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
- Allied Organization: Children’s Literature Association
- Allied Organization: MELUS: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
- Program: Allied Organizations
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Children’s Literature
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
- Forum: GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature
- Program: Forum Sessions
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Children’s Literature
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
- Forum: GS Comics and Graphic Narratives
- Program: Forum Sessions
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Electronic Technology (Teaching, Research, and Theory)
348. Futures and Pasts in Indigenous Comics and Graphic Novels
3:30 PM—4:45 PM, Friday 10 Jan. 2020
WSCC – 211
Presentations
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
- Allied Organization: Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures
- Program: Allied Organizations
- Subject: American Literature – Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
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
- Allied Organization: Children’s Literature Association
- Program: Allied Organizations
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Children’s Literature
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
- Forum: GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature
- Program: Forum Sessions
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Children’s Literature
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 PolicÃa del Karma
Eduardo Ledesma, U of Illinois, Urbana
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
- Program: Special Sessions
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Cultural Studies, Folklore, and Popular Culture
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
- Forum: GS Comics and Graphic Narratives
- Program: Forum Sessions
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Film, Television, and Other Media
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
- Program: Special Sessions
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Electronic Technology (Teaching, Research, and Theory)
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
- Program: Special Sessions
- Subject: Genre, Theory, Method – Cultural Studies, Folklore, and Popular Culture
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
- Allied Organization: North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
- Program: Allied Organizations
- Subject: Comparative Literature – Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
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