Newcastle Children’s Literature Master Classes 2015
The Future of the Subject: Archives
6-7 August 2015
Newcastle University and Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books
In August 2015 the Children’s Literature Unit in the School of English at Newcastle University will be hosting a
series of children’s literature Master Classes concentrated in two days. The classes will be led by a distinguished,
international team of children’s literature scholars. The overall subject will be ‘The Future of the Subject’, with a
particular focus on Archives. This reflects the recent archival turn in literary studies and will focus attention on the
fascinating material in the archives of Seven Stories, the UK’s national centre for children’s books, based in
Newcastle and co-hosting the Master Classes. Participants will have the opportunity to work directly with material
from the Seven Stories archives, and will be trained in some of the skills they will need as emerging scholars in the
field of children’s literature.
The Master Classes are designed principally for high-level undergraduates and graduate students (master’s and
doctoral), although anyone at an early stage in a career involving research in children’s literature is welcome to
apply for a place. The Classes will be delivered to a maximum of 14 participants, and selection will be competitive.
We are now inviting applications for the 2015 Master Classes. Students will be selected on the basis of a 500-word
statement about their current and proposed research and interests. The Master Classes are open to fluent Englishspeaking students of any nationality. The selectors will be looking for outstanding students who promise to be
shaping the field in the future.
Thanks to generous support from Newcastle University, each participating student will be awarded a bursary to
cover the full cost of registration, meaning that the Master Classes will be free of cost. Students will, however, be
required to cover their own travel and accommodation costs and evening meals.
Teaching
Master Classes will include a mixture of presentation, discussion and applied activities on a range of key themes,
theories, and research methods relating to archival research. Students will be set preparatory tasks in the month
prior to the classes. There will be no formal assessment but students will receive a high level of direct feedback and
guidance. There will also be a roundtable and session on careers and professional development. All students will
receive a certificate of participation that acknowledges the bursary element of the master classes.
Newcastle University, Seven Stories, and the city of Newcastle
The Master Classes will take place at Newcastle University and at the Archives (Design Works) of Seven Stories.
Seven Stories is the UK’s national museum, archive and visitor centre for children’s literature. Its holdings date
from the 1930s and contain original manuscripts, artwork, correspondence and other material relating to the
creative processes that underpin children’s literature. The archives cover all ages, formats and media in which
children’s literature appears.
The School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University was recently ranked third best
in the UK for research in English in the national Research Excellence Framework. Its ‘impact case study’ on
Children’s Literature Unit was rated 100%.
Newcastle is the cosmopolitan capital of the North East of England. It has a fascinating history, strong cultural life
and is famous for its welcoming character. The University is situated in the heart of the city. Newcastle has
excellent road, rail and air links with major UK and international cities.
How to apply
To be considered for the 2015 Master Classes please send a description of your interests and current/proposed
research of no more than 500 words to Kim.Reynolds@ncl.ac.uk by 31 May 2015. Please use the subject headline
‘2015 Master Classes’ and include the contact details of one referee who will be able to support your application.
(You should notify the referee too.) The following information should also be included in your application: your
name; your contact details; your current affiliation and status (if any). Notification of the result of your application
will be made by 10 June 2015.
Master classes will be delivered by:
Brian Alderson is an internationally acclaimed children’s book historian, critic, translator, collector, and author. He
was children’s book editor of The Times, founded the Children’s Book History Society and is author of many books,
catalogues and studies about children’s book. Recent publications include The Ladybird Story: Children’s Books for
Everyone (with Lorraine Johnson, 2015) and, with Andrea Immel, Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book: The First
Collection of English Nursery Rhymes; A Facsimile Edition with a History and Annotations (2013).
Katherine Capshaw is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Connecticut, where
she teaches courses in children’s literature, young adult literature, and African American literature. She is the author
of Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks (2014) and Children’s Literature
of the Harlem Renaissance (2004), which won the Children’s Literature Association’s award for best scholarly book.
