Ecologies of Childhood

KEYNOTE:  The Complex Precursors, Legacies, and Possibilities of Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins  

August 13th at 9:00-10:00am

Corwin Pavilion, University Center, UC Santa Barbara

Dr. Sara L. Schwebel is Professor and Director of the Center for Children’s Books at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  A historian by training, her research centers on the historical narratives young people absorb through frequently assigned fiction and nonfiction—as well as the way K-12 educators can challenge the heritage-based approach long central to school history.  Schwebel is the author of Child-Sized History: Fictions of the Past in U.S. Classrooms (Vanderbilt UP, 2011), editor of Island of the Blue Dolphins: The Complete Reader’s Edition (U of California Press, 2016),   

co-editor, with Jocelyn Van Tuyl, of Dust Off the Gold Medal: Rediscovering Children’s Literature at the Newbery Centennial (Routledge, 2022) and, in collaboration with student researchers and the National Park Service (United States), author of the Books to Parks site on Christopher Paul Curtis’ The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 (forthcoming) and Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, a survival story (ending in Santa Barbara) that has long been celebrated as a feminist and environmental text but which problematically positions an indigenous Californian as both a “girl Crusoe” and “the last of her tribe.” Before beginning her academic career, Schwebel taught middle school U.S. history and English Language Arts. 

KEYNOTE:  When Oil and Childhood Mix: Children's Literature and (or as) Petroculture

August 14th at 8:45-9:45am

Corwin Pavilion, University Center, UC Santa Barbara

Dr. Lara Saguisag is Associate Professor and Georgiou Chair in Children’s Literature and Literacy at New York University. Her research, teaching, and community projects are informed by climate justice and energy justice movements. Her current research project investigates the ways children’s cultural forms naturalize and interrogate human relationships with fossil fuels. Through the Children’s Literature Association’s Climate Justice Interest Group, which Saguisag founded and currently convenes, she works with colleagues to promote climate justice-oriented research and teaching. With Marek Oziewicz, she co-founded Climate Lit, an open-access web resource for teaching climate change and climate justice through literature for young people. Saguisag’s other interests include comics and graphic novels, Philippine children’s literature, and transformative justice in education. Her monograph Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics (Rutgers UP, 2018) examines how the intertwined discourses of childhood, citizenship, and nationhood were expressed in and complicated by Progressive Era newspaper comics. It received several honors, including the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society and an Eisner nomination for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. Saguisag is also the author of several children’s books, including Animal Games and Children of Two Seasons: Poems for Young People.

KEYNOTE:  Protecting Children, Protecting Nature: The Rise and Contestation of Environmental Education in China 

August 15th at 8:45-9:45am

Corwin Pavilion, University Center, UC Santa Barbara

Dr. Orna Naftali is Director of the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main research interests include the anthropology of childhood, schooling and education in modern and contemporary China, with a particular focus on issues of science and subjectivity, gender and sexuality, citizenship and legal consciousness, nationalism, militarization, and the nation-state. She is the author of two books: Children, Rights, and Modernity in China: Raising Self-Governing Citizens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Children in China (Polity, 2016), and is currently working on a new book project on the militarization of children’s culture and education in the People’s Republic of China (1949-). Her articles have appeared in leading academic journals, including Journal of Youth Studies; Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research; Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth; The China Quarterly; The China Journal; Modern China; and the Journal of Contemporary China. 

KEYNOTE: Thinking with Black Ecologies in Early Childhood Studies

August 16th at 8:45-9:45am

Corwin Pavilion, University Center, UC Santa Barbara

Dr. Fikile Nxumalo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, where she directs the Childhood Place Pedagogy Lab.  She is also affiliated faculty in the School of the Environment. Her scholarship focuses on developing possibilities for anti-colonial early childhood environmental education. Her work seeks to make conceptual, methodological, curricular and pedagogical contributions in disrupting settler colonial erasures and anti-Blackness in environmental education for young children. Fikile’s scholarship works across multiple fields including childhood studies, children’s geographies, Indigenous and Black studies, social studies of science, and the environmental humanities and sciences. Her book, Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education (Routledge, 2019) examines the entanglements of place, environmental education, childhood, race, and settler colonialism in early learning contexts. Her current research aims to generate insights on how Black ecologies can inform the design of climate justice education in Canadian cities.

ARTIST-AUTHOR PLENARY

August 13th at 5:10-6:00pm

Corwin Pavilion, University Center, UC Santa Barbara

Gene Luen Yang writes, and sometimes draws, comic books and graphic novels. As the Library of Congress’ fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, he advocates for the importance of reading, especially reading diversely. American Born Chinese, his first graphic novel from First Second Books, was a National Book Award finalist, as well as the winner of the Printz Award and an Eisner Award. His two-volume graphic novel Boxers & Saints won the L.A. Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award Finalist. His other works include Secret Coders (with Mike Holmes), The Shadow Hero (with Sonny Liew), New Super-Man from DC Comics (with various artists), and the Avatar: The Last Airbender series from Dark Horse Comics (with Gurihiru). In 2016, he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

