures

• Day: Thursday, January 04, 2018

• Related to the Presidential Theme: Yes

Keywords

• Indian comics, graphic narratives, South Asian literature, Cultural critique, global literature

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122: Strips of Modernity: Affect, Labor, and Identity in Early Comics

Thursday, January 04, 2018, 05:15 PM – 06:30 PM. Hilton: Nassau East

Presider

• Hillary L. Chute, Northeastern U

Respondents

• Nhora Lucia Serrano, Hamilton C
• Michael Tisserand, author

Presentations

• ‘Things Are Going to Be Bad!’: The Emergence of the Working Woman in the Early Comic Strip, Ksenia Sidorenko, Yale U
• A Battle of Wills: The Woodcut Novel and the Politics of Form, Olivia Badoi, Fordham U
• The Queer Tortured State of Prince Valiant, Eyal Amiran, U of California, Irvine

Session Information

• Program: Special Sessions
• Subject: Comparative Literature – Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

• Day: Thursday, January 04, 2018

• Related to the Presidential Theme: Yes

Keywords

• comics, modernism/modernity, labor, affect, identity

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173: Connecting the Dots: Museums and Comics

Thursday, January 04, 2018, 07:00 PM – 08:15 PM. Hilton: Sutton Center

Presider

• Nhora Lucia Serrano, Hamilton C

Presentations

• At Home in the Museum, Catherine Labio, U of Colorado, Boulder
• Paracomics: Art as Comics, Vasilios Kartalopoulos, New School
• Tintin in the World of the Artifact: Authenticity and Artifice, Colonialism and Copyright, Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, Palomar C
• ‘There’d Be a Hanging’: Community as Art Gallery, Comic as Museum in Gilbert Hernandez’s Human Diastrophism, Osvaldo Oyola, New York U

Session Information

• Forum: GS Comics and Graphic Narratives
• Program: Forum Sessions
• Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Cultural Studies, Folklore, and Popular Culture

• Day: Thursday, January 04, 2018

• Related to the Presidential Theme: Yes

Keywords

• Comics, Popular culture, Museum culture, Fine arts, Museum space/architecture

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190: Radical Sisterhood in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Thursday, January 04, 2018, 07:00 PM – 08:15 PM. Sheraton: Sugar Hill

Presiders

• Deirdre H. McMahon, Drexel U
• Mary Jeanette Moran, Illinois State U

Presentations

• Sisterhood, Motherhood, and the Personal as Political in Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer, Michelle Holley Martin, U of Washington, Seattle
• ‘Fierce Foursome’: Making Familia from Scratch in Rigoberto González’s The Mariposa Club, Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez, LaGuardia Community C, City U of New York
• ‘Wait a Little While and the Fruit Will Fall into Your Hand’: Empathetic Reading in Esperanza Rising, Caren Town, Georgia Southern U

Session Information

• Program: Special Sessions
• Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Children’s Literature

• Day: Thursday, January 04, 2018

Keywords

• Children’s literature, Social justice, Intersectionality, Empathy, Feminist theory

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298: 4H: History, Hamilton, and Hip-Hop in High School

Friday, January 05, 2018, 12:00 PM – 01:15 PM. Sheraton: Empire Ballroom West

Presider

• Jan Christopher Susina, Illinois State U

Presentations

• History in Three Minutes: Interrogating the Uses of Billy Joel’s List Song, Jennifer A. Low, Florida Atlantic U
• 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: Teaching History through Graphic Biography, Joshua Adams, DePaul U
• ‘Freedom’ in History: Teaching Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar’s BET Performance, Bethany Jacobs, Georgia Inst. of Tech.
• Resignifying the Body of History: Hamilton and Hybrid, Subaltern Forms, Sandra K. Stanley, California State U, Northridge

Session Information

• Forum: GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature
• Program: Forum Sessions
• Subject: American Literature – Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

• Day: Friday, January 05, 2018

Keywords

• young adult literature, history, nonfiction, performance, music

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Children’s and Young Adult Literature Forum: Business Meeting

Friday, January 05, 2018, 01:45 PM – 03:00 PM. Sheraton New York Times Square: Madison 4

The open meeting will begin shortly after Session 298 is completed. The assigned room for the business meeting is snug, but we will try to accommodate everyone who attends. One of the orders of business will be the selection of sessions to be sponsored by the Forum for next year’s MLA Conference in Chicago. It would be helpful for individuals who would like to propose a session to provide a short handout to be distributed during the business meeting. The proposed sessions handouts should include: 1. A working title 2. A short (at least a paragraph) description and 3. The name of a current MLA members willing to chair the session.

Individuals unable to attend this year’s MLA conference, or unable to attend the Forum’s business meeting, can still submit topics for sessions for the 2019 MLA Conference in Chicago.  Those proposals should be in the same format as the handouts for proposed sessions. The requirements are noted above. Session proposals for those unable to attend the business meeting should be submitted by email to Jan Susina (jcsusina@ilstu.edu) by December 21.

