A Voyage into Children’s Literature

A Voyage into Children’s Literature

It is no wonder interdisciplinary work is challenging!! I personally feel that interdisciplinary research and collaboration across disciplines is emphasized way too late in our intellectual development, the time in which people have learned their “static” disciplinary boundaries and the role in the society. It is no wonder interdisciplinary work at graduate level is overwhelmingly frustrating; we have been socialized to value our individual disciplines to the point where it is frightening to collaborate. At this point, we have learned the “importance ” of our individual disciplinary approaches to solving world problems; as a result we are too comfortable to be challenged. Only if interdisciplinary work started early in our education journeys, would we have more tolerance of other disciplines. Mutual understanding and respect of each other’s background as of contribution in dismantling information that eventually lead to combating today’s societal problems would not be as problematic and barrier to IDR.

However, that is not to undermine the power of such work. This is my first time in my academic journey to intentionally work with other people from various disciplines. From establishing group norms to writing abstract, proposal and more, it seems as if we have known each other for a long time. My SPI family experience has been very enriching, but I think it is so because we have similar interests, we all value the power of cultural experiences in influencing one’s interests. My group is comprised of two social work students, library science and one from history background. The most common thing we share is that, we like to focus on issues that impact minority groups, in this case minority children in children's illustrated books.

 On the very first day we met as a group, we talked about our individual disciplinary background, but the most important part was our personal interest both short and long terms. This allowed us too keep each other in our thoughts as we crafted and continue to work on our project.

This process has become more than just working on project, but how day in and out I am realizing more and more how personal and relevant our topic is. Children are fragile human beings and through our curiosity to examine the depiction of ethnic minorities in children’s literature and the impact on children, we work hard to create space for all of us to question and learn. We are learning together! This has led some of us to think critically as minorities, how would we want to raise our own children given the misinformation that is circulating. One of the fundamental questions that have come as a result for me is, how can we raise awareness and fight and demand for inclusion, more diversified and accurate depiction of experiences of minority groups in children’s illustrated books? This question and many more are explored in our interdisciplinary research team.