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International Research Society for Children's Literature |
Klein Kariba Resort, Warmbaths |
Keynote speakers: Marita de Sterck Marita de Sterck studied languages and communication sciences at the University of Ghent and Anthropology at the University of Leuven. She teaches Literature and Anthropology at the Library School in Ghent. She also teaches creative writing in multicultural groups of young adult adults. She has published an Encyclopedia of Children's Literature and studies such as: In the looking glass: the images of immigrants in Dutch children's literature. Marita also writes fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults. A lot of her non-fiction work deals with intercultural encounters. There is a direct line between her research about initiation rituals and her recent novels for young adults. Splinters (1998), a story of first love (13 years and up) deals with questions: Can you love without getting wounded by splinters? Is love ever the same, for him, for her? If you've tasted it once, can you ever do without it? The book was awarded by the Flemish Children's Jury. Scar tissue (15 years and up) is about coming to terms with loss. Like Splinters, the book raises pressing questions about love and death. The book was awarded with the Golden Kiss for the best young adult novel in 2001. Marita's topic for the conference is: The widwife's Tale: how ritual storytelling can promote change and renewal in individuals and groups Non-western cultural groups celebrate the growth of their children with initiation rituals. In these rituals stories evoke and promote second birth. What kind of stories do these groups select for their rituals? How do these stories work? What are their functions? In which way do they promote individual and social change and renewal? What are the differences between these stories and western literature for children and young adults? How do these stories generate intercultural change and renewal? With the help of overhead projection we travel around the world, look at rituals and listen to stories. The journey takes us along confronting anthropological, psychoanalytical and literary pathways. Roderick McGillis is a Professor of English at the University of Calgary. His books include The Nimble Reader (1996), The Little Princess: Empire and Gender (1996), Voices of the Other (editor) (1999), and Children's Literature and the Fin de Siecle (editor). He is the editor of the Literary Theory Column in ChLA Quarterly and one of the Senior Editors for Oxford University Press's forthcoming Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Most recent work concerns coprophagia and children's culture. The title of Roderick McGillis's plenary paper is '"Captain Underpants is My Hero': Things Have Changed." Rod has the following to say bout his presentation: "Change and Renewal: the more things change, the more they remain the same. Or do they? Have books for children changed these past so many years? Has the way we deliver stories to children changed? Do we really value reading or do we just think we do? Are we reconfiguring our notions of the child or does she play as usual? Who is this "we" anyway? Can we speak as a collective? Should we speak collectively? Does globalization manifest itself in children's books or does the "children's literature in different countries," as Maria Nikolajeva argues, have "little in common" (43)? Is homogenization of the child and child culture the danger as Jack Zipes says it is? Has criticism of children's books changed along with the books produced for the young or does it remain the same, anchored in its concern for the child's moral and social well being? How far have we come, really? That list of questions ought to keep us going for several hours. And so let me try to focus. I'll turn the glass to Captain Underpants, superhero for 6 to 10 year old children, mostly boy children or so they say. This diaper-clad defender of the world appears in the series of books by Dave Pilkey, and I intend to ask whether the Captain Underpants books can help us approach answers to some of my questions. Riana Scheepers is not only a versatile and creative author but also an established scholar with a PhD in Afrikaans literature. She has written more than 10 novels and anthologies of short stories and all these books have been translated into Dutch with some translated into Spanish, French, English, Polish and Estonian. Her first youth novel Blinde Sambok was published earlier this year. She has also been awarded numerous literary prizes and is member of the South African Academy of Arts and Culture. Since 1988 she has lectured at the Universities of Zululand and Cape Town, been editor at Tafelberg Publishers and has started a School for Writing and Creative Thought at the Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch. She has been on various guest lectures and study tours abroad and has delivered papers in Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium.
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