The file below contains a course-by-course summary of the major concepts, theoretical stances, methods learned, and work produced during my PhD coursework at the University of South Florida 2010-2019:
research_coursework.123119docx.pdf | |
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RESEARCH: SUMMER 2018 TO SPRING 2019,
NARRATIVE & PRODUCT FILES
Publications
Book Review for The Lion and The Unicorn: The Children’s Ghost Story in America by Sean Ferrier-Watson (Review).
First Lines from the Review: "Sean Ferrier-Watson’s The Children’s Ghost Story in America opens a scholarly conversation about the ways in which ghosts have, over time, taken particular shapes in children’s literature published in the United States. Ferrier-Watson includes in his discussions only stories involving the spirits but not the bodies (no ghouls or zombies) of the dead returning to the land of the living as well as stories in which only the perception of a ghost—a “mock-ghost” (11)—is featured. Within these parameters, Ferrier-Watson traces the development of the ghost story in North American English-language children’s literature from its early appearances in nineteenth century periodicals, such as The Youth’s Companion and St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks, to its twenty-first century new-media manifestations termed creepypastas" (Anderson, 2018, p. 378).
Not long after I attended my first Children's Literature Association (ChLA) conference in 2012, I joined a syllabus exchange group on Facebook that had been started by a ChLA member. I learned much -- and still do -- from the discussions of how to teach ChYA lit, trends in critical studies of ChYA lit, and general industry banter. A couple of years later, the organizer of the group -- who also was/is the book review editor for The Lion and The Unicorn -- put out a call for people interested in reviewing books for the journal. I sent her my information, but didn't hear anything. Fast forward to the very last session of the 2017 ChLA conference in Tampa. As one of the conference organizing team, I hadn't had time to attend as many of the conference sessions as usual. But the title of one of the presentations in the last session included the word "creepypastas," a type of online horror narrative word I had encountered a few years before and about which I wanted to learn more. Nine months later, the book review editor offered me the opportunity to review the book that had grown out of that presentation: The Children's Ghost Story in America by Sean Ferrier-Watson.
Writing the review for this particular journal was meaningful for another reason, as well. The Lion and The Unicorn was the first children's literature journal I encountered ten years ago when I was working toward my master's in journalism and, for a media history assignment, searched for articles written about Youth's Companion, a 19th century children's newspaper. What I found in The Lion and The Unicorn -- apart from studies referencing Youth's Companion -- was a world in which ChYA works were taken seriously as literature. I think that's when the idea of my becoming part of that world took root, and, in a sense, this review brings me full circle.
Anderson, A. W. (2018). The Children’s Ghost Story in America by Sean Ferrier-Watson (Review). The Lion and The Unicorn, 42(3), 378-381.
First Lines from the Review: "Sean Ferrier-Watson’s The Children’s Ghost Story in America opens a scholarly conversation about the ways in which ghosts have, over time, taken particular shapes in children’s literature published in the United States. Ferrier-Watson includes in his discussions only stories involving the spirits but not the bodies (no ghouls or zombies) of the dead returning to the land of the living as well as stories in which only the perception of a ghost—a “mock-ghost” (11)—is featured. Within these parameters, Ferrier-Watson traces the development of the ghost story in North American English-language children’s literature from its early appearances in nineteenth century periodicals, such as The Youth’s Companion and St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks, to its twenty-first century new-media manifestations termed creepypastas" (Anderson, 2018, p. 378).
Not long after I attended my first Children's Literature Association (ChLA) conference in 2012, I joined a syllabus exchange group on Facebook that had been started by a ChLA member. I learned much -- and still do -- from the discussions of how to teach ChYA lit, trends in critical studies of ChYA lit, and general industry banter. A couple of years later, the organizer of the group -- who also was/is the book review editor for The Lion and The Unicorn -- put out a call for people interested in reviewing books for the journal. I sent her my information, but didn't hear anything. Fast forward to the very last session of the 2017 ChLA conference in Tampa. As one of the conference organizing team, I hadn't had time to attend as many of the conference sessions as usual. But the title of one of the presentations in the last session included the word "creepypastas," a type of online horror narrative word I had encountered a few years before and about which I wanted to learn more. Nine months later, the book review editor offered me the opportunity to review the book that had grown out of that presentation: The Children's Ghost Story in America by Sean Ferrier-Watson.
