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

Christa-Spangenberg-Hall

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).

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.

The conference programme can be accessed here.

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.