Prof. Nina Goga:
"Dialogue, politics, and activism in (and through) children’s literature – – with a focus on environmental issues"
DATE: 9 May 2024, 18.00 (CET)
VENUE: MS Teams
What is the lecture about?
In recent years, I have collaborated with colleagues from the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, and the University of Padova to explore the significance of dialogue in and about children's literature that addresses environmental and climate issues. Our research has adopted an ecocritical and material dialogic approach, drawing from ecocritical perspectives, posthumanism, new materialism, and Bakhtin's dialogue theory (Goga et al., 2023; Goga & Pujol-Valls, 2023; Campagnaro & Goga, 2022). Building on this previous work, my lecture focuses on a selection of children's books, including graphic novels, picturebooks, and nonfiction, that emphasize the importance of dialogue in addressing environmental and climate concerns. These dialogues occur between individuals and their environment, children and adults, and citizens and authorities with decision-making power. They are significant in both shaping the books’ themes and enabling readers to engage responsibly in environmental and climate-related matters. The examples I will examine are rooted in a Scandinavian context and illustrate how the (un)willingness to find sustainable solutions to the ongoing climate crisis is largely connected to wishes for continued economic growth. In other words, these texts facilitate dialogues about the challenging connection between ecology and economy. I will therefore, after a close reading of the texts, discuss why texts like this can provoke adult (readers) to react negatively, and why representations of growth-critical eco-activism (still) seem to be a taboo in texts for children and young people.
If you are interested in taking part in the lecture, please REGISTER HERE by 7 May.
(Quelle: Aussendung)