Publications: Book Reviews, Non-Refereed Articles, Journalism
Contributor of book
reviews, features, and author interviews. Publishers Weekly’s Children’s Forecasts
and online Children's Bookshelf, 1991-present.
Forthcoming, 2009. Invited
introduction to Environmentalism section of special issue
on Children's Literature and Social Justice. The Lion and the Unicorn.
Forthcoming, 2008. Invited
speaker on metanarrative and the picture book for Sally Placksin's "What's the Word?," an MLA Radio program.
"Bringing Up the Book." Review of Bookwomen: Creating an Empire in Children's Literature,
1919-1939. Children's Literature 35 (2007): 213-217.
“Growing Greens.”
Review of Wild Things: Children’s Culture and Ecocriticism (2004).
Children’s Literature 33 (2005): 280-284.
Review of Out of
This World: Why Literature Matters to Girls (2004). Children’s
Literature Association Quarterly 30.1 (Spring 2005): 110-116.
“Same-Sex Parents: A
New Theme in Kids’ Books.” Interview for National Public Radio’s All
Things Considered. 21 May 2005.
“Diversity Breeds
Controversy.” Feature article on gay and lesbian families in picture books
and on PBS children’s television. Publishers Weekly. 26 April
2005.
“Bigot-toons.” Letter
to the editor on comics and social justice. The Nation. 4 April 2005.
“Picture Books Go
Graphic.” Feature article on comic book narrative style. Publishers
Weekly. 6 December 2004. (27-29)
Interview with
Scholastic editor Arthur A. Levine. Riverbank Review of Books for Young
Readers. Fall 2003.
“Tilting to
Windmills.” Commissioned essay on sustainable energy in the eastern U.S.
Potomac Review: A Journal of Art and Humanities 36 (Fall/Winter
2003-2004).
“Trying to Catch the
Wind.” Wind-generated power and sustainable energy in Somerset, PA. The
Washington Post. 25 October 2002.
“The Picture Book
Redefined.” Riverbank Review of Books for Young Readers. Fall 2002.
Interview with
author-illustrator Peter Sís. Riverbank Review of Books for Young Readers.
Spring 2002.
Interview with
novelist Howard Norman. Writing for Your Life #2. Ed. Sybil
Steinberg. New York: Pushcart Press/W.W. Norton, 1995.
Additional feature
articles and reviews have appeared in The Washington Post and
Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review,
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Washington City Paper, Out
Magazine, The San Francisco Review of Books, and Hungry Mind
Review.
Presentations and
Panels
Forthcoming. "Industrial Folklore and Pictorial
Narrative," at the
American Studies Association annual meeting. Albuquerque, NM. October 2008.
Forthcoming. "Save the Planet, Read a Book?
Paradoxes of Eco-Stewardship," at the
Children's Literature Association International Conference, Illinois State
University. Normal, IL. June 2008.
"Asian American Ethno Graphix: Deploying Critique in
Comics," at the Futures of American Studies Seminar, Dartmouth College.
Hanover, NH. June 2007.
"Metta Narratives," at the Children's Literature
Association conference. Newport News, VA. June 2007.
"Ecology,
Empathy, and the Observer: Encounters with the Phantasmagorical Wilderness," at the
Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference. Chicago. March 2007.
"Visceral
Theory (Ecology, Empathy, and the Observer)," at the Framework conference, Oklahoma State University.
Stillwater, OK. November 2006.
"Murals in Miniature: Proletarian
Icons, Graphic Narrative Forms, and American Picture Books of the 1930s,"
for the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Seminar, Illinois State
University. November 2006.
"Murals in Miniature: Modern America in
James Daugherty’s Illustrated Texts," part of a seminar at the Modernist
Studies Association conference. Tulsa, OK. October 2006.
"Sentient Machines and Beasts of Burden: Modern Technologies in 1920s-40s
Pictorial Texts," for the Colloquium on Visual Culture, Illinois State
University. September 2006.
