Guest Post on The Cooney Center Blog

A few weeks ago, the fabulous folks over at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center invited me to write a post for their (really quite) fantastic blog exploring a topic related to gender and gaming. Having just watched the footage from last summer's 3G Summit (The Future of Girls, Gaming & Gender), I was inspired to write about the ongoing debate around girls and games (e.g. why don't more girls/women design games and/or play non-casual games, etc.), where it stands today, and how it overlaps with similar concerns about girls and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). I also wanted to touch upon potential for UGC games to open up design practices to a greater diversity of players - and this seemed like a good place to start working out those relationships. The result, Getting (More) Girls into (More) Games, went live earlier today, and I'm quite pleased with the feedback so far (albeit, all through personal correspondence...that comments section is looking mighty lonely!). Here's an excerpt:

While the issue of "girls and gaming" has resurfaced several times over the years, there has been a noticeable shift in approach. During the past decade, girls and women have continued to play digital games in greater and greater numbers. They have done this in various ways, from embracing mainstream games, to contributing to the massive success of gender-inclusive games like Mario Kart and Dance Dance Revolution, to sustaining a small but enduring "pink games" market. Much of the discussion has now shifted onto the importance of paying better attention to the games girls do play, and finding out more about how and why. The conversation has also broadened to include boys and men, through a more inclusive consideration of the issues that all players face when it comes to games and gender. 

In other respects the gender gap first observed in the 1990s remains as wide as ever. 

To read the rest, please check out the original post on the Cooney Center Blog. Big thanks to Marj, Michael and the rest of the team for inviting me to contribute to what's turning out to be an amazing online resource for media producers, educators, students and users. I've been following their informative updates and thoughtful debates with great interest (e.g. the Waiting for Superman discussion from a couple of weeks ago, and ongoing posts on the Creativity Crisis), and am thrilled by the opportunity to add my voice to the mix. 

"Arts & Crafts" Materiality in (and out of) Digital Games

©2010 Nintendo, Inc., Kirby Epic Yarn promo materials

This week Nintendo released it's newest installment of the Kirby series, Kirby's Epic Yarn. What piqued my interest about the game is its use of arts & crafts as an aesthetic motif - everything looks like it's made of string, buttons, yarn and zippers. The aesthetic is supplemented by some clever looking game mechanics, which add to the sense of materiality and texture introduced by the game's environments and imagery. For instance, backgrounds contain loose threads that can be pulled, and things made of yarn (including Kirby himself) can change shape. I should add in a disclaimer at this point that this description is based on a cursory review of the demo videos (such as the one I've posted below) and early reviews - I haven't actually played it yet:

Of course, this immediately reminded me of LittleBigPlanet, which obviously also applies an "arts & crafts" aesthetic, albeit in a significantly (i.e. stylistically) distinct way. But as I thought about it a little more, I started to list all the other games I've come across that "play" with materiality, textiles and crafts, and realized that there is a small but notable genre emerging here. Nintendo itself has applied a similar "material" or "arts & crafts" aesthetic to a number of games in the past - most notably in the Paper Mario games, but also in the cardboard cut-out environments of Yoshi's Story:

Games like Crayon Physics, And Yet It Moves and Okami might also be included on this list, though more on the arts aspect than crafts. From Majesco, we now have Crafting Mama for the NDS. And there must be just about a million "girl games" or "pink games" that incorporate crafting to some degree - though I suspect this is predominantly in the form of mini-games, rather than on an aesthetic dimension.  Searching for more examples, I came across this website for KNiiTTiiNG!!, a game that uses the Wii to simulate and teach knitting. Apparently, the game is still in Beta, but it got some media coverage last year (e.g. Kotaku), and is currently being featured as part of an art exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Again - not quite what I have in mind when I'm thinking of materiality and an "arts & crafts aesthetic" - but worth mentioning nonetheless.

All of which leads me back to the other side of this burgeoning relationship between arts & crafts, materiality and videogames, which manifests as physical objects, crafts, embroidery, etc., that reify (reproduce, remediate?) elements and characters from videogames. Aldo Tolino calls these "ludic artifacts": player-created objects that are inspired by video games, but created outside of the games themselves. Oftentimes, these objects aim to transport game themes or characters into the physical world, thereby extending the game experience into other areas of cultural experience & fan practice. 

Gaming community members have long engaged in these practices, which include everything from knitting Metroid Prime dolls, to dressing up as Pacman characters and running around the city, to baking the Portal cake (based on a recipe included in the game as an Easter Egg). For Tolino, one of the most important features of "ludic artifacts" is that they are quite often shared online - through pictures, videos, and other digital artifacts - with other members of the game community. There are also online communities that have formed around particular forms of "ludic artifact" production. An example of this is Sprite Stitch, a blog and forum dedicated to "videogame inspired crafts" and the people who make them. The forum community includes over 1200 knitters, embroiderers and other craftmakers who exchange pictures, patterns and advice about making videogame characters into tangible objects. One of the things that interests me most about these practices is how frequently they combine traditionally feminine (or do I mean feminized) craftwork with videogame fandom - baking, knitting, sewing, carpentry and metalworking. The transfer from digital to material and back to digital again (as the objects are photographed and filmed to be shared online) is simply fascinating. 

