A hallmark of the Center for the Study of Children's Literature is the Summer Institute held every other year. The intensive long weekend program offers students an opportunity to meet with authors, illustrators, editors, and others committed to the study of children's literature. Guest lecturers have included Newbery Medal winners Paula Fox and Lois Lowry; Caldecott Medal winners Maurice Sendak, Paul O. Zelinsky, Ed Young, Allen Say, David Wiesner and David Macaulay; British author Anne Fine; authors Jacqueline Woodson, Patricia C. McKissack, Avi, and Julius Lester; regional authors Natalie Babbitt, Nancy Garden, and Robert Cormier; poets Nancy Willard, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Paul Janeczko; illustrators Jerry Pinkney, Trina Schart Hyman and Robert Sabuda; editor Roger Sutton; and child development theorist David Elkind.
2011 Institute: The Body Electric
Thursday, July 28 — Sunday, July 31, 2011
"The Body Electric," sponsored by The Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons College, will be held the last weekend in July, commencing on Thursday evening, July 28th and concluding Sunday noon, July 31st. The preceding symposium will be taught by Associate Professor Kenneth Kidd from the University of Florida where his interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, gender studies/queer theory, and children's literature and media; it will run Tuesday and Thursdays beginning July 5th and will culminate with the Institute. Among the speakers who will attend the Institute are Mordicai Gerstein, Sara Pennypacker, David Small, Jacqueline Woodson, and Gene Yang.
Past Institutes
The following is a list of past institutes held by Simmons College:
- 2009: Crimes and Misdemeanors
- 2007: Food, Glorious Food
- 2005: Let's Dance: Performative Aspects of Literature for Children and Young Adults
- 2003: Midnight Gardens: Themes of Good and Evil in the Garden of Children's Literature
- 2001: Brave New Worlds: Looking Towards the Future
- 1999: Halos & Hooligans: Images of the Child at the Turn of the 21st Century
- 1997: As Time Goes By: the Many Ways Time is Constructed, Interpreted, and Revisioned in Literature and Life
- 1995: A Room of One's Own: Actual and Metaphorical Constructs of Creativity, Space, and Identity
Symposium Graduate Credit
The symposium earns four semester hours of graduate credit; enrollment in the institute is on a non-credit basis.
