2016 Lenski Children's Literature Lecture on History of comics, children & libraries

Comics and young readers will be examined
by Carol Tilley for the 2016 Lois Lenski Children’s Literature

Illinois State University’s annual Lois Lenski Children’s Literature Lecture will feature Carol Tilley, a professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who will present “A Severe Case of Comics: Looking Back at the Problem That Wasn’t.” Her talk will be held Monday, March 21, at 7 p.m. in Stevenson Hall, Room 101.

Tilley is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at UI-UC. She is a nationally recognized expert on children’s comics and comic book history. Her research on comic archenemy Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent (1954), has been featured in The New York Times and will be a part of her presentation. Tilley has recently been awarded the Arnold O. Beckman Award for her current research project, “Children, Comics, and Print Culture: A Historical Investigation.”  Tilley teaches courses on the readership of comics, media literacy, and youth services librarianship.

Approaching comics from a variety of perspectives, Tilley’s scholarship has appeared in Children’s Literature in Education, Information & Culture: A Journal of History, and The Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.  Tilley’s research focuses on the intersection of young people, comics, and libraries, particularly in the United States during the mid-20th century.

Professor Tilley is affiliated with the Center for Children's Books and the Center for Writing Studies and is the co-editor of School Library Research.  Tilley earned a Master’s of Library Science and a Ph. D. in Information Science from Indiana University.

The annual Lois Lenski Children’s Literature Lecture is co-sponsored by ISU Department of English and Milner Library. The presentation is open to the public.