“Now Playing: Silent Cinema and Picture Book Montage,”
at the
Children’s Literature Association conference. Manhattan Beach, CA. June
2006.
Faculty panelist. "Roundtable: What Is Visual Culture?" for the Colloquium
on Visual Culture, Illinois State University. April 2006.
“Arcades and Ephemera:
Lived Experience, Obsolescence, and Urban Decay in Contemporary Graphic
Texts,” part of the “New Angles in Graphic Narratives” panel at
the Modern Language Association conference. Washington, DC. December 2005.
“New to You: Aphorisms
on the Secondhand,” part of a peer seminar on “Adorno, Benjamin, and the
Concept of the New” at the Modernist Studies Association conference.
Chicago, IL. November 2005.
“Wild Kingdoms: The
Animal Other and the Immigrant Subject in Unfriendly Territory,” at the Sixth Biennial Conference on Critical Approaches to Children’s
Literature, Middle Tennessee State University. Nashville. April 2005.
Organizer and chair:
“Here and Now: Approaches to Current Events through Children’s Literature,”
a Children’s Literature Association session at the Modern Language
Association conference. Philadelphia, PA. December 2004.
“Pineapple Canneries
and Abandoned Forts: Historical Contexts and Subtexts in Langston Hughes and
Arna Bontemps’ Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti,” at the
American Studies Association conference. Atlanta, GA. November 2004.
“Speaking for the
Trees: Environmental Ethics in the Rhetoric and Production of Picture
Books,” at the Children’s Literature Association conference.
Fresno, CA. June 2004.
“Family Portraits:
Word and Image Representations of Alternative Families and Unconventional
Childhoods,” at the annual National Council of Teachers of English
conference. San Francisco, CA. November 2003.
“‘Victims of
Industry’: Loiterers, Laborers, and Children in American Picture Books of
the Thirties,” at the annual Children’s Literature Association
conference, University of Texas/El Paso. June 2003.
“The Proto Picture
Book: Mary Liddell’s Little Machinery (1926),” at the Fifth
Biennial Conference on Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature, Middle
Tennessee State University. Nashville. April 2003.
“Out of Innocence:
Beginnings of a Redemptive Critique on Childhood and Memory,” at
the Traveling Concepts III conference, Amsterdam School for Cultural
Analysis, University of Amsterdam. March 2002.
“The Bear, the Cat,
and Other Wild Things: Childhood Icons and Adult Collectors,” at
the Conversations with the Other conference, Duquesne University,
Pittsburgh, PA. March 2001.
“Simulations of
Childhood,” at the Critical Exchange Colloquium of the Department
of English, University of Pittsburgh. November 2000.
“‘Mulberry Street runs
into Bliss’: Dr. Seuss and the Imaginative Child,” at the
conference on Reading Pictures: Art, Narrative, and Childhood, Homerton
College, Cambridge University. September 2000.
“Dr. Seuss’
Construction of Childhood,” at the conference on Small Worlds:
Visions of Childhood in Contemporary Literature in English, University of
Navarre. Pamplona, Spain. March 2000.
“Many Imaginary
Returns: Childhood and Exile in the Work of Esther Hautzig and Peter Sís,”
at the Children’s Literature Association/International Research
Society for Children’s Literature conference, University of Calgary. July 1999.
“From Madeleines to
Madeline: The Children’s Book as a Text of Pleasure,” at the
Colloquium on Memory, University of Pittsburgh. March 1998.
“Domestic
Spaces/Enchanted Spaces,” delivered at the conference on Private Lives,
Public Meanings: Constructions of Childhood, University of Pittsburgh.
September 1997.
