International Workshop Politics of Text and Image in Children’s Culture: Contemporary Eastern Europe and Beyond
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and International Youth Library in Munich, July 18–19, 2024.
- Abstract
- Keywords
- children’s literature, picturebook, politics of text, politics of image, Eastern European children’s culture, ideology, propaganda, censorship, empathy, empathetic reader, children’s activism.
- Table of contents
- no
Politics and its influence on contemporary children’s literature is one of the pressing topics in current Eastern European scholarship.1 In her numerous works, one of the conference organisers, Marina Balina (Illinois Wesleyan University), has addressed aspects of political influence on children’s audiences through print and images in different periods of Russian history (see, e.g., Balina 2019, 2020, 2023.) Svetlana Efimova’s (LMU Munich) research on the intersection of the emotional and political dimensions in children’s literature is integral to her current scholarly interests. In several of her recent publications, Efimova explored strategies of political influence using various materials, from the Russian ABC books of pre-revolutionary times (Efimova 2021) to contemporary war-themed Ukrainian picturebooks2 for children (Efimova 2024, forthcoming). The scholarly interests of the organisers intersected in the media and visual aspects of children's and young adult literature and culture. Focusing on this topic, Efimova and Balina organised an international workshop “to discuss the new picture of the world being constructed for today’s young readers/viewers by diverse authorities and various actors involved in creating literature and culture for children” (Balina, Efimova 2024). The workshop took place at the International Youth Library in Munich; the fifteen invited scholars came from Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Poland, and the United States. Their research perspectives combined a focus on Eastern Europe with an interest in the global and theoretical dimensions of the interaction between children’s literature and politics.
Most of the presentations were dedicated to studying contemporary children’s literature and culture. However, the historical context within the relationship between text and image drew considerable attention. The workshop was opened by Serguei Oushakine (Princeton University), who addressed the era of the early Soviet avant-garde in his keynote. Oushakine demonstrated how illustrations in children’s magazines and posters of the 1920s influenced children’s self-determination. An impressive number of illustrated books for children and young adults published in the 1920s created an image of the future for Soviet citizens. Such visual propaganda provided these audiences with post-revolutionary guidelines directing them away from the old regime toward industrialisation, literacy, and the professions that the state needed most at the time. Visuality was of paramount importance and, quite often, image overpowered text in influencing a new generation of Soviet children in their choices for the future.
The multimodality of the picturebook was discussed further in two talks that were united by the idea of this medium serving as a mental laboratory. Both presentations discussed strategies for using children’s picturebooks as an encouraging tool to promote questioning and reflection about the past, present, and possible future. Carmen Sippl (University College of Teacher Education, Lower Austria) offered an Anthropocene reading of several German and Austrian picturebooks, focusing on the provision of imaginative spaces for dreaming about the possible futures of our planet. The discussion over the narrative and visual strategies in today’s children’s books continued fruitfully in Svetlana Efimova’s (LMU Munich) presentation. Efimova focused on four non-fiction picturebooks from 2017 to 2023, created by Russian authors for the independent publishing house Samokat,3 that address a young adult audience and discuss various political topics: democracy, justice, ideology, and the history of protests. Both papers suggested that a picturebook, through the selection of colours, themes, and associative connections, can contribute to developing a reader’s critical thinking, independent judgement, and creative competence.
Karoline Thaidigsmann (University of Heidelberg) outlined three narrative strategies present in children’s books by contemporary Polish authors that are aimed at shaping three types of potential readers: 1) emotional reader, 2) mature reader, and 3) instructed reader. Based on the choice of narrator, point of view, topic in focus, and illustrations, these three groups of readers demonstrate different levels of engagement on issues such as consumer behaviour, poverty, and civic responsibility. Anne Hultsch (University of Vienna) focused her talk on the national identity formed through children’s books. Hultsch critically reviewed children’s and young adult books dedicated to the Czech (and Slovak) national anthem in the late 1930s, 1985, and 2018. The scholar highlighted the patriotic messages of these books and showed their failure to convey a sense of national consciousness.
