Reading To Kill a Mockingbird from a Southern guy's view

Just wanted to share that my essay, "Alabama Bound: Reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird While Southern" has recently been published in The Southern Quarterly. Here is a link to a .pdf reprint.

I have taught To Kill a Mockingbird for years so I was pleased to be asked to write about the book and growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. My family moved there from the Chicago suburbs when I was nine. In the essay, I write about my experience as a Northern boy learning how to live in the South and how To Kill a Mockingbird informed my understanding of Alabama. I weave in references to President Obama, Drive-by Truckers, George Wallace, the Birmingham Library, the WPA's Alabama: A Guide to the Deep South (1941), my childhood confusion on segregated water fountains at the Birmingham Zoo, and one of my favorite professors when I was a student at Samford University, Wayne Flynt.  I'm glad Mark West asked me to write this essay.

Thanks for checking out the essay.

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. 

Peter Pan play marks 110th anniversary

Tonight is the 110th anniversary of J.M. Barrie's play "Peter Pan" first being performed. Laura Kennedy, the local NPR station WGLT, interviewed me about Peter Pan and its multitude of forms that Barrie created. Thanks to Laura Kennedy for being such a great interviewer and making me sound so good.

Here's the link to the interview.http://wglt.org/wireready/news/2014/12/05436_12-26PeterPanWEB_040330.shtml

In the interview, you will hear how Peter Pan is linked to the legendary Victorian Pantomime's that filled theaters with laughter during the holiday season. I also talk about how Barrie befriend a family of boys and then based much of the Peter Pan story on playing with them as well as missing his younger brother, David, who died in childhood. Barrie published numerous versions of the story in adult novels, as a play, as a novel for children and more.

MLA panel on Children's Literature & the Common Core

The MLA Division of Children’s Literature will be sponsoring the session “Children’s Literature and the Common Core” on Thursday, January 9, 2014, from 3:30-4:45 p.m. in the Belmont Room (4th floor) of the Chicago Marriott Hotel during the 129th annual Modern Language Association Conference. This panel is open to the public.

The New York Times has called the controversial Common Core State Standards, “the most important educational reform in the country.” Defending the Common Core, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state school superintendents that he found it  “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core has come from “white suburban moms who—all of a sudden—their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”  

Using a roundtable format, five speakers will examine the effects of the English Language Arts Standards of the Common Core State Standards on the teaching of college courses in Children’s and Young Adult Literature.  The featured speakers for the session are Sarah Minslow, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Kristin McIlhagga, Michigan State University; Michelle Holley Martin, University of South Carolina, Columbia; Joe Sutliff Sanders, Kansas State University; and Daniel D. Hade, Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

While each speaker will present prepared remarks for 5-7 minutes, the session is intended to be an active dialogue and discussion between the speakers and the members of the audience.  Speakers will consider if the Common Core State Standards effectively prepares students for college-level academic work and literacy for the workplace. The political and social implications behind the stated education goals of the Common Core will be examined. 

Since the Common Core recommends that 70% of the texts used by the twelfth grade should be informational texts, how will this effect of the teaching of fiction, poetry, and drama?   Can the Common Core address issues of cultural diversity given the increasing gap between students of color and their predominately white K-12 teachers? 

The session has been selected as part of the conference’s Presidential Theme of “Vulnerable Times” and is chaired by Jan Susina, Illinois State University.

Common Core article in Inside Higher Ed

Just wanted to mention that I am quoted in a rather lengthy, somewhat comprehensive article on "The Common Core on campus" by Libby A. Nelson.  The article was published today on the website Inside Higher Ed, which is connected to The Chronicle of Higher Education.  

Nelson contacted me because I have proposed a special session for MLA 2013 about The Common Core and teaching children's and adolescent literature courses at the university levels.  While some academics have encountered and wrestled with the Common Core, many have not, and, I think, will be somewhat surprised how the creators of this document clearly ignored most university types in favor of business leaders thinking on what's important for school age children to learn.  What's worse, the Obama administration under Arne Duncan's leadership as Secretary of Education has forced states to adopt the Common Core in order to receive the relatively meager amount of money through Race to the Top federal competitions.

Still, as I point out in the article, I am adjusting my syllabi somewhat so that students in my courses are familiar with the texts that are 'recommended' in the Common Core documents.  This summer I'll be teaching Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 and am looking forward to that.  The texts in the Common Core are just suggested, but my feeling is that new teachers especially are going to follow the Common Core documents hook, link, and sinker because they feel they have no choice.

The Common Core certainly presents a conundrum for people who argued vehmently against E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s's ideas that he promoted in Cultural Literacy (1986).  Hirsch said in 2010 that the Common Core has the potential to revolutionize reading particularly as it de-emphasizes literature for a wider selection of texts. Hirsch presented his updated ideas in The Making of Americans: Democracy and our Schools (2010).

Whether academics like it or not, business people and government bureaucrats have decided that there is a canon of texts that all school children need to read and understand.  It's detailed in The Common Core.