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354: Graphic Resistance: Comics and Social Protest

Friday, January 05, 2018, 01:45 PM – 03:00 PM. Sheraton: New York Ballroom West

Description

This session investigates how and why comics have served as sites of resistance and explores how this history informs how comics are used–or could be used–for protest in our current moment. Participants explore genealogies of social protest that comics create in and across local, national, and international communities. How will this conversation open different future trajectories for exploring comics as micropolitical sites of resistance?

Presiders

• Margaret Galvan, U of Florida
• Leah Misemer, Georgia Inst. of Tech.

Speakers

• Rebecca Giordano, U of Pittsburgh
• Nicholas Miller, Hollins U
• José Alaniz, U of Washington, Seattle
• Susan E. Kirtley, Portland State U
• Liz Adams, Duke U
• Alexander Ponomareff, U of Massachusetts, Amherst

Session Information

• Program: Special Sessions
• Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Cultural Studies, Folklore, and Popular Culture

• Day: Friday, January 05, 2018

• Related to the Presidential Theme: Yes

Keywords

• protest, comics, grassroots, social movements, activism

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413: Narrating Vulnerability: Re-seeing Asian American Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Friday, January 05, 2018, 05:15 PM – 06:30 PM. Sheraton: Chelsea

Presider

• James Kyung-Jin Lee, U of California, Irvine

Presentations

• Restaging the Superhero Spectacle: Shame and Performative Pedagogy in Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew’s Shadow Hero, Kai Hang Cheang, U of California, Riverside
• Goyangi Means Cat and the Precarity of Transnational and Transracial Adoptive Citizenship, Sandra Kim, U of Southern California
• Reading Vulnerability: Young Adulthood in Cynthia Kadohata’s Kira-Kira, Mika Kennedy, U of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Session Information

• Forum: LLC Asian American
• Program: Forum Sessions
• Subject: American Literature – Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

• Day: Friday, January 05, 2018

• Related to the Presidential Theme: Yes

Keywords

• Asian American Literature, Children’s/Young Adult Literature, Politics/Aesthetics, Transnationalism, Environmentalism

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439: Teaching Global Arab Comics in the United States

Friday, January 05, 2018, 05:15 PM – 06:30 PM. Hilton: Concourse G

Presider

• Pauline Homsi Vinson, Diablo Valley C

Presentations

• Teaching and Drawing Boundaries in South-South Collaborations: The Seventh Issue of Lab619 as a Case Study, Rania Said, Binghamton U, State U of New York
• Depicting the Graphic in Abirached’s A Game for Swallows and Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi, Rachel Norman, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Palestine at the Crossroads: Teaching Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi as a Mediterranean Comic, Tera Reid-Olds, U of Oregon

Session Information

• Forum: CLCS Global Arab and Arab American
• Forum: GS Comics and Graphic Narratives
• Program: Forum Sessions
• Subject: Arabic Literature

• Day: Friday, January 05, 2018

Keywords

• Arab literature, Comics, Comparative literature, World literature, Diaspora

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543: The Rise of Latinx Literature for Youth

Saturday, January 06, 2018, 12:00 PM – 01:15 PM. Hilton: Hudson

Presider

• Marilisa Jiménez García, Lehigh U

Presentations

• Navigating the Borderlands: Childhood and the Power of the Mestiza Consciousness in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Bilingual Picture Books, Cristina Rhodes, Texas A&M U, Commerce
• Learning Unbounded: Emancipatory Education in Latinx Young Adult Fiction, Ashley Perez, Ohio State U, Columbus
• Conocimiento Narratives: (Re)Imagining the Künstlerroman for Latina Girls, Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez, LaGuardia Community C, City U of New York

Session Information

• Allied Organization: Children’s Literature Association
• Program: Allied Organizations
• Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Children’s Literature

• Day: Saturday, January 06, 2018

Keywords

• children’s literature, latinx literature, latino/a literature, ethnic studies, young adult literature

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595: Graphic States of Insecurity

Saturday, January 06, 2018, 01:45 PM – 03:00 PM. Sheraton: Empire Ballroom East

For Related Material: joncn@bu.edu after 1 Dec.