Children’s activism and its depiction in contemporary texts was the focus of Marek Oziewicz’s (University of Minnesota) paper. The scholar argued that children’s literature could effectively mobilise resistance to the current ecocide, a crucial issue for humanity. Oziewicz demonstrated how narrative warfare and the notion of a “new climate war” can attract children’s attention to environmental health and improve climate literacy. From the struggle for ecological well-being in children’s literature, the topic in focus has moved to a different form of active engagement. Using a vast corpus of Russian and Soviet literature and applying modern quantitative methods of analysis, Svetlana Maslinskaia (Université Grenoble Alpes) addressed four types of heroic child behaviour: a virtuous child, an everyday hero, a citizen, and an actual (war) hero. The scholar distinguished between pedagogical and political pragmatics in moralising children’s literature. Maslinskaia concluded that ideology and propaganda overpowered pedagogical approaches in most narratives about child heroes.
Rethinking traditions and reshaping the canon were the focus of the next section of the workshop. In her talk, Enikő Dácz (LMU Munich) explored the corpus of contemporary Hungarian children’s literature, focusing on rewriting as an interpretation of canonic texts from today’s perspective. As one of her examples, she used the book A Fairytale for Everyone (Meseország mindenkié), which introduced previously silenced themes of a multitude of ethnicities, genders, and sexualities and became the subject of an acute political debate within contemporary Hungarian society. Larissa Rudova (Pomona College) addressed a different kind of rewriting while discussing various subjects of new gender identities in young adult literature. She analysed Mikita Franko’s novelistic world, focusing mainly on the transgender protagonist in the book Zero Level Girl (Devochka v nulevoi stepeni). Rudova concluded that because topics of gender identity are censored and made taboo in Russia, it is even more important to address them in young adult literature.
The second workshop day started with an inspiring tour of the International Youth Library, guided by Katja Wiebe. The participants visited several library halls and fascinating exhibitions located in Blutenburg Castle. The workshop presentations on this day were dedicated to the treatment of the historical past in children’s literature. Mateusz Świetlicki (University of Wrocław) argued that North American historical fiction about little-known aspects of the Eastern European past has the potential not only to enable the transfer of next-generation memory but also to help young people understand the transcultural and transtemporal relevance of wars and genocides and their influence on present-day global politics. In his presentation, Swietlicki examined the narrative strategies of several novels and addressed the multilayered and discursive character of such stories about the past. Anastasia Ulanowicz (University of Florida) explored the topic of nostalgia in graphic narratives produced by former Soviet emigres in North America. She focused on the understanding of the term ‘nostalgia’. This scholar revealed a complex relationship between two types of nostalgia identified by Svetlana Boym: on the one hand, a restorative nostalgia — a passionate desire to reclaim or reestablish idealised fragments of a past life in the present, and, on the other hand, a reflective nostalgia — a bitter feeling of an irretrievably lost past.
In her paper, Marina Balina (Illinois Wesleyan University) addressed the complexity of the World War II experience, as it is described in contemporary Russian young adult historical fiction. She has analysed literature that not only revises the glorification of the war but also openly challenges the traditional depiction of Russia’s victorious past. Moving away from glory to the hardship of the everyday war experience, these books present their readers with a much more realistic depiction of the war’s everydayness. At the core of her theoretical framework was Reinhart Koselleck’s idea of history as a space of experience that young readers enter to formulate their own opinions about past events. Laura Thibonnier-Limpek’s (Université Grenoble Alpes/ILCEA4) presentation traced the construction of the visual canon of the Leningrad Siege, which was formed under the influence of the government’s political agenda. Stressing the ideological pressure under which such a visual canon was formed, the researcher demonstrated the existence of a similar visual discourse in contemporary drawings of Russian children. These drawings came from letters that schoolchildren have been sending to Russian soldiers on the battlefield of the Russо–Ukrainian War as part of a state campaign.