Writing the review for this particular journal was meaningful for another reason, as well. The Lion and The Unicorn was the first children's literature journal I encountered ten years ago when I was working toward my master's in journalism and, for a media history assignment, searched for articles written about Youth's Companion, a 19th century children's newspaper. What I found in The Lion and The Unicorn -- apart from studies referencing Youth's Companion -- was a world in which ChYA works were taken seriously as literature. I think that's when the idea of my becoming part of that world took root, and, in a sense, this review brings me full circle.
Anderson, A. W. (2018). The Children’s Ghost Story in America by Sean Ferrier-Watson (Review). The Lion and The Unicorn, 42(3), 378-381.
Conferences
SUMMER 2018: CHILDREN'S LITERATURE ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
Conference presentation at ChLA Conference in San Antonio, Texas | June 28-30, 2018
In early 2015, the poster displayed on the image at left was posted around the USF campus and disseminated via email. The poster caught my attention because it included an image of a book cover I had seen featured in one of the children's literature textbooks we used for teaching LAE4414. I knew the book, The Green Glass Sea, had won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, but this award was not mentioned on the poster. Rather, author Ellen Klages was touted as a co-winner of the World Fantasy Award.
Curious, I attended the discussion and learned that Klages was a bit perplexed that the book had won an award as a children's book and for historical fiction. She clearly saw the book as science fiction.
I knew that ChYA literature often is marginalized as not "real" literature. I did not understand until later that Sci-Fi and Fantasy are the provinces of the Humanities rather than the English department for the same reason. Klages expressed concern that the award impinged on her credibility as a sci-fi/fantasy writer for adults. I had not yet read the book, but I was intrigued by the discussion. I wondered whether/how the O'Dell committee had misread the book or whether Klages' self-identity as a sci-fi/fantasy writer blurred her vision of the book. As I read the book, I discovered it was a bit of both. In particular, Klages' changing use of verb tenses throughout the book and her use of the subjunctive mood seemed orchestrated to evoke a connection to a popular TV show that played with both sci-fi and fantasy. When the 2018 ChLA conference theme "Water" was announced, I returned to a study of The Green Glass Sea, a not-historical-fiction-for-children book that told of a sea not made of water. The abstract/proposal and conference schedule are attached below.
Anderson, A. W. (2018, June). Ellen Klages’ The green glass sea: History stranger than (science) fiction. Paper presented at the Children’s Literature Association Conference, San Antonio, TX.
Acessibility and Dis/Ability at ChLA: My position as accessibility coordinator at Eckerd College influenced my choice of sessions I attended this year. Topics ranged from ones on depictions of ability/disability in various narratives to representations of mental health issues in ChYA Literature. Additionally, I attended a lunch gathering on Accessible Teaching, which flipped my thinking from accommodating students to using the limitations of my own body as a teaching tool. I have attached my notes below.
Conference presentation at ChLA Conference in San Antonio, Texas | June 28-30, 2018
In early 2015, the poster displayed on the image at left was posted around the USF campus and disseminated via email. The poster caught my attention because it included an image of a book cover I had seen featured in one of the children's literature textbooks we used for teaching LAE4414. I knew the book, The Green Glass Sea, had won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, but this award was not mentioned on the poster. Rather, author Ellen Klages was touted as a co-winner of the World Fantasy Award.
Curious, I attended the discussion and learned that Klages was a bit perplexed that the book had won an award as a children's book and for historical fiction. She clearly saw the book as science fiction.
