Dangerous Sexuality at Children's Lit Assoc. meeting

[sensei]

Not a con, per se, but the nearest thing professional academics have to one. (I miss the cosplay most...)

I gave a presentation on father-daughter incest themes in manga/anime at the Children's Literature Association meeting in Hollins, Virginia, this weekend. It turned out to be the only presentation in the whole 4-day meeting to deal with either manga, anime, or Japanese culture. (There was a panel on Taiwanese children's literature, and the occasional paper on American animation or graphic novels.)

The organizers put it into a panel titled "Dangerous Sexuality" and bundled it with two papers by graduate students. One was on Margaret Mahy's novel The Changeover, which is (from what I heard, not being familiar with the book) about a teen coming to terms with her sexual power in society, phrased in terms of her being secretly a witch (the magical girl idea phrased in European fantasy tropes). The other was a survey of references to female masturbation in young adult fiction, ranging from conservative (leads to eating disorders and geekiness) to more supportive (a normal phase of self-exploration). Third was my piece, the least explicit of all, though perhaps the most subversive as I was dealing with works (CCS, Sasami: Magical Girls Club) that were clearly intended for a child rather than young adult audience.

While I felt it fit in well (and the professional psycho. counselor who attended told me at length afterwards how much she enjoyed my approach), if I'd known what the other two papers had concerned, I'd have switched my topic to Chobits, which has a good share of both empowerment through sex and implied female masturbation (plus incest, bondage, rape, etc.)

Still, the panel went well. There was a very outspoken attendee in Goth dress who took copious notes in a paper notebook and acted as an informal discussant for all the papers. That was just as well as she seemed much more informed about dangerous sexuality than I was. And a small cheering section of obvious anime fans in the corner were visibly delighted when I pointed out that Mari Okada, who did the scripts/series composition for Sasami, had more recently done the same jobs for Vampire Knight and Black Butler. They especially liked the scans and screen grabs I used in the PowerPoint, and how I got them to dissolve into each other.

I only wished we'd had a bigger house. Panels on similar topics drew standing-room-only audiences earlier in the meeting. But Saturday afternoon seems to be a popular time for people who have heard too many overly erudite papers read in teeny-tiny voices without amplification to take a break and go shopping. Still,we had a couple dozen, about the same or a little less than my AnimeNext crowds.

While there weren't any other papers or panels on anime, I did find quite a few on general topics that will help me as I push some of this toward publication. Best was an interesting paper on the emergence of "Lethal Little Girls" into Western cinema and youth literature. On a quite different front, I enjoyed seeing a display of some of Clement Hurd's original watercolors for the classic picture book The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown (a Hollins alumna). An exhibition focused around the other Brown/Hurd classic, Goodnight Moon, is planned for next summer.

All in all, I think both I, the (visibly nervous) other panelists, and the ChLA all survived "Dangerous Sexuality" unscathed.

[tex-chan]

I'm glad to hear your presentation went well. It sounds like you had an interested and engaged audience, which is always a wonderful thing. Congrats!!

[toonybabe]

That is so awesome that you presented at Hollins University! And what an interesting topic!

In a perfect world I would LOVE to get my master's in children's literature. Hollins University is one of the schools I was looking at along with Simmons College in Boston and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Ohio State University, close to my home, offers a PhD in Children's Lit but no masters. I would also love to study children's television programming or maybe children's media in general. I recently completed my BFA in Illustration and need to take some time to start my career and pay my student loans down before I even think about going to graduate school, though.

[sensei]

Thanks, Tex and Toony. It wasn't a con audience, which was just as well, but on hearing other panels and papers, I could tell that it was exactly in tune with other things graduate students and their mentors are working on now. There's real intellectual content in the material, which makes it more challenging to study than comics or animation where style is more important than message. And so I'd hope that papers like these will get the word out to people who have a role in policy-making (e.g., choosing age-appropriate acquisitions for school libraries, or psychological counselors who are increasingly aware of the role of fantasy plots in children's understanding of their minds).

Yes, Hollins has a major-league program in Children's Literature, which used to be little more than a specialized wing of library science (i.e., training libraries to order the right books for kids and organize reading/storytime programs). It's gotten somewhat radicalized in the process, as the main figures have shown that the popular culture offered young children has a powerful impact on how they define "normal" society. "Revolt and Rebellion" was in fact the theme of the whole meeting, and so I thought Sasami's refusal to give up her magical idol/sexualized fantasy father-figure at the end was, in its own cute pink way, a fine illustration.

It is a beautiful campus in the Jeffersonian tradition, and Roanoke is a lively, cosmopolitan town. I do know a few people there, so let me know if you want to apply there, Toony (when your situation allows), and I'd be happy to write a letter of support.

[toonybabe]

Thank you for the offer Sensei! I wish I could have been there for your presentation. Do you happen to have it in an essay form? It looks like they used an illustration of General Ginger from the Oz books to advertise the conference on their website - what a perfect character to communicate Revolt and Rebellion!

Hollins' program is the most appealing to me right now because I could live/work in Ohio and still complete it. I wouldn't have to re-locate to Virginia except during the 6 weeks each summer. I am at least a few years away from going back into a classroom, probably more. Right now I need to spend some time in the work force, work on my portfolio and start focusing on my goal of eventually getting a picture book or YA fiction novel published. I also need to take the time to organize my thoughts and opinions on various media for children. I've formed a lot of strong opinions in the last couple of years, especially since starting art school. I want to eventually start a blog on the subject and connect it to my cel gallery. I've been so focused on visual art lately – I need to switch gears and start focusing on writing and how to integrate it with my art.

I don't know if you have heard of the Looking Glass – its a really cool electronic journal exploring topics in Children's Literature:

http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/ojs/index.php/tlg/index

[sensei]

Thank you for the link to Looking Glass: I'll keep that in mind. I'd like to try out some of the ideas I've been presenting on in short form, and this might be a good venue. Electronic journals are still a little dubious in the eyes of tenure and promotion committees, as they're considered less professional than print journals. But even the major print journals are putting more and more stock in electronic publication now, and in any case this nearly-extinct dinosaur (thank God almighty!) doesn't need to justify himself to T&P committees any more.

No, I don't have a print version (yet) but bug me in a couple of months. I'm working now on the revisions of "Love and War and Anime" which came back from the editor with a nearly continuous wall of proposed changes and requests for changes. I took a quick view and saw, with some relief, that there was one section that had significantly fewer comments. It being a part of the essay that I liked, I thought that at least I'd succeeded here.

Then I read more closely and found that it was the part he wanted me to cut out, and so he had not read it as carefully as the rest.

DL: July 15. I'll what I can do on "Dangerous Sexualities in CCS" afterwards, and also my 9/11 update (9th anniversary of the RS gallery, 11th anniversary of my first cel) shortly after, if the critical thinking test bank people hold off a little.

Don't retire unless you're ready to be very, very busy.