More Examples:

• Kirby Epic Yarn Plush on Instructables
• LittleBigPlanet Sackboy Knit Pattern
• AP's list of Video Game themed Crochet & Knit Patterns
• Gaming's Non-Digital Predecessors, by Laurie N. Taylor and Cathlena Martin, University of Florida (International Digital Media & Arts Association Journal, v.1, no.3, SPring 2005, pp.25-9)

The Creativity Crisis Revisited

©laffy4k, Crayola Lincoln Logs, at Flickr

Way back in June, Newsweek did a cover story on the Creativity Crisis, centered on an article by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman about a steady decline in American children's Creativity Quotient (CQ) scores since the early 1990s. The main focus of the article was the most recent batch of findings from a longitudinal study (50 years and counting) initially led by E. Paul Torrance and now headed by Garnet Millar at the Torrance Center for Creative Studies at the University of Georgia. The "Torrance Kids Study" has tracked hundreds of kids over their lives in order to measure creativity, and to understand how early creative skills and expressions can be predictors of later creative accomplishments, ingenuity and success. The gist of the study - and the topic of the article - is summarized in the following excerpt:

Nobody would argue that Torrance’s tasks, which have become the gold standard in creativity assessment, measure creativity perfectly. What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University recently reanalyzed Torrance’s data. The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

What is particularly surprising about this finding is how quickly & recently the shift has happened. As Bronson and Merryman describe:

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

The authors highlight the centrality of creativity/human ingenuity to everything from business and corporate leadership, to everyday problem solving to saving the world. In terms of causes, the usual suspects are fingered (*sigh* - videogames, television, et al.), with a few others inferred, including the enormous emphasis/time taken by curriculum standards. I was especially interested in the coincidence between standards-based education reform, which apparently only started gaining momentum in the US in the early 1990s, right about the time that children's creativity scores began to decline.

The authors also address the systematic cuts to the arts in public education - although they also dismiss increased arts funding as an option, claiming that the "age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded" by studies comparing creativity in music and engineering (an odd choice considering the highly mathematical dimension of music...not to mention the highly creative problem solving aspects of engineering. I'd rather see studies comparing a range of arts and sciences, and focused specifically on curriculum taught in elementary and secondary schools rather than universities, esp. in cases such as these where the findings are being extrapolated - potentially quite erroneously - to kids). The more palatable point of this argument is that allowing more room for creativity across curriculum and subject matter would be immensely valuable to kids. They even point to a couple of examples where incredibly innovative teachers have been able to reach established curriculum standards and foster enormous amounts of creativity and innovative thinking from their students (e.g. using Treffinger’s Creative Problem-Solving method used at the National Inventors Hall of Fame School).

The article - and the many studies and projects it covers - is a really compelling, and I highly recommend reading it now if you missed it last summer (I'm embarrassed to admit that I only skimmed through the first few paragraphs when I initially looked at the story back in July - most of the juicy stuff starts mid-way, though, so I really missed out). I am a bit troubled by the enormous emphasis that is placed on purposive outcomes - both in the article and in the emerging discourses around the creativity crisis. For instance, there's a bit too much focus on the potential negative impact that diminished creativity could have on the market (in terms of product innovation and corporate leadership), and almost no discussion of how this could undermine the richness and diversity of culture. Add those aforementioned substantial cuts in arts education (or even just opportunities to engage in and enjoy the arts) with these general decreases in creativity among today's youth, and the question that first jumps out at me has little to do with outcomes, and everything to do with cultural experience, the aesthetic dimension, joy and beauty...those unmeasurable, quite possibly non-purposive facets of life that make it all worthwhile. But then again, when it comes to kids, purposiveness and instrumentality (and outcomes - developmental, educational, physical, etc.) always take centre stage, so I guess I can hardly blame creativity's champions for wanting to frame the problem in a language policymakers and the public can easily understand.

Anyhow - all of this is rattling around in my brain at quite an opportune time, seeing as I've become somewhat obsessed with creativity, particularly within children's play and cultural production. I'm seeing lots of links with my UGC Game project - at the very least a narrative this study/discussion could provide a great frame for pitching the project and relaying to others (funding agencies, public, press) why it's important to foster spaces for kids to create their own games and play spaces...and films, comics, stories, etc. There are also clear linkages with all the stuff going on with STEM - if we can start refocusing the discussion a little to incorporate a more comprehensive understanding of what goes into innovation - technological, scientific - to include creativity, there may be more space within the discussion for kids' creative practices, like storytelling, make-believe and play. The idea that STEM should be changed to STEAM - science, technology, arts and math.

Lots to think about, and I still need to sort out my ideas about this, but here are some "nodes" in my thought process right now that might eventually become a trajectory for research:


STEM and Storytelling
Many thanks to my assistant, Erica, who got me to give Alice a second (and now a third, fourth, fifth...) look.  In particular, I'm fascinated by the thinking behind Storytelling Alice, which articulates a wonderfully layered approach gaming and learning to make games, as a process that includes both technical skills and storytelling skills. This brought me back to chapter written by Storytelling Alice's creator, Caitlin Kelleher, which describes using storytelling to get girls into computer programming. What about vice versa????

• Kelleher, C. Using Storytelling to Introduce Girls to Computer Programming. In Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Computer Games. Yasmin Kafai, Carrie Heeter, Jill Denner, and Jennifer Sun editors. MIT Press, 2008

"Thinkering"
A multi-modal project being conducted out of the IIT Institute of Design, ThinkeringSpaces is focused on creating "interactive environments that encourage school age children to tinker with things, both physical and virtual, reflect upon what they discover, and elaborate their ideas in ways they can share with others." learning by tinkering and making.

"Cartooning"
An approach developed by one of the members of the Torrance Centre, Bonnie Cramond, at the University of Georgia, "Cartooning" uses some of Torrance's theories (along with others) about teaching creativity through manipulations with cartoons and comics. You can read more about this particular approach on the Centre's Creativity Resources page. Highly reminiscent of a number of tools now available - many of them free - to kids online, including Storybird and Bitstrips.

Creative Explorations
My students just did a workshop on Gauntlett's "Artlab" approach, one of the recommended readings in my research methods class a couple of weeks ago, and I think it fits in somehow here as well. Hmmm...