She is currently co-editing Impossible Publics: African American Children’s Literature Before 1900 (2016). She was
the longtime Editor of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly and has edited for Children’s Literature and
MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States.
Matthew Grenby is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies and Director of the Newcastle University Humanities
Research Institute. He specialises in children’s culture and literature in the pre-modern period. His books include
The Child Reader 1700-1840 (2011) and a scholarly edition of Little Goody Two-Shoes and Other Stories Published
by John Newbery (2013). He has co-edited Popular Children’s Literature in Britain (2008), The Cambridge
Companion to Children’s Literature (2009) and Children’s Literature Studies: A Research Handbook (2011).
Kenneth Kidd is Professor and Chair of English at the University of Florida, where he also serves as Associate
Director of the Center for Children's Literature and Culture. His publications include Making American Boys:
Boyology and the Feral Tale; Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children's Literature, and coedited collections on ecocriticism and queer children’s literature. At present he is co-editing Prizing Children's
Literature, and working on a monograph entitled Theory for Beginners. Kenneth is a longtime member of the
Children's Literature Association and from 2004 to 2014 he was Associate Editor of the ChLA Quarterly.
Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer: Professor in the German Department at the University of Tübingen and author of
a range of monographs and edited collections including Manga’s Cultural Crossroads (2013), Picturebooks.
Representation and Narration (2014), and Children’s Literature and the Avant-garde (summer 2015). She is a
member of the Management Committee of the COST-action “The Digital Literacy and Multimodal Practices of
Young Children”. She co-edits the book series ‘Children's Literature, Culture and Cognition’ (Benjamins) and
‘Studies in European Children's Literature’ (Winter). She is currently editing the ‘Routledge Companion to
Picturebooks’.
Anja Müller is Professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Siegen in Germany. Her research
interests range from eighteenth-century literature and culture to childhood studies, children’s literature,
contemporary drama, European transnational identities, adaptation and, recently, high fantasy and fantasy-related
participatory fan cultures. Her monographs and edited/co-edited collections include Framing Childhood in
Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals and Prints, 1689-1789 (2009); Mediating Identities in Eighteenth-Century
England: Public Negotiations, Literary Discourses, Topography (2011); Childhood in the Renaissance (2013); and
Adapting Canonical Texts in Children’s Literature (2013). She co-edits the book series “Studies in European
Children’s Literature”. Current activities include a research project, funded by the German Research Foundation
(DFG) on canon-formation and the social imaginary in British literature for children and young adults.`
Philip Nel is a University Distinguished Professor in the English Department at Kansas State University. He is
author of the award-winning Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the
FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (2012), author or co-editor of eight other books, including Keywords
for Children’s Literature (2011), Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature (2008), The
Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (2007), and Dr. Seuss: American Icon (2004). Since 2011, he
has been General Editor of Routledge’s Children’s Literature and Culture Series. He blogs at Nine Kinds of Pie
<http://www.philnel.com/>, and tweets as @philnel.
Lucy Pearson is Lecturer in Children's Literature at Newcastle University. She is the author of The Making of
Modern Children’s Literature in Britain: Publishing and Criticism in the 1960s and 1970s (2013). She works
closely with Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books, and is interested in the way that archival
material can open up new understandings of children’s literature. She is currently working on a new history of
children's books and publishing in the twentieth century.
Kimberley Reynolds is Professor of Children’s Literature in the School of English Literature, Language and
Linguistics at Newcastle University. She has published widely on many aspects of children’s literature, most
recently in the form of an audio book, Children’s Literature between the Covers (2011), Children’s Literature: A
Very Short Introduction (2011), and the co-edited volume Children’s Literature Studies: A Research Handbook
(2011). With the support of a Major Leverhulme Fellowship she recently completed Left Out: the forgotten radical
tradition in British children’s publishing 1910-1949 (forthcoming 2015). In 2013 she was awarded the International
Brothers Grimm Award for contribution to research in children’s literature.
Members of Seven Stories’ Collection staff