[Lunchtime Talk] IYL × AFCC: The Architecture of Storytelling
PanelAlya Farzana, Jessie Huang, Michelle Chan, Theresia Enny Anggraini, Virine Hutasangkas | Moderator: Lucia Obi
Free with Registration
Bring your own lunch and join us for our Lunchtime Talks!
This is part one of a two-part panel by the International Youth Library.
This panel consists of five short presentations by scholars from Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Thailand. It examines the building of worlds with words and images, the creation of (imagined) communities, the instrumentalization of contrasting urban and rural worlds, and the dichotomies between environmental destruction and conservation associated with these spaces.
This two-part panel takes the festival theme literally, examining not only the “architecture” of storytelling and the imaginary worlds created by adults, but also the role of the “concrete” world of cities as setting and theme in Asian children’s literature. What worlds do adults create in stories for children? In what environments does this literature take place? Is it set in the rural and historical spaces that Western readers so readily associate with Asia? Or does it reflect realistic, contemporary realities?
environmentworldbuildingstorytelling
Alya Farzana (Malaysia)
Alya Farzana is fascinated by the ways stories and images invite children to see and reimagine the world around them. She is a lecturer in literature at Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia, and a PhD researcher in Children’s Literature at the University of York, UK. She delights in the possibilities of storytelling, and in the questions stories leave us with.
Jessie Huang (Taiwan)
Dr. Jessie Huang is a children’s book writer, illustrator, and researcher whose work explores bilingual storytelling, cultural identity, and the preservation of local and Indigenous languages through picture books. She has created several award-winning bilingual titles in collaboration with schools and communities across Taiwan. As the former President of the Taiwan Children’s Literature Research Association, she has been active in promoting Taiwanese children’s literature internationally and fostering dialogue between creators, educators, and scholars about the evolving landscape of stories for young readers.
Michelle Chan (Hong Kong)
Dr. Michelle Chan, who earned her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, is affiliated with the Department of English Language and Literature at Hong Kong Shue Yan University. Her research includes Victorian Literature, Fantasy, and Children’s Literature, with a recent focus on healing and picture books, fairy tales, translating visual narratives, and transmedia presentation of children’s literature. Most of her works concern how children’s texts are received and reinterpreted in contemporary society. She has received funding to promote Asian children’s literature, including Korean picture books and Hong Kong children’s literary history, respectively.
Theresia Enny Anggraini (Indonesia)
Theresia Enny Aanggraini received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Literature for Children and Young Adults from the Ohio State University in 2015. She is an associate professor of English at Faculty of Letters, Universitas Sanata Dharma, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Her interests include Literature for Children and Young Adults, Drama, and African American Literature. Chocolate is her favorite food and drink.
Virine Hutasangkas (Thailand)
Virine Hutasangkas is an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Humanities, at Chiang Mai University. Her main interest focuses on French children’s literature and global picturebook trends, exploring diverse thematic landscape from around the world.
Lucia Obi (Germany)
Lucia has been working in academic libraries, and also as a freelance illustrator and editor in the children’s publishing industry. Trained in Cultural Anthropology, Chinese Literature, Art and the Library and Information Sciences, she is now the language specialist for Chinese and Korean children’s literature at the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany.
Programme dates and times are subject to change.