Joan Ganz Cooney Center
I was actually first alerted to the Newsweek article by Michael Levine and Ann Thai at the Joan Ganz Cooney Centre, who have been at the cutting edge of the story, exploring the issues behind the crisis and formulating possible responses. Of particular interest is the way they are linking this with their ongoing work on kids, education, creativity and digital tech, which you can read more about over at The Huffington Post and on the Cooney Center Blog (especially here, here, and here).

Banned Books Week 2010

©American Library Association, Banned Books Week 2010

This week is Banned Books Week in the US, and a great opportunity to learn more about (not to mention contribute to) the ongoing battle against censorship that readers, librarians, educators and authors across the continent and around the world are engaged in every day. Since last Saturday (September 25th), and ongoing until this coming Saturday (October 2), members of the American Libraries Association (ALA), libraries (and the people who love them), book sellers, book clubs and other fans of intellectual freedom play host to a variety of activities, including read-outs, displays, and even a few events in Second Life. Just like Freedom to Read Week (the Canadian equivalent), one of the primary aims is to raise awareness about the surprising pervasiveness, arbitrariness and absurdity of censorship and book banning campaigns, and to spur a broader debate and discussion about the implications for both individual rights and for the democratic health of our culture(s) as a whole. Since children and youth are so often the ones who pay the price, this issue and event is of particular relevance to young people, child/youth advocates, librarians, educators and parents.

This year, much of the coverage and discourse around Banned Books Week has focused on a recent spurt of book bannings down in Missouri, and the related controversy around an associate prof who dismissed three popular YA novels that deal (apparently quite sensitively) with themes of sexuality as "filthy" and "soft-core porn." The Office of Intellectual Freedom of the ALA was quick to rally support for the targeted authors, a number of whom spoke out quite forcefully against the ban and the larger implications for youth in that area.


Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, wrote an opinion piece, blogged a response and call for action for fans of the book, in the form of letter writing campaigns and other activities aimed at both protesting the ban AND countering the misrepresentation of the book by the associate prof., the school board and the media. The book has also inspired a Twitter campaign, #SpeakLoudly, which has evolved into a broader discussion about banned books, book banning, intellectual freedom and social justice.

Similarly, Sarah Ocker, whose book Twenty Boy Summer was also singled out for criticism and banning, responded in a number of formats, including a blog post, published opinion piece, as well as a Youtube video. I love, love, love that these authors are not only addressing heavy issues in their books, but also fighting back and taking a very vocal and well articulated stand against the book banners. It's not often the most popular thing to do, and it's never easy, and kudos to them for taking the ban so seriously.


Another key text/target being discussed this year is Sherman Alexie's highly acclaimed, award-winning YA book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which has also been banned by school boards in Missouri and Oregon, among others. And, refreshingly, a number of media outlets have also given special attention to the large number of banned graphic novels, such as Bone, which I wrote about briefly last spring.

For more info, updates, or to find events in your area, you can check out the Banned Books Week website, follow the #bannedbooksweek Twitter stream, check out the OIF's machinima contest, or simply make an effort to pick up and read a book on the banned/challenged list (for instance, one of the books listed on the ALA's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books 2000-2009). Or you can pass these books along to others, as this awesome teen started doing last year, or through the Freedom to Read Week/BookCrossings "Free a Challenged Book" initiative.

Just a little reminder that Canada has its own sorted history of book banning, as well as our very own Freedom to Read Week, which takes place every February. Which means that we all have two excellent opportunities a year to take part in the movement.

Upcoming Public Lecture on Pinocchio, Representations of Childhood and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Culture

Check out this upcoming, free, public lecture by Children's Literature professor Laura Tosi - to be held at the Lillian H. Smith Branch (which also houses the The Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books) of the Toronto Public Library on September 30th. I've reproduced the entire announcement from the Italian Cultural Institute website below - I think it will be a great talk, as well as a wonderful opportunity to (finally) visit the Osborne Collection. See you there:

The Fourth Annual Sybille Pantazzi Memorial Lecture

ONCE UPON A PUPPET: PINOCCHIO AND FAIRY TALES IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

A talk by Laura Tosi

On the occasion of the fourth annual Sybille Pantazzi Memorial Lecture, the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Book with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute is proud to present the lecture: Once upon a Puppet: Pinocchio and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Culture by Professor Laura Tosi.

The conference is related to the exhibition "A name that will bring him luck": Pinocchio and the Italian Fairy Tale Tradition that is on view at the Osborne Collection from September 13, 2010 to December 13, 2010.

September 30, 2010 – 8.00 pm 

The Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books 

Toronto Public Library Lillian H. Smith Branch 

239 College Street , Toronto 

Free admission 

Call 416.393.7753 for info 

In her lecture, Professor Tosi will give a lively review of the context in which Pinocchio was written, its narrative and stylistic features, and its inspiration of drama, cartoons, film and prose narratives addressed to child as well as adult audiences. Collodi’s Pinocchio is a subtle and multifaceted book that has broken new ground with its subversive representations of non-model children, but pays tribute to the fairy tale tradition. Professor Tosi discusses Pinocchio as part of this canon of Western children’s literature, but possibly not the “original” that dominates collective imagination. Collodi’s book may be considered only one version among many (The Friends of the Osborne Collection, Gryphon newsletter).

Laura Tosi is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Venice- Ca’ Foscari. She has taught courses and conducted research on British children’s literature, especially on the history of the literary fairy tales in its socio historical context in England and in the English speaking world. She is interested in exploring the social values and role models offered by the fairy tales as historical documents and vehicles of dominant cultural patterns. On these issues in particular, she has lectured extensively at several Italian and foreign universities. In 2000 in Venice she organized an international conference on children’s literature in the English-speaking world, entitled “Hearts of Lightness. The Magic of Children’s literature.” 

The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books belongs to the Toronto Public Library and had its beginnings in a large donation of children’s books made in 1949 by Edgar Osborne, a British librarian. The Osborne Collection has grown to over 80,000 rare and notable modern children's books.

