Literature SIG Business Meeting and Invited Talk. Critical Content Analyses: Exploring Marginalized Populations and Languages in Literature

Session Type: Business Meeting

Abstract

We start the Business Meeting by awarding the Shelby Wolf AERA Literature SIG Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Literature and reviewing SIG business. Then, we welcome Mary Adu-Gyamif, Christina King, Edwin Bonney, and Angie Zapata (discussant) who will share their research on marginalized populations and languages in literature. Over fifty years ago, Nancy Larrick (1965) lamented how poorly books served those unlike the dominant social groups. Nearly thirty years ago, Sims Bishop (1990) added that books serve as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors for readers to gain affirmation, knowledge, and motivation for action. Nearly thirty years after Bishop’s piece, literature still does not provide accurate, respectful, or authentic stories for all children. Thus, we respond by presenting critical analyses focused on colorism in visual character portrayals, immigration experiences, and English language hegemony over native languages. More specifically, we respond to the conference theme of regarding power and possibilities for collaboration by providing space for discussion of misrepresentations and omissions of not only voices, experiences, and languages, but race, identity, and power. We aim to highlight critical (Short, 2017) work in various genres of literature while utilizing three different theoretical frameworks, while answering the call to hold literature to a more inclusive and equitable standard for our young readers. We represent a range of disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives working with literature for children and youth to call attention to ways in which critical content analysis methods help us understand how literature perpetuates the marginalization of diverse communities.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Literature

Participants

• Katrina Emily Bartow Jacobs, University of Pittsburgh

• Rachel Skrlac Lo, Villanova University

• Nora Peterman, University of Missouri - Kansas City

• Mary Adu-Gyamfi, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Christina King, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Edwin Nii Bonney, Radford University

• Angie Zapata, University of Missouri - Columbia