I knew that ChYA literature often is marginalized as not "real" literature. I did not understand until later that Sci-Fi and Fantasy are the provinces of the Humanities rather than the English department for the same reason. Klages expressed concern that the award impinged on her credibility as a sci-fi/fantasy writer for adults. I had not yet read the book, but I was intrigued by the discussion. I wondered whether/how the O'Dell committee had misread the book or whether Klages' self-identity as a sci-fi/fantasy writer blurred her vision of the book. As I read the book, I discovered it was a bit of both. In particular, Klages' changing use of verb tenses throughout the book and her use of the subjunctive mood seemed orchestrated to evoke a connection to a popular TV show that played with both sci-fi and fantasy. When the 2018 ChLA conference theme "Water" was announced, I returned to a study of The Green Glass Sea, a not-historical-fiction-for-children book that told of a sea not made of water. The abstract/proposal and conference schedule are attached below.
Anderson, A. W. (2018, June). Ellen Klages’ The green glass sea: History stranger than (science) fiction. Paper presented at the Children’s Literature Association Conference, San Antonio, TX.
Acessibility and Dis/Ability at ChLA: My position as accessibility coordinator at Eckerd College influenced my choice of sessions I attended this year. Topics ranged from ones on depictions of ability/disability in various narratives to representations of mental health issues in ChYA Literature. Additionally, I attended a lunch gathering on Accessible Teaching, which flipped my thinking from accommodating students to using the limitations of my own body as a teaching tool. I have attached my notes below.
anderson.green_glass_sea.2018chla.101517.pdf | |
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FALL 2018: SOUTH ATLANTIC MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION (SAMLA) CONFERENCE
Conference Presentation at SAMLA in Birmingham, Alabama, November 2-4, 2018:
Shauna Maragh, doctoral candidate in the English Literature program, College of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the ChYA GSA at USF, invited other ChYA GSA members to submit a proposal for a panel presentation at the 2018 SAMLA conference as their panel, "We Need Diverse Books," was short one person. I was curious as to why more of Christopher Paul Curtis' work had not been discussed by academia. Eventually my wonderings became the presentation "Disrupting Cultural and Historic Images of Black Childhood: Christopher Paul Curtis's Elijah of Buxton, The Madman of Piney Woods, and The Journey of Little Charlie." In these three first-person books, Christopher Paul Curtis writes in the voices of an 11-year-old free black child in 1860's Canada; a black child, a white child, and an elderly Irish woman in 1901 Canada; and a pre-Civil War poor white boy in South Carolina, raising questions of who can speak for people of different times, places, and races.
Anderson, A. W. (2018, November). Disrupting cultural and historic images of Black childhood: Christopher Paul Curtis's Elijah of Buxton, the madman of Piney Woods, and the journey of Little Charlie. Paper presented at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Birmingham, AL.
Conference Notes: Only one panel addressed accessibility, dis/ability, and/or mental health in The Crown (historical television series), Sue Graftons alphabet mystery series, and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Additionally, I attended the American Humor Studies Association panel, as my dissertation studies editorial cartoons, and ended up volunteering to chair next year's session.
Conference Presentation at SAMLA in Birmingham, Alabama, November 2-4, 2018:
Shauna Maragh, doctoral candidate in the English Literature program, College of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the ChYA GSA at USF, invited other ChYA GSA members to submit a proposal for a panel presentation at the 2018 SAMLA conference as their panel, "We Need Diverse Books," was short one person. I was curious as to why more of Christopher Paul Curtis' work had not been discussed by academia. Eventually my wonderings became the presentation "Disrupting Cultural and Historic Images of Black Childhood: Christopher Paul Curtis's Elijah of Buxton, The Madman of Piney Woods, and The Journey of Little Charlie." In these three first-person books, Christopher Paul Curtis writes in the voices of an 11-year-old free black child in 1860's Canada; a black child, a white child, and an elderly Irish woman in 1901 Canada; and a pre-Civil War poor white boy in South Carolina, raising questions of who can speak for people of different times, places, and races.
Anderson, A. W. (2018, November). Disrupting cultural and historic images of Black childhood: Christopher Paul Curtis's Elijah of Buxton, the madman of Piney Woods, and the journey of Little Charlie. Paper presented at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, Birmingham, AL.