The annual Sybille Pantazzi Memorial Lecture has arrived at its fourth edition and it was created to celebrate beautiful children's books in memory of Sybille Pantazzi (1914-1983), who was a noted Canadian librarian, book-collector and a pioneering scholar in the area of Victorian book design.

Information

Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010

Times: 8:00 p.m.

Venue: Toronto Public Library Lillian H. Smith Branch

Presented by: Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Book

In collaboration with: Italian Cultural Institute

Free admission

Putting Games on the Reading List

Screenshot of Rule of Rose, © 2006 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. 

A colleague of mine has added Portal to the reading list of one of his grad seminar courses this year, which is oh-so-awesome. It's a wonderful game, with mind-blowing gameplay mechanics and a deep and multilayered story that has a surprisingly lot to say (given the game's short length and puzzle-solving focus) about surveillance, corporate control, institutions, gender relations, paranoia, human behavior, and human-technology relations. Coincidently, this is the second time in less than a month that I've heard about a humanities-type university course incorporating Portal as a required reading. The first was announced on Michael Abbott's blog Brainy Gamer, wherein he describes how Portal came to be included alongside Gilgamesh, Aristotle's Politics, and  Shakespeare's Hamlet on the reading list for a core course at Wabash College on "Enduring Questions" in the humanities. If you read the comments section following Abbott's post, you'll see an unfortunate rehearsal of the whole ludology/narratology debate (are games "really" texts, etc.), which is so past its expiry date it's not even funny anymore. When people challenge the idea of games as texts, I think that we can point as much to the players themselves as to the mushrooming body of literature addressing them as such in terms of evidence supporting the notion that games contain important experiential and narrative dimensions (among many, many others), all of which can be analyzed and thought about. But for the most part, the idea now seems sufficiently accepted/normalized that it's generating a thoughtful discussion of how, rather than eternally focusing on why.

As Abbott points out, there are various unexpected logistics involved in putting a digital game on the reading list - from securing licenses and access, to grappling with whether or not one should or can assume a certain level of digital literacy among the students themselves (or will they need tutorials in basic gaming skills first, or is playing the games firsthand required, etc.). Having attempted to incorporate games as recommended readings in some of my previous courses (not required, just recommended), along with my experiment in using Metaplace as a teaching and learning tool last fall, I have a small idea of some of the unexpected challenges and assumptions that arise when bringing games into an otherwise not-game-based curriculum. As I plan on incorporating even more games in my future courses, in exercises and as required readings, I think that I should probably start looking into this a bit more seriously, and potentially try to delineate some guidelines or best practices for points/issues that may need to be addressed.

I've got to say, though, so far I'm finding a lot more support for the theory behind games as learning tools, as well as instructions on how to use games for teaching, rather than practical advice about things like logistics, copyright, which game companies might be willing to offer an educational discount, and what to do about varying literacy/gaming skills. Though for this latter item, I'm sure a bit more delving into the following sites will yield some good advice. Anyway, all this to say that for now, what I've got is primarily a short list of resources that would be the obvious starting points for finding tips and established entry points for games in/as teaching (e.g. great for formulating learning objectives, developing in-class strategies, etc.):

Future Lab: UK non-profit (but surely industry funded) group dedicated to facilitating the incorporation of games and other digital apps into the classroom, enabling tech-based innovation in the development of tech curriculum & pedagogical tools.

Katie Salen's Institute of Play & Quest to Learn: An entire think tank dedicated to harnessing play for education, along with an entire school based around digital interaction, gaming and play. Salen has also written (& edited) key texts within game studies, and both organizations are based on theory grounded principles (as well as, no doubt, intentions to write some new theory).

McDaniel, R. and Telep, P. (2009). Best Practices for Integrating Game-Based Learning into Online Teaching. MERLOT: Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 5(2). Link

Max Lieberman, a graduate student at the University of Arizona, is generously sharing his in-progress research (from proposal to lit review to findings) on the use of games in humanities. He has also launched a resource for educators, called The Educational Game Database/...it's still in the early stages, but hopefully will produce some good material soon. In the meantime, check out his slide presentations on his Research Proposal (examining the use of and outcomes of using digital games "as texts" in college English courses), and his Lit Review on the use of games in humanities education.

Additional possible sources of interest:
Adams, M.G. (2009). Engaging 21st-century adolescents: Video games in the reading classroom. English Journal, 98(6), 56-9. Link (subscription required? not sure)

Clayton, J. and Hall, M. J. (2008). Worlds of Warcraft: class audio and video (Podcast). iTunes U.

Games as writing/narrative tools (rather than texts):
Colby, R.S. and Colby, R. (2008). A Pedagogy of Play: integrating computer games into the writing classroom. Computers and Composition, 25(3), 300-12.

James Paul Gee's copious work on games & learning (e.g. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy).

Jolley, K. (2008). Videogames to reading: Reaching out to reluctant readers. English Journal, 97(4), 81-6.

I've also found this massive list of resources exploring topics related to games in and for education/learning, which you can find here.

Not that I've lost sight of my original mission - I think that potentially some discussion with people who have done this before is the best way to proceed - learn from their mistakes and triumphs, as well as keep a good record of any admin and/or logistical hurdles my colleague (and later on myself) might have to clear this semester. I'm not sure though - was Abbott's experience typical? Have any of you who have incorporated games into a not-otherwise-or-entirely-games-focused course bothered to draft up established procedures for this, or have you even had to? Or has it been quite easy to bring games into a course reading list...both in terms of the associated admin and student response???? Any and all advice on this would be deeply appreciated (in comments or through email/DM).

Job Opportunities in Children's Studies - Pass it on!!!!

Via the Childhood Studies mailing list, as posted by Peter Cumming, an announcement and call for applications for TWO(!) tenure-stream faculty positions at York University's Children's Studies Program. Very exciting news for those of you currently or soon-to-be on the academic job market. I'm so glad to see this program expanding, and am really looking forward to seeing who they get!!!! 


