Politics of Text and Image in Children’s Culture: Contemporary Eastern Europe and Beyond

Politics of Text and Image in Children’s Culture: Contemporary Eastern Europe and Beyond

International Workshop of Ludwig Maximilian University
of Munich (LMU) and International Youth Library in Munich,
organized by Svetlana Efimova (LMU)
and Marina Balina (Illinois Wesleyan University)

July 18-19, 2024, in Castle Blutenburg (International Youth Library),
Seldweg 15, 81247 Munich

Modern scholars of children’s literature long ago abandoned the view that the phenomena of children’s literature and culture, in general, were separate from and independent of the influence of politics and ideology. Charles Sarland, in his article “The Impossibility of Innocence: Ideology, Politics, and Children’s Literature” (1998), characterizes the discourse of children’s literature as a “crossroads” where a variety of discursive practices reflecting the ideological and political debates of the time meet. The high level of politicization of modern life and the constant access that today’s generation of children and adolescents has to a wide variety of electronic sources of information require a revision of many of the themes and concepts that have become entrenched in contemporary children’s literature and culture.

In the format of a workshop devoted to the problems of interaction between children’s literature and politics, we propose to discuss the new picture of the world being constructed for today’s young readers/viewers by diverse authorities and various actors involved in creating literature and culture for children. By designating Eastern Europe and beyond as our research area, we want to discuss the practices adopted today in a region that has undergone the most radical changes in contemporary politics and ideology and the general/theoretical problems of the interaction between children’s literature and politics.

This workshop is supported by LMUexcellent, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Bavaria under the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder.

Program
July 18, 2024

• 10:00 am – 10:10 am – Greetings by Dr. Christiane Raabe, Director of the International Youth Library in Munich
• 10:10 am – 10:30 am – Opening remarks by Svetlana Efimova (LMU Munich) and Marina Balina (Illinois Wesleyan University)
• 10:30 am – 11:30 am: Keynote by Serguei Oushakine, Princeton University: Is it a Cross or an Airplane? Training Literate Spectators in the Early Soviet Russia
  Moderator: Svetlana Efimova
• 11:30 am – 11:50 am – Coffee Break

Section I. Picturebooks as a Mental Laboratory

Moderator: Marina Balina

• 11:50 am – 12:10 pm – Carmen Sippl, University College of Teacher Education Lower Austria: Decoding Picturebooks in/as a Futures Literacy Lab: a Guided Tour or a Voyage of Discovery?
• 12:10 pm – 12:30 pm – Svetlana Efimova, LMU Munich: A Laboratory of Political Thinking in Non-Fiction Picturebooks by Independent Russian Authors
• 12:30 pm – 12:50pm – Discussion
• 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Lunch

Section II. Social Consciousness and Civic Engagement in Children’s and YA Literature

Moderator: Svetlana Efimova

• 2:30 pm – 2:50 pm – Karoline Thaidigsmann, University of Heidelberg: Mature? Empathic? Engaged? Concepts of Socially Conscious Polish Children’s Literature of the 21st Century
• 2:50 pm – 3:10 pm – Anne Hultsch, University of Vienna: Pátrání/pátranie po Patria. Czech and Slovak Books for Children and Young People in Search of the Specifically Czech and Slovak
• 3:10 pm – 3:30 pm – Discussion
• 3:30 pm – 3:50 pm – Coffee Break

Section III. Activism in Children’s and YA Culture

Moderator: Marina Balina

• 3:50 pm – 4:10 pm – Marek Oziewicz, University of Minnesota: The Politics and Cultural Work of Children’s Literature in the “New Climate War”
• 4:10 pm – 4:30 pm – Svetlana Maslinskaia, Université Grenoble Alpes: Heroism – an Educational Model or/and a Political Order? (Russian Children’s Literature of the 20th-21st Centuries)
• 4:30 pm – 4:50 pm – Discussion
• 4:50 pm – 5:10 pm – Coffee Break

Section IV. Politics of Rethinking Traditions

Moderator: Svetlana Efimova

• 5:10 pm – 5:30 pm – Enikő Dácz, LMU Munich: Rewriting and Politics in Contemporary Hungarian Children’s Literature
• 5:30 pm – 5:50 pm – Larissa Rudova, Pomona College: The Queering of Russian Childhood in Mikita Franko’s Novelistic World
• 5:50 pm – 6:10 pm – Discussion

July 19, 2024

• 10:00 am – 11:00 am – Tour of the Library with Dr. Katja Wiebe
• 11:00 am – 11:20 am – Coffee Break

Section V. Politics of Memory I: East and West

Moderator: Larissa Rudova

• 11:20 am – 11:40 am – Mateusz Świetlicki, University of Wrocław: Eastern European Children Becoming (North) Americans: Politics of Memory in Historical Fiction for Young People
• 11:40 am – 12:00 pm – Anastasia Ulanowicz, University of Florida: You Can’t Go Home Again: Nostalgia in Post-Soviet Immigrant Graphic Narratives
• 12:00 pm – 12:20 pm – Discussion
• 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm – Lunch

Section VI. Politics of Memory II: War Memory

Moderator: Mateusz Świetlicki

• 2:00 pm – 2:20 pm – Marina Balina, Illinois Wesleyan University: The Presence of the Past: Transmitting of War Memory in Contemporary Russophone YA Literature
• 2:20 pm – 2:40 pm – Laure Thibonnier-Limpek, Université Grenoble Alpes / Institute of European, American, African, Asian and Australian Languages and Cultures (ILCEA4): The Leningrad Siege in Children's Drawings: Memorial Politics and Visual Canon
• 2:40 pm – 3:00 pm – Discussion
• 3:00 pm – 3:20 pm – Coffee Break

Section VII. Refugee and Migrant Children: Ethnic Biases, Minorities, Repatriation

Moderator: Karoline Thaidigsmann

• 3:20 pm – 3:40 pm – Smiljana Narančić Kovač, University of Zagreb: “When the Heart is Put to the Test”: War and Refugees in Croatian Children’s Books
• 3:40 pm – 4:00 pm – Dorota Michułka, University of Wrocław: Growing Up in Transnational Space: Images of a Migrant Childhood in Contemporary Polish YA Literature
• 4:00 pm – 4:20 pm – Discussion
• 4:20 pm – 4:40 pm – Coffee Break
• 4:40 pm – 5:10 pm Concluding discussion will be moderated by Svetlana Efimova and Marina Balina