This symposium brings together scholars from China, Taiwan, Korea, and a British scholar long based in Japan to explore the rich tapestry of children’s literature and childhood in East Asia, highlighting its distinctive features compared to its English counterpart.
With their diverse research backgrounds in and beyond East Asia, the four speakers explore topics ranging from the evolution of Chinese fairy tales and their social relevance to the global circulation of Taiwanese picturebooks, from Korean picturebooks and their contemporary perspectives on childhood to the differing traditions in Japanese and English children’s literature.
Through four presentations and a subsequent discussion, the symposium examines the diverse traditions, evolving narratives, and cultural nuances that have shaped children’s literature across East Asia throughout its history and continue to influence its development. The symposium promises fresh insights into how children’s literature in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China evolved and where they might be heading.
*The symposium program and presentation abstracts are available for download here.
Date: Thursday, February 6th, 2025
Time: 3:00 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. (JST/GMT+9)
Venue: Online (via Zoom) Please register here.
Language: English
Presentation Titles and Speakers:
1. “Tonghua in Transition: The Chinese Fairy Tale without Fairies”
Xiaofei Shi (Associate Dean, Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Soochow University)
2. “Taiwanese Picturebooks as ‘World Literature’: Guji Guji and The Orange Horse”
Andrea Mei-Ying Wu (Director, Chinese Language Center; Distinguished Professor, Department of Taiwanese Literature, National Cheng Kung University)
3. “Korean Picturebook Studies and Contemporary Views of Children”
Hejeong Yoon (Research Fellow, Graduate School of Language and Society, Hitotsubashi University)
4. “Pictorial History and Poetry: Different Traditions in Japanese and English Children’s Literature”
Dominic Cheetham (Professor, Department of English Literature, Sophia University)
Moderator: Cheng-Ting Chang (Project Research Fellow, EAA, University of Tokyo)
Organized by East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts, the University of Tokyo (EAA), Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up “Exploring Adulthood in Contemporary Crossover Picturebooks: Comparative Analysis across the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, and Taiwan” (Principal Investigator: Cheng-Ting Chang)