91麻豆天美app

• April 1, 2015

JoAnn Conrad, an adjunct professor in Cal State East Bay’s Department of Anthropology, Geography & Environmental Studies, has been awarded two research fellowships to advance her study and understanding of how children’s picture books have helped mold generations of Americans.

Recently, Conrad was a fellow at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and at the end of summer 2015, she will embark on a fellowship at the University of Connecticut.

The Beinecke Library is one of the world’s largest libraries devoted entirely to rare books and manuscripts. It has one of the richest and fastest growing collections of its kind in the world. The Yale Beinecke Library fellowships support research in fields ranging from literary and cultural studies to the history of science, music, and theater and art, among others.

Conrad spent this past winter at the Beinecke Library in New Haven, Conn., studying the papers of Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire, two immigrant authors and illustrators whose children’s books often focused on a particular version of American history, i.e. the “great men” of history, like Ben Franklin, George Washington, Buffalo Bill, and Abe Lincoln.

“These books reaffirmed a particular story of America,” Conrad said. “One that excluded a lot of others – stories of women, Native Americans, and blacks. This tendency of the mid-20th century has had to be remediated and challenged in the late 20th century by myriad disciplines, not the least of which is American studies. One of my arguments is that these ideas are not just taught in school, they circulate in those ‘innocuous’ children’s books.”

She believes that children’s picture books are a long-overlooked cultural phenomenon. “They were ‘just for little kids,’ and so didn’t get a great deal of critical scrutiny,” Conrad said. “But books like The Little Golden Books, which were in high production and distribution in the ’50s and ’60s, were the everyday realities of millions of kids. They were published in the millions, and they tied into other cultural forms – like Disney movies, for example. In terms of shaping a generation, these were arguably the main influences early in life.”

Conrad is also examining the relationship between image and text in these children’s picture books, and the role of modernist artists in shaping a new “way of seeing” in the 20th century. “These artists were introducing a radical new perspective into those children’s books, which became ‘normal.’

“The books and authors and illustrators I'm looking at were part of the shifts in art, literature, and also the attitudes toward children and child development,” Conrad continued. “This, combined with the mass production of cheap books sold in supermarkets for the child consumer, shaped the kids growing up in the late 20th century – today’s ‘Boomer’ generation. My argument is that these modernist ideas trickled into that generation's consciousness effortlessly, through these books.”

Conrad will continue her research at the University of Connecticut at the end of summer, studying the papers of Leonard Weisgard, an award-winning illustrator of more than 200 children’s books.

Conrad earned a doctorate in anthropology/folklore from UC Berkeley in 1999. She has taught at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, UC Davis, and the University of Missouri. At Cal State East Bay, she teaches folklore, folk religion and magic, cultural anthropology, introduction to anthropology, and anthropology and the modern world. She has been an adjunct professor at CSUEB since 2007.