ARTIST-AUTHOR PLENARY

August 14th at 3:45-4:35pm

Corwin Pavilion, University Center, UC Santa Barbara

Jorge Argueta is a Pipil Nahua Indian from El Salvador. He is a prize-winning poet and author of more than twenty award-winning children’s picture books. The California Association for Bilingual Education honored him with its Courage to Act Award. In addition, Jorge Argueta is the founder of The International Children's Poetry Festival Manyula, and also created The Library of Dreams in his native El Salvador, a non-profit organization that promotes literacy in both rural and metropolitan areas. In 2023 he was named Poet Laureate of San Mateo County and his book Viento, Vientito won the Premio Campoy-Ada Award in Children’s Poetry given by the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española. His fourth book in the series celebrating Mother Earth, Tierra, Tierrita won The Salinas De Alba Award, for Latino Children’s Literature. Jorge divides his time between San Francisco, California, and El Salvador.

ARTIST-AUTHOR PLENARY

August 14th at 4:50-5:40pm

Corwin Pavilion, University Center, UC Santa Barbara

Maya Gonzalez is an award-winning children’s book artist, author, activist and progressive educator. Maya's work addresses systemic inequity in relation to race/ethnicity, sexism and cissexism using children’s books as radical agents of change and healing, both personally and culturally. Maya co-founded Reflection Press, a POC, queer and trans owned independent publishing house that uses holistic, nature-based, and anti-oppression frameworks in their books and materials for kids and grown-ups. Maya is also the creator of the Gender Wheel, a tool to express the dynamic, infinite and inclusive reality of gender, and provides lectures and workshops to educators, parents and caregivers. See also: www.mayagonzalez.com | www.genderwheel.com | www.reflectionpress.com

ARTIST-AUTHOR PLENARY

August 16th at 5:10-6:00pm

Corwin Pavilion, University Center, UC Santa Barbara

Eugene Yelchin is a writer and illustrator of books for children and young adults. Yelchin is a National Book Award finalist for The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge co-authored with M. T. Anderson and the recipient of Newbery Honor for Breaking Stalin’s Nose. He received Sydney Taylor Award for The Genius Under the Table, Golden Kite Award for The Haunting of Falcon House, Crystal Kite Award for illustrating Won Ton, National Jewish Book Award for illustrating The Rooster Prince of Breslov, and Tomie DePaola Award from the Society of Children Books Writers and Illustrators. His books were named Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, People Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Horn Book, USA Today, Amazon, NPR, Huffington Post, School Library Journal, etc., and were translated in dozens of languages worldwide. For more information please visit: eugeneyelchin.com

EVENING STORYTELLING SPEAKER:  Chumash Storytelling, Multicultural Center (MCC) 

Barbareño Chumash elder Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto has worked to document the Barbareño language and as an illustrator and Chumash historian. She is the daughter of Mary Yee, who was the last first language speaker of Barbareño and some of her family's stories were documented by ethnologist John Peabody Harrington. She has worked closely with anthropologist John Johnson documenting family memories and Barbareño Chumash cultural traditions. She is the illustrator of a children's book which tells one of her mother's cultural stories, The Sugar Bear Story (2005). The United States National Park Service has devoted a web page to her commentary on Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), where she shares her family’s stories about the Lone Woman of San Nicolas, the historical figure on whose life the book is based. In 2009, she helped to co-write a documentary film script with John Johnson for the film 6 Generations: A Chumash Family's History (2010) by Paul Goldsmith, which won several awards at the Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival (2012). 

EVENING FILM EVENT SPEAKER:  Special Film Screening of "Whale Rider" and Discussion, Carsey-Wolf Center

Māori author Witi Ihimaera celebrates 50 years since he became New Zealand’s first Māori novelist with Tangi, published, in 1973. Since then Ihimaera has become one of the world’s leading indigenous writers with four of his novels made into feature films. Among them is The Whale Rider, 1987, whose film adaptation became a huge hit in 2002, winning audience awards around the world. Acknowledged as a mentor of younger New Zealand writers, playwrights, editors and filmmakers, his titles include The Matriarch 1986, Bulibasha1994, The Uncle’s Story 2000 (in feature film development), Sleeps Standing 2017 (in feature film development), two memoirs and a non-fiction history of Maori mythology. He is a multi-award winner in his own country and, internationally, the holder of a Premio Ostana, 2010, and a Chevalier Des Arts et Lettres 2017. He lives in Auckland.

EVENING FILM EVENT MODERATOR:  Special Film Screening of "Whale Rider" and Discussion, Carsey-Wolf Center

An Associate Professor in Te Kura Toi Tangata, Division of Education, Dr. Nicola Daly is a sociolinguist interested in the language hierarchies present in children’s literature. She is also interested in the pedagogical potential of picturebooks for social justice in educational contexts from early childhood settings through to tertiary contexts. She teaches courses in children’s literature and supervises Masters and Ph.D. students in children’s literature and language-related topics. The main focus of her research is in the language used in children’s picturebooks. Her research has examined the use of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English picturebooks, and more recently has been analyzing the linguistic landscape of dual language picturebooks. She also has explored the link between national identity and children’s literature.