Here's the info, as posted by Cumming earlier today:

It is my pleasure to draw your attention to two new postings for Full-Time Tenure-Stream - Assistant Professor positions at York University in Toronto, Canada, in the Children's Studies Program in the Department of Humanities in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.  One position is in Children's Studies (Contemporary Children's Culture) and the other is in Children's Studies (Children's Literature).  Both are for a start date of July 1, 2011, with an application deadline of October 30, 2010. 

Here are links to the two complete postings: 

Children's Studies (Contemporary Children's Culture): http://webapps.yorku.ca/academichiringviewer/viewposition.jsp?positionnumber=1161 

Children's Studies (Children's Literature): http://webapps.yorku.ca/academichiringviewer/viewposition.jsp?positionnumber=1162 

The posting also notes that they are conducting a broad search for both positions, and welcome applications from scholars from a range of specializations and backgrounds. Also, while all qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, priority will be given to Canadian citizens/permanent residents.

Ready for the (Mockingjay) Revolution

©2010 Scholastic, Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

A short follow up to my previous post on dystopian YA fiction from a couple of weeks ago, to note the release of the third installment of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, last night at midnight. While not as massively popular as "mega"-series like Harry Potter and Twilight (a comparison that will likely make any fan groan, as it's made way too often in discussions of the series), I have noticed that the hype around this series - and this title in particular - has gone from persistent hum to a fairly descent buzz, with most of the high profile kids/youth media sites covering the release, attending launch parties and generally paying attention. Small release parties appear to have been held all over N. America, and Suzanne Collins herself attended the midnight "madness" release party in NYC, at Books of Wonder, which was covered by MTV (no less). You can watch her reading the first chapter here.

A quick tour around the kids/YA lit blogs will confirm just how popular and highly anticipated this particular book is (I'll start you off: go here, here and here). Of course a movie is in the works, and I'm sure we'll be seeing some "interesting" videogame adaptations before too long (the story revolves around a game after all...seems like a total no-brainer. i know that videogames based on other media don't always turn out that well, but there are also some pretty awesome exceptions... American McGee's Alice, Tale of Tales' The Path, Lego Star Wars...). But for now, be sure to check out all the unsanctioned and unofficial fanfare around the series and its characters, from fashion to fan art, and everything in between.

It's Officially CFP Season: Another Childhoods Conference!! (Updated)

© Sesame Workshop, Image of Panwapa

From the looks of all these CFPs flooding my Inbox, 2011 is set to be an AMAZING year for children's studies...which is very fitting, seeing as this year has been proclaimed the International Year of Youth by the UN. This next CFP comes out of Rutgers University in Camden's Department of Childhood Studies, home of several of my favourite academics, including Dan Cook and Lynne Vallone. The conference itself promises to be a good one, with a nice broad focus that will likely bring in a diverse assortment of papers and scholars. Here's the description, as posted on the conference website:

Multiple Childhoods / Multidisciplinary Perspectives: Interrogating Normativity in Childhood Studies

May 20-21, 2011

The Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA

We invite submissions for participation in a conference hosted by the Department of Childhood Studies of Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, USA on Multiple Childhoods/ Multidisciplinary Perspectives. As a field, childhood studies has flourished in large part because scholars have recognized the necessity of moving between and beyond traditional academic disciplines and have resisted the idea that there exists one, normative version of childhood common to all. Indeed, Multiple Childhoods/Multidisciplinary Perspectives seeks participation from those who work to counter the presumption or invocation of an unproblematically normative childhood by making visible how varied material and institutional circumstances, ideologies, beliefs and daily practices serve to shape the unfolding lives and experiences of children.

In this spirit, participants are encouraged to interrogate practices and discourses surrounding childhood and childhood studies, asking, for instance: What forms do childhoods take in various social arrangements? How do the dynamics of social class, ethnicity, race, nationality, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation and religion configure notions of “appropriate” and “inappropriate” childhoods? How do children understand various kinds of social difference and inequalities? What about the understandings of researchers, and those who care for or otherwise attend to children? In what ways do conceptualizations of “the child” and of presumed normative childhoods—in research, in the commercial world, in institutional and everyday settings, in literature and discourse—inform the kinds of actions undertaken by and on behalf of children?

*Abstract submission opens here September 1st

Click HERE for full Call for Papers or download the PDF.

Updated Aug. 23, 2010: And here's another one:

CALL FOR PAPERS

Young People’s Cultures & Games, Gaming, and Play

A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE

AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
FREDERICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK

MAY 28-31, 2011

DEADLINE: November 15, 2010

Gaming and play culture have long been central components of childhood taking many forms across the Global North and South. The digital format dominates playtime today, but play is, and has been, a more complex set of practices in the everyday lives of young people. This session aims to explore how games, gaming, and play are tied to contemporary forms of social interaction and alternative ways of thinking and learning in the context of a dynamic media ecology that is participatory even while being shaped by an unparalleled moment of media concentration.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to): forms of participation games and gaming engender for children and youth; forms of learning present, missing or reinforced through gaming; gaming literacies and specific forms of knowledge produced by games; barriers to entry in gaming/game communities; the role of race, gender, and sexuality in gaming cultures; post-coloniality and gaming cultures; identity, performance, and game play; the “burden” of play on children and youth; the expectations that children will learn and be socialized through play; the “right” of children and youth to play.

Following the instructions under Option # 1 at www.accute.ca/generalcall.html, send three documents in separate electronic files directly to admin@arcyp.ca by November 15, 2010: (1) a 700-word proposal or 8- to 10-page double-spaced paper, without identifying marks; (2) a 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical statement; and (3) a Proposal Submissions Information Sheet.

NOTES: You must be a current member of ARCYP or ACCUTE to submit to this session. Rejected submissions will not be moved into the general “pool” of ACCUTE submissions.

