The Children’s Literature Association, or ChLA, is an organization devoted to encouraging high standards of criticism, scholarship, research, and teaching in children’s literature–a field more or less “invented” in 1973, when a group of professors set out to remedy the scholarly silence around–even embarrassment about–literature written for children. Every year the organization hosts a national conference that brings together a diverse group of scholars working in the field. Our own Emerita Professor Judith A.A. Plotz is a past president (2002-03) of the ChLA, and Richard Flynn, a GW English Ph.D., is recent past editor of the journal Children’s Literature Association Quarterly.
This year’s annual conference is June 8-10 at Eastern Michigan University, and I’m proud to report that seven GWU graduate students are presenting work: Rachel Vorona, Erin Sheley, Erin Vander Wall, Amber Vasquez, Rosemary Tonoff, Mark DeCicco, and Meghan Mercier. The first six were students in Professor Plotz’s spring seminar on “Romanticism and Golden Age Children’s Literature.” Meghan is doing a dissertation on the Juvenile Historical Novel, 1850-1920. Congrats to all, and have fun in Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor.