Conference Notes: Only one panel addressed accessibility, dis/ability, and/or mental health in The Crown (historical television series), Sue Graftons alphabet mystery series, and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Additionally, I attended the American Humor Studies Association panel, as my dissertation studies editorial cartoons, and ended up volunteering to chair next year's session.
anderson.disrupting_cultural_and_historic_images_of_black_childhood.061518.pdf | |
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samla-90-program.pdf | |
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WINTER 2019: THE QUALITATIVE REVIEW (TQR) CONFERENCE
Conference Presentation at TQR, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, January 16-18, 2019: One of the TQR conference themes this year was about how we as researchers first began to explore qualitative methods. In reflecting on this theme, I realized my first major qualitative project was working with Drs. Audra Parker and Danielle Dennis in mapping the then newly revised Florida Educator Accomplished Practices (FEAPs) to course objectives, assignments, and critical tasks in current course syllabi. A previous crossmatching had used a check-list approach, tracking the results on an Excel spreadsheet. However, that approach did not work as the language of the FEAPS and the objectives were not clearly aligned. Using Microsoft Word tables gave me the flexibility to account for similar language, nuance, and implied meanings while capturing the data in a format that plainly showed where the there were gaps. I reviewed my procedures and presented "Cross-mapping text sets using Microsoft Word tables: First steps on the road to qualitative research" based on the work I did in 2011 mapping department syllabi to the then-new FEAPS.
Anderson, A. W. (2019, January). Cross-mapping text sets using Microsoft Word tables: First steps on the road to qualitative research. Paper presented at The Qualitative Review Conference, Fort Lauderdale, FL.
Other conference notes: Only one presentation directly touched on accessibility and/or dis/ability (using therapy animals to help treat eating disorders); another indirectly included a mention of nuero-diversity. However, one of the best presentations was by Johnny Saldana who shared film and TV clips demonstrating various quantitative and qualitative methods.
Conference Presentation at TQR, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, January 16-18, 2019: One of the TQR conference themes this year was about how we as researchers first began to explore qualitative methods. In reflecting on this theme, I realized my first major qualitative project was working with Drs. Audra Parker and Danielle Dennis in mapping the then newly revised Florida Educator Accomplished Practices (FEAPs) to course objectives, assignments, and critical tasks in current course syllabi. A previous crossmatching had used a check-list approach, tracking the results on an Excel spreadsheet. However, that approach did not work as the language of the FEAPS and the objectives were not clearly aligned. Using Microsoft Word tables gave me the flexibility to account for similar language, nuance, and implied meanings while capturing the data in a format that plainly showed where the there were gaps. I reviewed my procedures and presented "Cross-mapping text sets using Microsoft Word tables: First steps on the road to qualitative research" based on the work I did in 2011 mapping department syllabi to the then-new FEAPS.
Anderson, A. W. (2019, January). Cross-mapping text sets using Microsoft Word tables: First steps on the road to qualitative research. Paper presented at The Qualitative Review Conference, Fort Lauderdale, FL.
Other conference notes: Only one presentation directly touched on accessibility and/or dis/ability (using therapy animals to help treat eating disorders); another indirectly included a mention of nuero-diversity. However, one of the best presentations was by Johnny Saldana who shared film and TV clips demonstrating various quantitative and qualitative methods.
tqr.breakoutsessionsschedule.jan2019.pdf | |
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SPRING 2019: "NARROWING THE GAP For Underrepresented Students in Higher Education" FLORIDA AHEAD (Association on Higher Education and Disability) CONFERENCE, April 4-5, 2019; St. Petersburg College EpiCenter
This two-day conference, which I attended as part of my work at Eckerd College, covered everything from assistive software, Microsoft accessibility features, laws and policies regarding ESAs and Service Animals, a review of OCR cases, and a discussion of the need for policies and protocols regarding Electronic Information Technology. I took extensive notes and, afterward, created a LiveBinder to collect websites and documents related to accessibility.
This two-day conference, which I attended as part of my work at Eckerd College, covered everything from assistive software, Microsoft accessibility features, laws and policies regarding ESAs and Service Animals, a review of OCR cases, and a discussion of the need for policies and protocols regarding Electronic Information Technology. I took extensive notes and, afterward, created a LiveBinder to collect websites and documents related to accessibility.
fl-ahead.ntg-registration-announcement-fees.pdf | |
File Size: | 501 kb |
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