Please feel free to print or forward the attached PDF of this Call for Papers: cfp ARCYP ACCUTE Congress 2011 Games, Gaming, and Play. 

Dystopia...Now for Kids!

© 2008 Disney/Pixar, Film still from Wall-E 

I read a great article in The New Yorker a couple of months ago, written by Laura Miller, exploring the role and rise of dystopian fiction in children's and YA lit. The article describes the recent boom in the genre, focusing on Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy (the 3rd installment comes out in 22 days...and yes, I am counting), but also drawing parallels with a number of other titles that fit the description, including Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy and Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go (also part of a trilogy...hmmm). While I don't agree with all of her conclusions (more on that below), what I like about Miller's exploration is its grounding in both a historical context (pointing out that dystopian themes have been a part of youth literature for a long, long time) and recent academic work on the function of the dystopian narrative within youth culture (and experience).

A key point here is that while there are of course continuities between youth and adult dystopian fiction, there are significant differences as well. And the elaboration of these differences might be what makes this recent incarnation of dystopian youth fiction unique and noteworthy. Miller writes:

"In an essay for the 2003 collection Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults, the British academic Kay Sambell argues that “the narrative closure of the protagonist’s final defeat and failure is absolutely crucial to the admonitory impulse of the classic adult dystopia.” The adult dystopia extrapolates from aspects of the present to show readers how terrible things will become if our deplorable behavior continues unchecked. The more utterly the protagonist is crushed, the more urgent and forceful the message.

Because authors of children’s fiction are “reluctant to depict the extinction of hope within their stories,” Sambell writes, they equivocate when it comes to delivering a moral. Yes, our errors and delusions may lead to catastrophe, but if—as usually happens in dystopian novels for children—a new, better way of life can be assembled from the ruins would the apocalypse really be such a bad thing?"

Miller reads Sambell's argument as basically saying that adult and youth dystopian fiction serve the same purpose. Miller summarizes this purpose as delivering a moral: "This is what will happen if we don’t turn back now, they scold, and scolding makes sense when your readers have a shot at getting their hands on the wheel." In response, Miller points out that "Children, however, don’t run the world, and teen-agers, especially, feel the sting of this." As a result, Miller suggests that dystopian narrative in youth fiction is actually both more pessimistic, and ultimately more personal...reflecting young people's feelings of disaffection and lack of agency in their everyday lives. She describes, for instance, that:

"The Hunger Games could be taken as an indictment of reality TV, but only someone insensitive to the emotional tenor of the story could regard social criticism as the real point of Collins’s novel. The Hunger Games is not an argument. It operates like a fable or a myth, a story in which outlandish and extravagant figures and events serve as conduits for universal experiences. Dystopian fiction may be the only genre written for children that’s routinely less didactic than its adult counterpart. It’s not about persuading the reader to stop something terrible from happening—it’s about what’s happening, right this minute, in the stormy psyche of the adolescent reader."

While I find many of Miller's arguments about the connections between youth experience and dystopian representations quite brilliant, I think that Miller has missed Sambell's point...Or at least missed a key component of dystopian youth fiction that runs counter to Miller's assessment. While it's true that children and teens don't rule the world, I think it's also true that the dystopian fiction written for them generally responds quite meaningfully to the particular lack of authority and power experienced by young people (as opposed to the lack of power to resist Big Brother, or the lack of authority to make decisions for oneself, found in adult-oriented dystopias). For instance, in The Hunger Games, the only real criterion for inclusion in the lottery is youth. The particular matrix of social, economic, political and legal relationships that are unique to the childhood & youth experiences are very much at the centre of the dystopia represented in this series, and I would suspect in many other examples of dystopian youth fiction as well.

The morality tales, the glimmers of hope at the end of the dark tunnel, contained within these stories are also reflective of this. As Sambell writes in another one of her articles, the point of these narratives is often to "critique and subvert the polluted adult world," whilst the optimistic glimmer of hope lies not so much in what might be accomplished in the present in order to avoid the downfall as it does in the unexpected opportunities for change that may yet emerge in a post-apocalyptic world.  So - not so much a warning of what might happen if "deplorable behavior" of adults "continues unchecked" - after all, the deplorable behaviors are those of adults, of the adult world over which children have little control (and which anyway seem to be spiraling so far beyond anyone's control that some sort of apex seems inevitable). But rather, there is an underlying message of encouragement and consolation: that even if all IS lost, there may yet be hope. Invariably, that hope is embodied in the children and youth at the centre of the narrative - in turn transferred onto the young readers themselves. This is what Sambell means, I think, when she talks about dystopian novels for children as different from those for adults, in that they are not warning the reader of an approaching societal collapse so much as suggesting that a better life/alternative way may nonetheless be assembled from the ruins. This is what Sambell is describing when she states that children’s authors (and, I would argue, other children's media producers) are “reluctant to depict the extinction of hope within their stories.”

And while I agree with Miller that dystopian youth titles (at least the ones that I've read so far) do indeed explore "what's happening, right this minute" in the lives and psyches of the young readers, I think it's misguided to limit that to immediate contexts such as home, school and peer groups. Young readers, from very young children to adolescents, also experience social change and global politics, grapple with the horrors of war and global warming - much more than they are given credit for. Dystopian fiction serves the same function for young people as it does for older people - as a forum for exploring worries and fears about the state of the world, as an exercise in imagining worst case scenarios, and a space for "testing" possible strategies and responses. These larger issues do, as Miller suggests, overlap and coincide with more immediate issues - but then again they do in adult dystopian fiction as well. The links between the future and the present, the fantastical and the tangible (or as Miller calls them "universal experiences"), are what enable us to understand dystopian fiction as stories about contemporary issues - and in a more quotidian way, what often enable us to understand our own relationships with more abstract, global and social phenomena in the first place.

