The Great Puzzle: Issues of self-identity in Carroll's Wonderland

Earlier this year, Jen Harrison at East Stroudsburg University, asked me to write a Guest Post on her blog, The Worrisome Words. Here's a link to my post "The Great Puzzle: Issues of Self-identity in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

Thanks Professor Harrison for publishing my essay on a question Alice asks, "Who in the world am I?"

Remembering Morton Cohen

 I was saddened to learn of the passing of Morton Cohen at age 96 who obituary is in The New York Times. Cohen was the premiere Lewis Carroll scholar. He edited the two-volume The Letters of Lewis Carroll, with assistance from Roger Lancelyn Green, which was published in 1979. Cohen's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1995, is the definitive biography on the Victorian author, photographer, and mathematician. 

Cohen was a classic researcher and scholar. While Cohen published many works on Carroll, the edited Letters and the biography form the basis for serious Lewis Carroll scholarship. 

I was fortunate to meet Cohen on several occassions through the meetings of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. He was formal,  but friendly. He seemed be a man steeped in Victorian culture. 

Cohen was also well known for significant work on H. Rider Haggard.

After a lifetime of researching Lewis Carroll, Cohen wrote his definitive Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Click here or on the title to a link of a .pdf of my book review of Cohen's biography: "On a First-Name Basis with Charles Lutwidge Dodgson" published in Children's Literature 26. 

CFP for 2018 MLA 4H: History, Hamilton, & Hip hop in High School

Here's the paper call for the session I'm chairing at MLA in 2018.

CFP for 2018 MLA

4H:History, Hamilton, & Hip hop in High School

2018 MLA Conference, New York City, January 4-7, 2018

Session sponsored by MLA’s Children & Young Adult Literature Forum

This session will examine the range of innovative informational texts and historical fictions that introduce young adult readers to significant events and figures in American history and culture in innovative formats. The session will consider creative texts that move beyond the traditional, and sometimes dull textbook approach, to reimagine American history and attempt to reach young adult readers/viewers in nontraditional ways. Possible texts might include, but are not limited to, the cast recording of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton; John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell’s March trilogy; Kate Schatz’s Rad American Women A-Z; Don Brown’s Drowned City; Carole Boston Weatherford’s Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer; Derek Waters’s Drunk History; and John and Hank Green’s Crash Course YouTube Channel. The session will appraise the multiple methods that contemporary writers and illustrators are using to present and represent American history and culture in inventive, but accurate, ways that will resonate with contemporary young adults.

Send 250-word abstract by March 10, 2017 to Jan Susina (jcsusina@ilstu.edu) . In order to participate in this session, you need to be a member of MLA by April 7, 2017.

Jan Susina

Professor of English

English Department

Illinois State University

Secrets of Famous Children's Literature

Do you know about the real lost map that's connected to Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson? This mystery is one of several background stories about children's books that I talked about with Rachel Hatch in an article in the latest issue of Redbird Scholar, Illinois State University's magazine on faculty & staff research.

Q&A with Jan Susina: Secrets and origins of famous children's literature

 Jan Susina

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.