Research Symposium: Michelle Martin
"A Tribute to Black Childhood in Music, Story and Pictures"
In this talk, Dr. Michelle Martin employs tenets of Critical Race Theory to address why children’s and young adult books are still written primarily by white authors (79% in 2018) about white children, despite contemporary awareness-raising movements such as #WeNeedDiverseBooks, #OwnVoices and #ReadingWhileWhite. Through sharing original songs based on children’s books, and counterstories inspired by family history, Martin hopes to inspire other scholars to tap into their own creativity and particularized backgrounds to bring more of ourselves into our scholarship.
Dr. Michelle H. Martin is the Beverly Cleary Endowed Professor for Children and Youth Services in the Information School at the University of Washington and from 2011-2016 was the inaugural Augusta Baker Endowed Chair in Childhood Literacy at the University of South Carolina. She published Brown Gold: Milestones of African-American Children’s Picture Books, 1845-2002 (Routledge, 2004) and founded Read-a-Rama (www.Read-a-Rama.org), a non-profit that uses children’s books as the springboard for year-round and summer camp programming.
To Attend: Please email Mallory Shaw to RSVP: mdshaw87@uw.edu