NEW book Series -Children’s Picture Books Their Contribution to Political, Educational, and Cultural Attitudes

2023-08-16

NEW book Series : "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Children’s Picture Books and Their Contribution to Political, Educational, and Cultural Attitudes"

Description: This book series delves into the profound influence of children's picture books on shaping societal, educational, and political beliefs. It underscores that these books, predominantly selected by adults, mirror our perceptions of childhood and literature's role in a child's evolution. The series aims to explore how such books are not mere reflections of societal values but are instrumental in transmitting them. Led by a research group with members from Australia, Germany, and Switzerland, this series brings a broad international perspective to the discussion on children’s literature.

Send your interest and one-page proposal to: A/Prof Martin Kerby, University of Southern Queensland, Australia, e-mail: Martin.Kerby@usq.edu.au

Tentative Titles in the Series:

  1. Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey" and Modern Children’s Picture Books
  2. Trauma in Children’s Picture Books
  3. Visual Analysis of Illustrations in Children’s Picture Books
  4. Post-Colonialism and the Representation of European Explorers in the Pacific in Children’s Picture Books
  5. Flora and Fauna, Fantastic Worlds, and Children’s Picture Books
  6. Shadow and Substance: Afro-American Experience in Contemporary Children’s Fiction
  7. Representations of Genocide in Children’s Picture Books
  8. Animals in Children’s Picture Books About the First World War
  9. The Generic Figure of the ‘Refugee’ as a Heroic Victim in Children’s Picture Books
  10. Conflict and National Identity in Children’s Picture Books
  11. Representations of Gender in Children’s Picture Books 
  12. Informational Picture Books in the Early Years’ Classroom

Leadership Team

Associate Professor Martin Kerby, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

Martin Kerby is an associate lecturer (curriculum and pedagogy) at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. His research focuses on historical and educational areas, with numerous publications that focus on children’s picture books, multiliteracies, biography, military history, and artistic and cultural responses to conflict. Dr Kerby is a research cluster leader in the School of Education focussing on student experience and learning. He has published extensively and received numerous awards and grants, including two competitive Queensland Anzac Centenary Grants (2014; 2017), a national Australian Government Anzac Centenary Arts and Culture Fund Public Grant (2015), a State Library of Queensland Q ANZAC 100: Memories for a New Generation Fellowship (2018) and a national Department of Veterans’ Affairs Saluting their Service grant in 2021. His interest in the arts, history and commemoration resulted in the co-edited The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War: Australasia, the British Isles, and the United States (2019). He is the co-curator of The Kangaroo and the Eagle: Allies in War and Peace exhibition currently showing at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. He is the chief editor of the Australian Art Education journal which was ranked in Scopus under his editorial leadership.

List of publications: 

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=cY7QJsEAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate 

Professor Marion Gymnich Professor, University of Bonn, Germany

Marion Gymnich is Professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Bonn. She studied English, German and Slavic Studies at the University of Cologne; she holds a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Cologne and did postdoctoral research at the University of Giessen, where she was coordinator of the International PhD Program 'Literary and Cultural Studies'. She was visiting lecturer at the University of Łodz and visiting professor at the University of Graz. She has published widely on children's and young adult literature, British literature from the nineteenth century to the present, postcolonial literature, genre theory, narrative theory, gender studies, audiovisual media and memory studies.

List of publications: https://www.iaak.uni-bonn.de/de/people/gymnich/publications 

Professor Margaret Baguley, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

Margaret Baguley is a professor in arts education, curriculum and pedagogy and the Associate Head Research for the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland. Her contribution to quality learning, teaching and research has been recognised through a series of awards including the Vice-Chancellor's Teaching Excellence Award and the Australian Learning and Teaching Council's National Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. She has published extensively, and her research encompasses the arts, creative collaboration, creative leadership, and historical commemoration.  Dr Baguley received a joint 2019 Princeton University Library Research Grant to explore the collaborative relationship between the author and illustrator of the Mary Poppins’ series of books. This resulted in successful funding through the Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal (FRRR) in 2023. She has an extensive teaching and research background across all facets of education, in addition to maintaining her arts practice. Her work is currently on exhibition at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. in The Kangaroo and the Eagle: Allies in War and Peace.  Dr Baguley is currently a member of the Queensland selection committee for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and is also the Vice President of Art Education Australia.

List of publications:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=89e1LmsAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate 

Dr Denise Burkhard University of Bonn, Germany

Denise Burkhard holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Bonn, where she teaches English Studies. Aside from neo-Victorian studies, her research interests include nineteenth-century British literature and culture, historical fiction, children’s and YA literature as well as adaptation studies. In addition to articles on fantasy fiction, contemporary (neo-) Gothic novels, and children’s literature, she has published the monograph Ancient Dwarf Kingdom or the Hoard of a Fiery Dragon?: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Erebor as a Transformed and Dynamic Place (Tectum, 2017) and the co-edited collection “Harry – yer a wizard”: Exploring J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Universe (Tectum, 2017). Her PhD thesis, entitled Exploited, Empowered, Ephemeral: (Re-)Constructions of Childhood in Neo-Victorian Fiction, will be published in August 2023 by V&R unipress / Bonn University Press.

List of publications: https://www.iaak.uni-bonn.de/de/people/denise-burkhard-m.a 

Associate Professor Heather Sharp University of Newcastle 

Heather Sharp has a PhD in education, with a focus on curriculum. She has been an educator for 20 years in secondary schools and universities. She is currently Deputy Head of School Research at the University of Newcastle. Her work focuses on History curriculum within the School of Education, convenor of the History Network for Teachers and Researchers (HNTR); and a Special Issues Editor of Historical Encounters. Her current research investigates the teaching of difficult and controversial pasts, the influence of public history in teaching, historical representations in school curriculum, particularly textbooks and also examines the written and visual texts in picture books that deal with conflict. Sharp enjoys taking her students on experiential learning experiences to museums, memorials, and outbound study tours to the former western front sites of World War I. In 2016, Sharp was awarded a competitive residency Fellowship to the prestigious Georg Eckert Institute in Germany. During this Fellowship, she researched ways educational media is used in History classrooms, innovative ways to teach history using ICT, and engaged in an analyse of national identity representation in History textbooks.

List of publications: 

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=gQ_yvGIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate 

Hanne Birk University of St. Gallen, Switzerland 

Hanne Birk studied English and German Literatures and Cultures as well as Philosophy in Freiburg and at Brock University, Ontario, Canada. 2003-2005 research assistant in the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Memory Cultures’ (University of Giessen). 2008 PhD thesis (AlterNative Memories: Kulturspezifische Inszenierungen von Erinnerung in zeitgenössischen Romanen indigener Autor/inn/en Australiens, Kanadas und Aotearoas/Neuseelands). 2007-2009 research and work stay in London, UK and Heraklion, Crete. Since 2012 postdoc at the Department of English, American, and Celtic Studies, University of Bonn. Research and publications focus on Indigenous literatures and cultures, postcolonial theories, Pacific literatures, narratologies, children’s literature, and memory studies.