The last session of the workshop was dedicated to a discussion about the depiction of refugee and migrant children in works of literature. Smiljana Narančić Kovač (University of Zagreb) spoke about the theme of refugees in Croatian children’s literature and presented several types of protagonists: displaced persons, expatriates, asylees, and Croatian work migrants. Different protagonists are united by similar issues facing them in their new environment, such as family, friendship, trauma, peace, and cultural adaptation. Dorota Michułka (University of Wrocław) focused on childhood narratives in Polish literature that describe migrant children and children growing up in transnational families. Michułka argued that in the 21st century, Polish children’s and young adult literature have adapted to new realities and helped their audiences by building a new transnational, migratory identity.
During two days of exciting presentations and productive discussions, the workshop participants were exposed to various political and cultural models of childhood in the Eastern European region as well as in global society. Many current concerns over the importance of new literary works for children were addressed and discussed. Although focusing on diverse national experiences, common themes and issues, similarities in the choice of literary characters, and creative strategies were established. This workshop opened new avenues for future dialogues and collaborations for the scholars, and new plans were made to continue discussing the main topics of the workshop through future publications. The conference organisers have already started working on a collective volume based on the workshop participants’ contributions.
Ekaterina Kolevatova
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU)
Ekaterina.Kolevatova@familymatters.lmu.de
Notes
1 Several volumes on political aspects of children’s culture include chapters discussing Eastern European literature (e.g., Krawatzek and Friess 2022, Kümmerling-Meibauer and Schulz 2023). The reviewed workshop responds to the need for book-length studies focusing primarily on Eastern Europe.
2 Written as one word, the “picturebook” is a term of children’s literature research (cf. The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks, Kümmerling-Meibauer 2018). Compared to an “illustrated book,” where the text still plays a dominant role, a picturebook is characterised by “a balance between text and visuals” (Kümmerling-Meibauer 2018, 3).
3 Independent children’s publishers, especially Samokat and KompasGid, continue to work in Russia after 2022. Efimova discussed creative strategies that address political issues in indirect yet recognizable ways (for example, through focusing on the past).
Bio
Ekaterina Kolevatova is a PhD student and a member of the Research Training Group “Family Matters. Figures of Allegiance and Release” at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research interests include the history of Russian and Soviet literature and drama. Kolevatova’s PhD project examines images of the family in Soviet theatre during the periods of late Stalinism and Khrushchev’s Thaw, using both close reading and digital humanities methodologies.
Bibliography
Balina, Marina, Efimova, Svetlana. 2024. Abstract of the International Workshop “Politics of Text and Image in Children’s Culture: Contemporary Eastern Europe and Beyond.” https://www.slavistik.uni-muenchen.de/aktuelles/archiv/ws_politics-of-trxt-and-image/index.html
Balina, Marina. 2023. “Melodrama v sovremennoi podrostkovoi proze o Kholokoste: stanovlenie empaticheskogo chitatelia” [Melodrama in Contemporary Young Adult Prose about the Holocaust: Making an Empathetic Reader]. Detskie chteniia 24(2), pp. 314–335.
Balina, Marina. 2020. “Re-Imagining the Past for the Future Generations: History as Fiction in Soviet Children’s Literature.” The Brill Companion to Soviet Children’s Literature and Film. Olga Voronina, ed. Leiden: Brill Publishing. p. 179-212.
Balina, Marina. 2019. “Depicting Communism for Children: Soviet Era Picture Books, 1920s-1930s.” In Filoteknos 9, pp. 156–170.
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Krawatzek, Félix and Nina Friess (eds.). 2022. Youth and Memory in Europe. Defining the Past, Shaping the Future. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina and Farriba Schulz (eds.). 2023. Political Changes and Transformations in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Children’s Literature. Heidelberg: Winter.
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina (ed.). 2018. The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks. New York, London: Routledge.
Suggested Citation
Kolevatova, Ekaterina. 2024. Review: “International Workshop Politics of Text and Image in Children’s Culture: Contemporary Eastern Europe and Beyond”. Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 19. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2024.00019.370.
URL: http://www.apparatusjournal.net/
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