Student News

2006-2007 Academic Year:

• Behind this artfully designed website, as the graphic angel in the background of various publications of the National Center for the Study of Children's Literature, there has been one person: Jessica Knapp. On the office staff of the Department of English and Comparative Literature for several years, Jessica has been a skilled and personable aide to faculty and to the NCSCL in its various ventures. Not surprisingly, in her other life, Jessica is an artist; specializing in ceramics, she has mounted exhibits of her work in various venues across this country. Now, Jessica has won a Alexander von Humboldt Award. With this prestigious fellowship, she will be a resident artist at the Ceramic Center Belin, study uses of porcelain in Germany and, near the end of her year-long residency, exhibit her artwork at the Ceramic Center Berlin's gallery space. While Jessica will be sorely missed, we wish her the very best. (posted 5/5/06)

2005-2006 Academic Year:

• Welcome to the newest students, who started the program in Fall 2006:
  • Jennifer Brinsky
  • Sarah Morrow

• Congratulations to our specialists in Children's Literature, Kim Kennelly and Peter Lederer, who completed their MA theses Fall 2005:
  • Kimberly Kennelly, Beasts, Clones, and Machines: Perfection at the Cost of Humanity in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (posted 11/2005)
  • Peter Lederer, Art in Art: Music, Poetry, and Painting in Russell Hoban's The Trokeville Way (posted 11/2005)

2004-2005 Academic Year:

• Joey Weber, SDSU MA student, was accepted to two conferences in 2005. In February, he presented his paper "The Schulzian Strip: The Identity Journey and Humorous Irony in A Boy Named Charlie Brown" at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Conference in New Mexico, and in March, delivered a paper titled "Clever for Their Age? Interpreting the Child Characters' Intelligence and Subjectivity in Charles Schulz's Peanuts Comic Strip" at the 2005 National Meeting of Popular Culture/ American Culture Associations in San Diego.

• Diana Duke, also an MA Children's Literature student, presented her paper "The Real Veggie Tale: A Comparison of Messages in Sesame Street and VeggieTales" at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture Conference in the Spring of 2005.

• SDSU student Christina Cheng, presented her paper "Construction and Subjectivity of Children in the Book and Film of Ian Fleming's Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang" at the Children's Literature Association Conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 2005. Visit the program page to see an abstract of her paper: http://chla.uwinnipeg.ca/sessions.cfm?idProgram=14

• Theresa Hanks, MA Children's Literature, delivered her paper, "Getting Past the Poop" at both the Southwest Texas Popular Culture Conference, and the Children's Literature Association conference in Winnepeg, Canada.

• Chandra Howard, MA student, has presented two papers since entering the Children's Literature program. Her first, "Institutionalism and Imprisonment in Louis Sachar's Holes," was given at the 31st annual ChLA conference in Fresno, CA, in June 2004. In August 2005 she presented at the International Research Society for Children's Literature conference in Dublin, Ireland. Her paper was titled "When the Prophet Is a Boy: Construction of Culture and Personal Identity in Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker." (posted 9/2005)

• MA candidate Jackie de Leo was hired as the Children's Book Buyer for all 153 stores in the Hastings Bookstore chain in the fall of 2005; she reports that telling the interviewers she was finishing up an MA with a specialization in Children's Literature is what ultimately got her the job. (posted 9/2005)

2002-2003 Academic Year:

• June 2003: SDSU student Joey Weber received "honorable mention" in the Children's Literature Carol Gay Award competition for his paper, "Lost in the Screentext: Cinematic Narrative, Styles, and Presentation in Holes and Weetzie Bat." The Carol Gay Award honors the best papers written by undergraduates in the field of children's literature. Joey presented his paper at the ChLA conference in El Paso, Texas.

2001-2002 Academic Year:

• June 2002: SDSU student Bonnie Margay Burke won the Children's Literature Association's Carol Gay Award for the best undergraduate paper in children's literature! Bonnie delivered her paper, "Big Pitchers Have Little Ears: Challenging Adult Participation in the Silencing of Children," at the ChLA conference in Wilkes Barre, PA. Bonnie also won the Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award from The Department of English and Comparative Literature.