© 2010 skellingt0n: Fan imagining of a
The Hunger Games movie poster (DeviantArt)

Anyway, the article is a thought provoking one that sent me hunting down articles and books on the subject, and potentially down an interesting path to add down the line to my research program. It also made me think about all of the other examples of dystopian fiction in children's lit and media - and the similarities with other genres that share an emphasis on the darker aspects of childhood (as found in Where the Wild Things Are, Mirror Mask, Coraline, which explore feelings of powerlessness, etc.). Certainly Wall-E popped into my mind immediately as a sort of "post-apocalypse" narrative that chooses not to present the "dystopia" as completely irreversible and totally impossible, and give the viewers that reassurance at the end that there may still be hope somewhere down the line. There's certainly a lot to explore here, and now that I've tracked down some of the literature, I plan on doing just that.

Libraries, the new Cupcakes!

© Kim Bolan Cullin, 2010, Teen Spaces 2nd Edition's photostream

Via YPulse and NPR, some thought provoking discussion this week about the growing buzz around libraries, and the surprising idea that libraries might be the "new big pop-culture wave." Or, as NPR put it, libraries are (or at least could very well become) the new cupcake.

I particularly enjoyed YPulse's interview with Kim Bolan Cullin, which links the apparent hype around libraries to a widespread movement to rejuvenate the public library system by better targeting and addressing youth, their needs and culture. Bolan Cullin is the author of the American Library Association's resource guide Teen Spaces: The Step-by-Step Library Makeover. The guide is now in its second edition, and will soon be joined by a companion piece on designing spaces for children. She's been studying design trends and devising solutions for several years now, and in the interview describes how much is changing when it comes to youth/children's services within public libraries across the US. For instance, she explains:

Over the years I’ve seen a huge shift in how libraries are thinking about space allocation and "space equity" for teens. This is happening with building revamps and renovations as well as with new building construction. More and more libraries are planning and designing space for teenagers as a priority rather than an afterthought. This is a huge step and I hope to see it continue. I have also been training people to "zone" their children’s libraries in order to create appropriate space for pre-teens, which is essential to this age group. This topic will be part of my upcoming book on Children’s Spaces so I hope to see more people reaching out to 9 – 12 year olds in the future.

In terms of the kind of ideological shifts Bolan Cullin sees as key drivers of this movement is an important change in the way that youth culture is approached and understood. She describes:

Increasingly there is an understanding that “adults are not teens” and adults cannot assume what is important or relevant to teenagers. [...] Many in the profession are looking at what’s behind [the Harry Potter and Twilight] “phenomenon” and trying to understand the appeal and then incorporating what they’ve learned into how they program for teens and how they make recommendations for materials, whether books or media. As many know, youth interests evolve and change faster than the typical adult can keep up with, but “keeping up with it” is part of a librarian’s job and getting teens involved in the whole process, whether it’s by them educating us, or them helping us plan and/or implement, is the true key to success.

Additionally, the movement appears to be striving for better gender representation - library services & collections for youth have traditionally leaned toward female readers (a quick glance at the YA section of any book store shows a similar trend), and so the incorporation of different genres, graphic novels, comics, manga, videogames and other media are apparently being used to create more gender inclusive spaces.

In terms of what this all looks like when put into practice, Bolan Cullin has compiled a Flickr collection of photos of youth libraries that she finds particularly awesome and well designed (as seen in the example at the top of this post). Although the YPulse article doesn't address it specifically, the discussion also reminds me of the recent news articles on library branches popping up in shopping malls as another way of targeting and adapting to youth culture.

My own perspective on this is definitely biased - having just joined a Faculty of Information, my increased exposure to libraries, library issues and news items was clearly inevitable. But that said, I'm nonetheless convinced that's something's up - I've been seeing library sites and videos popping up everywhere all summer, including some especially awesome things like the I Love Libraries website (and Facebook Group), and this pro-library parody of the Old Spice ad put together by BYU.

Mobile Phones in TV (& YA Lit) Depictions of Pretty Little Teen Girls

©2010 Alloy Entertainment, television still from Pretty Little Liars

So, I've been watching Alloy Entertainment's most recent offering, Pretty Little Liars, and I must say it's every bit the guilty pleasure of Gossip Girl (one of Alloy's other hits) or of early seasons of The O.C. It's very much a soap opera, with its impossible plot lines and coincidences, scandalous-to-disturbing romances, and always impeccably beautiful actresses, etc. It also has the usual insane casting found in most TV high school dramas: the actresses playing the 16-year-old Pretty Little Liars are all in their 20s (with the possible exception of Shay Mitchell), the actor who plays Aria's teacher/secret boyfriend is only 3 years older than the actress (he's 24 and she's 21), Spencer and her "much older" sister are played by actresses aged 25 and 26 respectively...the usual silliness which results in everyone looking the same age (since they actually are) and lets writers blur the lines when it comes to in/appropriate behaviours and relationships. But the show also has some interesting things to say about female friendship, and has enough scary moments, thrills and titillating revelations to keep you (well, me, anyway) watching.

One of the things that struck me was the centrality of mobile phones to the show's story lines, action and the characters' daily lives. As in Gossip Girl (especially the first two seasons), and a bunch of cheesy teen horror movies released over the past few years, plot developments often arrive in the form of texts, which the characters receive and must then react to, which in turn drives much of the action. Interestingly, in both GG and PLL the sender of the texts ("Gossip Girl" and "A") is anonymous and threatening. "Her" texts (for in both cases the anonymous sender is encoded/thought of as female) are a source of emotional pain and strife, and/or a catalyst for altercations, confrontations, and destructive behaviours. At the same time, the power of the texts (and their senders) lies in their capacity to reveal and mobilize "truth". In both cases, Gossip Girl and A are seemingly ubiquitous - all seeing, all knowing - and the threat they pose is their ability to expose the characters' lies. And since both shows depict high school as a world of lies, pretense and performance, the characters often see protecting the lies as critical - the only way to preserve their social status, maintain their relationships, be successful, etc.