Teaching and Research Interests
Cultural and Critical
Theory
Nineteenth- and
Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature and Childhood
Nineteenth- and
Twentieth-Century American Studies
Visual Studies and
Graphic Narrative
Modernism and
Modernity
Early Cinema and
Animation
Ecofeminism and
Environmental Ethics
Awards and Honors
One-Time Subvention Grant, Department of English/College of Arts and
Sciences/Research and Sponsored Programs, Illinois State University ($4500)
Travel Supplement
Grant, Illinois State University ($350)
Children's Literature Association Article Award, 2006 ($250)
University Service Initiative Award, Illinois State University, 2005-2006
($500)
Pretenure Faculty
Initiative Grant, Illinois State University, 2004-2005 ($2500)
New Faculty Initiative
Grant, Illinois State University, 2003-2004 ($2500)
Andrew Mellon
Predoctoral Fellowship, 2001-2002 (one-year stipend)
Women’s Studies Small
Funds Grant, University of Pittsburgh, 2001 ($250)
Teaching
Illinois State University, Department of English
Assistant Professor
(2002-present)
Dissertation
Director: Abbie Ventura, A.B.D.
Dissertation Committee Member: Henrry Lezama
Graduate courses: Susan Sontag: Arts and Letters (forthcoming Fall
2008); Feminist Literary Theories; Critical Theories in Children’s Literature;
Theorizing the Picture Book; Studies in Children's Literature: American
Childhood and Modernity.
Graduate/undergraduate-level courses:
Studies in the History of Literature for Young People; Literature for Adolescents;
Studies in Literary Genres: Graphic Narrative.
Undergraduate courses: Literature for Young Children; Literature
for Preadolescents; Texts and Contexts: Documenting Experience,
1890-2004.
University of
Pittsburgh, Department of English
Teaching Fellow
(1998-2002), Teaching Assistant (1996-1998)
Designed and
taught undergraduate courses: Childhood’s Books; Women and Literature:
Brazil (service-learning project, Santarém, Brazil, Summer 2002); Women
and Literature; Written Professional Communication; General Writing:
Women’s Studies; General Writing.
Teaching Assistant to Professor Valerie Krips: Children and
Culture.
Professional Organizations
Modern Language
Association
American Studies
Association
Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the U.S.
Modernist Studies
Association
Children’s Literature
Association
International Research
Society for Children’s Literature
Society for Cinema and
Media Studies
Association for the
Study of Literature and Environment
Professional Service
Children's Literature Association Article Award Committee, 2007-present
Children’s Literature Association Publications Committee, 2004-2007
Referee for
Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly,
and The Lion and the Unicorn
Child magazine, consultant for Best Books of
2006
University Service
Illinois State University
Administrative Fellow, Office of the Dean, College
of Arts and Sciences, Fall 2007-present
Academic Senate
College of Arts and
Sciences Senator, 2003-2007
Executive Committee, 2004-2007
Academic Affairs
Committee, 2006-2007
Rules Committee, 2003-2006
Department Service
Illinois State University
Department Council, Fall 2007-present
Department Faculty
Status Committee, 2004-2006
Organizer and
chair of the Graduate Symposium on Critical Approaches to
Children’s Literature, 2005-2006
Organizer and host
of the annual Banned Books Week reading, 2003-2005
Department of
English Diversity Committee, 2003-2004, 2006-2007
Department of
English Hiring Committee: Literacy Studies, 2002-2003
Committee for the
Unit for Contemporary Literature, 2002-2003
University of
Pittsburgh
Graduate Placement
and Professionalization Committee, 1999-2001
Young Writers’
Institute. Computer lab manager, Summer 1998
Related Experience
and Professional Training
Carnegie Mellon School
of Design. Graduate coursework in communication design and theory.
Proofreader, Design Issues. 1997-1999.
Washington City
Paper, Washington, D.C.
CityBooks Editor, October 1995-June 1996. Literary Editor and Copy
Chief. June 1993-October 1995.
Publishers Weekly,
New York, NY. Editorial assistant, Forecasts. 1990-1992.
New York University.
Summer Institute in Book and Magazine Publishing. June 1990.