CONFERENCE PANELS AND PAPERS
Critical Childhood Studies at MLA 2020

080. Diverse Destinies: Envisioning Futures for Youth of Color
3:30 PM–4:45 PM 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
083. Literatures of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) Movement
3:30 PM–4:45 PM Jan 9, 2020
WSCC – 303
Presentations
1: Federal Indian Law, Tribal Sovereignty, and Violence against Native Women in Wind River
Akikwe Cornell, U of Minnesota, Twin Cities
2: MMIWG in Canada, in Québec: How the Literature and Art of Indigenous Women Carries Them Up
Sarah Henzi, U de Montréal
3: Visualizing the Missing: Betty: The Helen Betty Osborne Story, ‘Clicktivism,’ and #MMIWG
Carrie Louise Sheffield, U of Tennessee, Knoxville
4: Tanya Tagaq’s Qiksaaktuq: Decolonizing Aesthetics of Grief for MMIWG
Shannon Toll, U of Dayton
Presiders
Laura De Vos, U of Washington, Seattle
Brian J Twenter, U of Minnesota, Morris
120. Gothic Childhood
5:15 PM–6:30 PM 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
292. After Adolescence: Emerging Adulthood in American Literature
12:00 PM–1:15 PM Jan 10, 2020
WSCC – 616
Presentations
1: Child Marriage and the Young Edge of Adulthood
Melanie V. Dawson, C of William and Mary
2: Vulnerable Youth and the Protest of Richard Wright
Claire Lenviel, U of Kentucky
3: American Soldiers, Trauma, and Permanent Adolescence in Literature of the Iraq War
Jennifer Haytock, C at Brockport, State U of New York
Presider
Nancy C. Backes, Cardinal Stritch U
315. Humanizing the Young Trans Body
1:45 PM–3:00 PM 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
408. Bodies, Borders, and Boundaries: Embodiments of Multicultural and Transnational Children
5:15 PM–6:30 PM 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
Presiders
Nithya Sivashankar, Ohio State U, Columbus
Tharini Viswanath, Illinois State U
431. Vision and Sight in Children’s Literature and Culture
8:30 AM–9:45 AM 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
497. Black Women and the Question of Futurity
12:00 PM–1:15 PM Jan 11, 2020
WSCC – 205
Presentations
1: Literary Endings and Speculative Futures in Gloria Naylor’s Fiction
Crystal S. Rudds, Malcolm X College, City C of Chicago
2: Disappearing Futures: Black Women Writers and the Atlanta Child Murders
Samira Abdur-Rahman, U of San Francisco
3: Phillis Wheatley’s Body
Dana Murphy, U of California, Riverside
4: Carceral Speculations on the Black Maternal: Futurity and Foreclosure in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
Selamawit Terrefe, Tulane U
519. Childhood and Violence in Latin America
12:00 PM–1:15 PM 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
567. Critical Childhood Studies and Intersectionality: The State of the Field
1:45 PM–3:00 PM Jan 11, 2020
WSCC – 619
Session Information
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?
For related material, visit http://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
Presiders
Allison Giffen, Western Washington U
Lucia Hodgson, independent scholar
766. Transmedia Storytelling in Children’s and Young Adult Literature
1:45 PM–3:00 PM 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