Investigating Children’s Literature

UF Faculty: Noah Mullens Department: Department of English College: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences	Partner Faculty: Vera Veldhuizen Department: Humanities Partner Institution: University of Groningen

Project details
Title:	Investigating Controversial Children's Literature: An International Perspective
Project Description:	In this project, UF students collaborated with students from the Netherlands to explore controversies in children’s literature from an international and historical perspective. UF students were paired with a Dutch student to analyze controversial or banned U.S. and European texts. Students were then asked to compare these books in two co-written blog posts published on a WordPress site: Investigating Controversial Children's Literature
Learning Outcomes:	The ability to explain children’s media in terms of its aesthetic qualities and its evolving function in society. To analyze the underlying power mechanics in children’s media and their potential ideological impacts. To discuss the impact of implicit and explicit moral discourse through aesthetic media on identity formation. To apply appropriate methodologies when analyzing children’s media or media presenting the child; combining “normative” literary/cultural methodologies with the children’s media approach. To consider what “controversy” is across state and national borders. To work with colleagues across differences (both in national identity and language). To practice comparative approaches to children’s literature. To professionally work across time zones through digital communication and platforms.
Participating Countries:	Netherlands
Number of Participants:	30 UF students, 19 Groningen students
Discipline:	English
UF Course Code & Name:	LIT4332 - Children's Literature and Controversy
Project Duration:	6 weeks
Activity Type(s):	Student-to-Student Dialogue Student-to-Student Project
Technology Tools:	Wordpress Zoom Qualtrics
Sequence of Activities:	Icebreaker Activity: On our first Zoom call, after a brief lecture we split the 19 groups in break-out rooms where they discussed their favorite books from childhood, and we had them think through how their experiences with children’s literature compared to their colleagues from another country. On our second Zoom call, we assigned a shared text titled The Arrival by Shaun Tan, which is a illustrated book that is not written in a language nor is it situated in a legible country. We decided to use this text as it’s use of language placed everyone into a defamiliarized position, and thus served as a premise for how we wanted to teach them how to engage and conduct close readings of the texts they would come to assign to themselves Engagement Activity: The students from Florida engaged with their colleagues that attended school in The Netherlands by meeting once a week to discuss their shared texts and their co-writing strategies. My collaborator and I decided to let our students make meetings, across time zones and individual schedules, without facilitation, as doing so was an essential skill to learn. They were required to reflect once a week in class, too, about their contributions, meeting times, and progress so far. Collaboration Activity: Students from the University of Florida worked alongside students in The Netherlands to think about controversy in children’s literature from an international and historical perspective. In the project, they were paired up with a student(s) from The Netherlands to analyze two to three books: one or two book from the United States and one book from Europe. The book from the U.S. consists of a contemporary text that was either banned or blacklisted by American schools and organizations. Likewise, the book from Europe will consist of a controversial contemporary text. The end-product of this assignment was a co-written blogpost that was published on a shared WordPress website. The post was to consider the role of controversy by comparing the two/three texts and considering them separately. Each post also included one photo from each text. Reflection Activity: On our third joint Zoom call we had students fill out a Qualtrics about the positives of their experiences, and what feedback they would give if we were to conduct the exchange project again. At this point, we had also had the teams co-write a “Letter” and a “Postcard” for the international refereed journal Bookbird (these were two formats unique to the journal). Students were required to write these based on the submission guidelines of the journal in order to practice conventional academic writing. They were asked to use their chosen texts from their blogposts to write these, so it furthered the reflection process as to how to discuss controversy in different academic contexts.