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. 

Fall 2012: Adolescent Literature

Welcome back to ISU!  Syllabi for Adolescent Literature, sections 1 and 2, are now availble on my website.  Here's a link.  Looking forward to a great semester learning about great books, films, plays, poems, graphic novels, and multimedia for teens.

Quidditch at ISU

ISU's new Quidditch team plays an amazing season of rough-and-tumble Quidditch.  My family and I enjoyed watching the lively games rendered for Muggle-style as the teams played hard last fall on the ISU Quad. The season seems to have two parts, fall and spring. Here's a link to the team's Facebook page.

Since this week we're studying Harry Potter in one of my classes, I thought I'd post a few photos from a match we saw last fall. The team is definitely worth checking out.  It's an amazing mash-up of book fans with a curiously interesting real game that's a cross between rugby, lacrosse, soccer and broom ball.

Instead of having the golden snitch a flying ball, in the Muggle version it's a person dressed as gold who runs around and hides.The players ride broomsticks while trying to get balls through the hoops.The play can get intense.

The fans are enthusiastic and creative as well.

Course descriptions for my summer & fall classes

Potential students at ISU for this summer's ENG 375: Young Adult Literature and next fall's ENG 272: Literature for Middle Grades can now read course descriptions and book lists for the sections that I will be teaching.

Course description for ENG 375: Young Adult Literature (in .pdf format). This is a four-week, intensive summer-session class that will meet Monday-Thursday 1--3:50 p.m from May 26 to June 9. Be prepared for a considerable amount of reading and writing during an interesting and challenging four-week course.  Attendance is crucial. Since you'll have the book lists, you might want to get a head start on reading now, if you're enrolled in this course.

Course description for ENG 272: Literature for Middle Grades (in .pdf format).  This course will be taught during the Fall 2011 semester and focuses on texts for children 9 - 13.  We will read fiction, including multicultural novels, non-fiction, including information books, and examine children's media and culture.  Be prepared for writing a research paper, a short paper, and several short writing assignments as well as pop quizzes and two exams.

As usual, I expect students to attend class regularly and to actively participate in class discussions. These courses have exams that you will be required to take.

For those of you interested in ENG 470: Topics in Children's Literature, the topic is going to be Tween Literature and Culture.  I am working on that course description.  Any graduate student who's interested might look at ENG 272 for some of the primary texts.  However, it will be different in scope and will have assignments and discussions geared toward the graduate-student level.  I think that there is a need to critically examine this popular and fast-growing segment of children's literature and culture, particularly for graduate students in children's literature.