Teaching Equity through Children’s Literature in Undergraduate Classrooms

Gayatri Devi is a Professor of English at Savannah College of Art and Design. She co-edited Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema (2014), Myths Shattered and Restored (2016), and the special issue on transnationalism (2017) for the North Dakota Quarterly, where she serves as a contributing editor. Fluently trilingual in English, Malayalam, and Hindi, she does translation and subtitling work for Indian films and literary translation from Malayalam to English. Her articles and book chapters on South Asian, Middle Eastern, and indigenous literatures and films have been published both in the US and India. Philip Smith is the author of Reading Art Spiegelman (Routledge, 2015), Shakespeare in Singapore (Routledge, 2020), and co-author of Printing Terror: American Horror Comics as Cold War Commentary and Critique (Manchester UP, 2021). He served as co-director of the Shakespeare Behind Bars program at The Correctional Facility at Fox Hill, Nassau, Bahamas; fight choreographer for the Shakespeare in Paradise festival; and executive board member for the Comics Studies Society. He is Chair of Liberal Arts and Professor of English at Savannah College of Art and Design. He is editor-in-chief of Literature Compass. He is level 47 in Pokémon Go and has a perfect Mewtwo (which, if you play Pokémon Go, you will know is pretty impressive). Stephanie J. Weaver is the Associate Director for Academics at the Forman School in Litchfield, Connecticut, and an Adjunct Professor at St. John's University in New York. Her most recent publication is an essay in Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene, published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2022. She is currently working on developing an anthology on teaching fantasy literature based on her various experiences in education.

Editors’ Introduction: Children’s Literature beyond the Golden Age?

Gayatri Devi, Philip Smith, and Stephanie J. Weaver

Part I Theoretical Approaches to Teaching Children’s Literature

Chapter 1 The Pedagogical Potential of Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Why All English Studies Professors Should Teach Children’s and Young Adult Texts

Erika Romero

Chapter 2 Censoring the "N-Word": Issues When Teaching Early African American Children’s Folktales

Lashon Daley

Chapter 3 Engaged Pedagogy as Empowerment: Teaching Embodiment of Gender and Sexuality in the Adolescent Literature Classroom

Tharini Viswanath

Chapter 4 The Power of Diverse Perspectives and Inclusive Voices in Contemporary Young Adult Literature

Elizabeth Laura Yomantas

Part II Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching Children’s Literature

Chapter 5 And Now for a Story: The Critical and Emotional Benefits of Reading Aloud When Teaching Children’s Literature

B.J. (Epstein) Woodstein

Chapter 6 Teaching LGBTQ+ Picture Books in First-Year Writing

Noah Mullens

Chapter 7 Reading Decolonially in a Children’s Literature Classroom in the Philippines

Gabriela Lee

Chapter 8 Teaching Guide: Children’s Literature Resource File for Teaching Children’s Literature to Undergraduates

Laura Lemanski, Sara K. Sterner, and Megan Van Deventer