©2009 Alloy Entertainment: television still of Gossip Girl, courtesy of Videogum

To further complicate things is an underlying morality tale (often, though not always) that "the truth will set you free" - that the immediate pain of a lie revealed is ultimately worth it, that living with the consequences of the truth will make you a better person, bring you and your friends or family closer together, let you escape from the deceit and illusion of harmful high school hierarchies, and of course let you be your "true" self. In both shows, keeping secrets and telling lies is largely what created the trouble that the characters are now in (got themselves into). In PLL, for example, it's strongly implied that if the girls had simply told the truth last summer (when the events driving the show's plot took place), their mysterious tormentor "A" would have nothing to threaten them with and they could go on living their (albeit imperfect) lives uninterrupted.

What I particularly like about the way the shows, and the books before them, don't just include mobile phones but really explore the technology - to the point of occasionally coming close to critical analysis, very nearly deconstructing the role of mobile phones in youth's, and especially teen girls', lives. Pretty Little Liars depicts the mobile phone as taking precedence anytime it rings, to the point of not only distracting the girls from school or social relationships, but overshadowing major events in the girls' lives (e.g. the funeral in the first episode). And this preeminence of the devices -- or rather of the messages they carry -- is very much felt and noticed by the characters. They're disturbed by it and by what their phones are letting in...they try to block the unknown sender, but that causes even more problems (other people are blocked, the sender retaliates, etc.). But the devices themselves are not vilified - in fact, they are a crucial tool for collaboration, for safety and staying in touch. The girls use the phones to call for help, to warn each other, and to rally together to lend support and assistance. A spectrum of facets/uses of the technology are thus explored. The phone can be a source of threat and bullying, but it is more importantly a persistent link to the group.

The show also offers some context to the communicative function of mobile technology, placing it along a continuum of various methods and tools that can be similarly used to bully and torment. In light of the ongoing public discourse around texting and bullying, which often seems to approach this phenomenon as something totally new and totally the fault of the technology, I think this aspect of the story is particularly valuable. When the girls (temporarily) block "A" from calling their mobiles, s/he moves on to more traditional forms of communication - hand written or hand delivered messages, along with video and photographs (which can be digital or not). But this suddenly makes things a lot scarier and more threatening. The message scrawled on Spencer's bedroom mirror in red lipstick means that "A" was in the house with her. As the messages start appearing in increasingly intimate and immediate contexts, the threat is amplified tenfold, and the threat of physical danger all the more tangible. Suddenly the digital texts, though disruptive, don't seem so bad...at least they held an illusion of distance and containment.

©2010 Alloy Entertainment, television still from Pretty Little Liars, courtesy of The Remote Generation

Note: Alloy Entertainment recently launched a new digital division aimed at producing online cross-platform series, which you can read more about here. Seeing as the company started out as an online community turned book packager, and has been a key player in youth market research -based content development, I suppose it's not all that surprising that they (and the creative types they hire to write their books and other media products) spend enough time thinking about information technologies to generate more interesting treatments of them than is usually found on TV (not to mention other traditional media - the way computers and mobile phones are depicted in movies is often laughable).

(Another) CFP Alert: The Childhoods Conference: Mapping the Landscapes of Childhood

"Childhood Map" ©2009 by Joe Beale at ghost blog

Via the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures (CRYTC) website, another CFP for yet another fantastic looking conference on topics related to children's culture & media studies. This one seeks to explore a wide range of issues that will help map the state of child studies in Canada, as well as examine our ever changing notions & understandings of childhood(s). Here's the description from the conference website:

The landscape of child studies has changed. The Childhoods Conference: Mapping the Landscapes of Childhood is meant to engage scholars and practitioners from a wide variety of academic disciplines and institutions to consider the state of child studies in Canada. Beginning in the last decade of the 20th century, disciplines long dedicated to the study of the child and childhood have been revitalized, while those whose attention to childhood had waned significantly since mid-century are newly engaged with the central problematic of what the child and childhood represents. Figured in the plural, childhoods pose a significant crossroads for theoretical and empirical work on the nature of being human and development broadly construed, and childhood as an experience, as a social category, as an artistic and literary construct, as a category for historical and demographic analysis, as a category of personhood, and as a locus for human rights and policy interventions. Considering childhoods of the past, present and future , scholars will present research results, policy approaches, and theoretical paradigms that are emergent in this re-engagement with the child and childhoods. Bringing together divergent networks of expertise organized around childhoods, this conference offers the opportunity for new research collaborations and the scholarly dissemination of innovative research.

Venue: University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada

Date: Thursday, May 5 - Saturday, May 7, 2011

Conference Format:

* Two days of multidisciplinary scholarly panels on conference themes
* Three separate keynote events
* A film night
* One day of poster and practitioner sessions

Conference themes include: Definitions of Childhood; Indigenous Theories of Childhood; Gender and childhood; Globalization; Technology; Adolescence; Empowerment; Health, Disability, and Risk. Keynote speakers include Dr. Allison James (University of Sheffield, Director of Interdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences (ICOSS)) and Dr. Mavis Reimer (University of Winnipeg...as well as the Canada Research Chair in the Culture of Childhood and Director of the CRYTC).

To participate in the conference you'll need to submit a 300-500 word proposal/abstract 300 and 500 words through conference website (see links on left hand side) by October 1, 2010. Multidisciplinary panels are welcome. Graduate students are encouraged to contribute posters on current research (there's even a prize attached).

Impressively, the conference will also include a series of practitioner workshops devoted to the following topics: Digital bullying; Brain development; and Changing family contexts.

Find out more (or submit an abstract) here, or by emailing childhoods [at] uleth.ca.