Presider

• Jonathan Najarian, Boston U

Respondent

• Hillary L. Chute, Northeastern U

Presentations

• Making Comics: Word and Image in Nonfiction Narratives, Josh Neufeld, School of Visual Arts
• The Child as Witness in Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future, Nima Naghibi and Andrew O’Malley, Ryerson U
• Now and Then: Richard McGuire and Lauren Redniss’s Representational Extremes, Christopher Spaide, Harvard U

Session Information

• Program: Special Sessions
• Subject: American Literature – Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

• Day: Saturday, January 06, 2018

• Related to the Presidential Theme: Yes

Keywords

• graphic narrative, graphic novel, comics, cartoons, visuality

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618: From Gotham to Camazotz: Madeleine L’Engle at One Hundred and New York City

Saturday, January 06, 2018, 01:45 PM – 03:00 PM. Sheraton: Bowery

Presider

• Michelle Ann Abate, Ohio State U, Columbus

Presentations

• Actualizing Camazotz in New York City, Heidi A. Lawrence, U of Glasgow
• When You Wrinkle Time: The ‘Expanding Universe’ of Madeleine L’Engle in Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, Susan Strayer, Ohio State U, Columbus
• A Butterfly in the City: Interrelational Musical Identity in The Young Unicorns and A Severed Wasp, Mary Jeanette Moran, Illinois State U

Session Information

• Program: Special Sessions
• Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Children’s Literature

• Day: Saturday, January 06, 2018

Keywords

• Madeleine L’Engle, children’s literature, science fiction, author centennial, New York City

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625: Queer Futurities in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Saturday, January 06, 2018, 03:30 PM – 04:45 PM. Sheraton: Central Park West

Presider

• Angel Daniel Matos, San Diego State U

Presentations

• The Ethics of Queer Futurity, Gabrielle Owen, U of Nebraska, Lincoln
• ‘Read Up on Your Future’s History’: Futurity through Bisexuality in Young Adult Novels, Christine N. Stamper, Ohio State U, Columbus
• ‘We’ll Always Come Here for the Summer, Right?’: The Queer Geographies of This One Summer, Katharine Slater, Rowan U
• Out of History: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, the Reclamation of a Lost Past, and Queer Retrosity, Michelle Ann Abate, Ohio State U, Columbus

Session Information

• Forum: GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature
• Program: Forum Sessions
• Subject: American Literature – Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

• Day: Saturday, January 06, 2018

• Related to the Presidential Theme: Yes

Keywords

• queer, temporality, sexuality, childhood, adolescence

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650: Ignite Talk: Alison Bechdel on the Page, Onstage, and in Theory

Saturday, January 06, 2018. 03:30 PM – 04:45 PM. Hilton: Beekman

Description

Ten years after the conclusion of Dykes to Watch Out For, twelve years after the graphic memoir Fun Home, and five years after Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori’s theatrical adaptation of Fun Home, this ignite talk session offers a spectrum of voices, perspectives, and theoretical approaches to the works of Bechdel, demonstrating not just analysis of a single author across genres but the impact of such texts on wider fields of study.

Speakers

• Susan E. Kirtley, Portland State U
• Alissa Bourbonnais, Spokane Falls Community C, Washington State U
• Aubrey Mishou, Old Dominion U
• Judith Kegan Gardiner
• Dana A. Heller, Old Dominion U
• Leah M. Anderst, Queensborough Community C, City U of New York
• Robert Hutton, Carleton U

Session Information

• Program: Special Sessions
• Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Literature and Other Arts, Humanities, Law, Psychology, Science, and Sociology

• Day: Saturday, January 06, 2018

Keywords

• Theatre
• Graphic memoir
• gender studies
• queer theory
• adaptation

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729: Comics and the Culture Wars

Sunday, January 07, 2018, 08:30 AM – 09:45 AM. Sheraton: Central Park West

Presider

• Aaron Kashtan, U of North Carolina, Charlotte

Presentations

• ‘The Truth of Matters’: Transnational Human Diastrophism and the Culture Wars in the Work of Gilbert Hernandez, Osvaldo Oyola, New York U
• Queer Representation in Sandman: Comics in the Culture Wars of the 1990s, Leah Misemer, Georgia Inst. of Tech.
• Super Social Justice Warriors: DC Rebirth’s Green Arrow and the Comic Culture Wars, Anastasia Salter, U of Central Florida
• Queering Captain America: Fandom Rewritings of a Jewish Superhero Icon, Megan Fowler, U of Florida

Session Information

• Forum: GS Comics and Graphic Narratives
• Program: Forum Sessions
• Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Cultural Studies, Folklore, and Popular Culture

• Day: Sunday, January 07, 2018

Keywords

• Comics, Culture wars, Marvel/DC, queerness, fandom

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810: Framing New York City in Comics

Sunday, January 07, 2018. 12:00 PM – 01:15 PM. Sheraton: Madison Square

Presider

• Robin S. Hammerman, Stevens Inst. of Tech.

Presentations

• Drawn from the Stage: Nineteenth-Century United States Comics and New York City’s Theater Culture, Alex Beringer, U of Montevallo
• Between Strange and Familiar: Old New York in Contemporary Jewish Comics, Julia Alekseyeva, Harvard U
• When Frames Disappear: Gotham City between Violence and Vengeance, Lisann Anders, U of Zurich
• Great American Myths: New York City and Conservative Utopianism, Joseph Donica, Bronx Community C, City U of New York

Session Information

• Program: Special Sessions
• Subject: American Literature – General

• Day: Sunday, January 07, 2018

Keywords

• Comics, Graphic Novels, American Literature, Popular Culture, Fandom