Monday, August 31, 2015

NCSCL Welcomes Everyone to the Fall 2015 Semester!



The NCSCL would like to welcome everyone to the Fall 2015 semester.

Back again, for another fantastic semester of blogging and fun NCSCL work, is Cristina Rivera. Cristina has officially begun her second year of the graduate program at San Diego State University, emphasizing in children’s literature, of course. After a year of graduate studies, she has once again found her love of folktales and psychoanalytic theory and spent the summer rereading some YA favorites. She hopes to graduate in May of 2016, after spending what she predicts to be a large number of sleepless nights writing her thesis. Although, the stone is still setting for the official thesis project, Cristina is considering the topic of repressed adult behaviors (more so, sexual tendencies) in children because of scary folktales and stories parents tell their children to make them behave. This idea came about from a paper written specifically on The Sandman and the effects of sexuality and a child’s instinctual behavior and conduct, and closely examined how the childhood story corrupted the main character of E. T. A. Hoffman’s version, ultimately creating sadomasochistic tendencies.

This semester our graduate students have the opportunity of taking two very interesting children’s literature courses: Dr. Phillip Serrato’s Children’s Gothic and Horror and Dr. Joseph T. Thomas’s Edward Gorey and Nonsense.

And here to introduce herself is our newest edition to the NCSCL team, Susan Shamoon. We are very excited to have her!

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Hello everyone!

Welcome to the Fall 2015 semester — let me hear you cheer! (Or at least make a little noise to let me know you’re awake. Anyone?)

My name is Susan Shamoon, and I’m the newest addition to the NCSCL team here at San Diego State University, and I can’t explain how excited and honored I am to be given this opportunity. I accepted this position by literally responding with, “Yes. A thousand times yes.” No lie, I did. I am a first year graduate student here at SDSU, working for my M.A. in English Literature with a specialization in Children’s Literature.

I believe understanding our fellow human beings starts young and with good stories. And, really, who doesn’t love metafiction about the very last unicorn in the world, where the fantastic and the everyday blur together when they meet, and become virtually indistinguishable? Someone who hasn’t read The Last Unicorn that’s who, and that’s a sad, deprived child indeed. I will forever support the Oxford comma and buy more books than I could ever realistically read during the school year.

Looking forward to a great semester!

And as always, if you haven’t done so, please follow us on Twitter (@NCSChildLit) and on Instagram (NCSChildLit).