Carol Tilley, GSLIS assistant professor, is an invited speaker for the Colloquia Series at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. Tilley’s presentation, “Children, Comics, Critics, and the Researcher,” is scheduled for January 30.
In the mid-twentieth century, comic books were extremely popular but also a highly contested form of print. In her presentation, Tilley will draw from her archival research on Fredric Wertham, a prominent critic of comic books, and the 1954 Senate hearings on comic books, which revealed letters from young readers providing insight into how they disputed the way adults understood comic book reading. Tilley writes:
I did not expect to find letters from young comics readers when I explored these collections. The discovery of these narratives has prompted me to extend this investigation into locating more descriptions of children's reading experiences—many of which are unfiltered and unmediated by adults—that can serve as potent evidence to enrich scholarship in children's print culture.
At GSLIS, Tilley teaches courses on comics’ reader’s advisory, media literacy, and youth services librarianship.