"But It Was a Different Time Then!" Own and Other Voices in Wilder’s Little House books: teaching and talking about Wilder, Lane, and beyond.
Title and/or Affiliation
Hollins University, University of Cambridge
Presenter Bio
Dawn Sardella-Ayres received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2016, and has published on Alcott, Montgomery, Johnston, and Wilder. Her critical work explores girls' literature as a distinct genre, rooted in theories of genre as social action.
Session
Workshop: "But It Was a Different Time Then!" Own and Other Voices in Wilder’s Little House books: teaching and talking about Wilder, Lane, and beyond.
Location
Zoom
Start Date
8-7-2022 1:15 PM
End Date
8-7-2022 2:30 PM
Abstract
When the ALSC board voted in 2018 to change the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, their statement cited Little House’s “dated cultural attitudes toward Indigenous people and people of color....” Public responses were swift, and took sides on a too-simplistic binary of gatekeeping. These responses overlooked the texts’ incredible complexities, their production, and their afterlives in popular culture, literature, and American- and world history. None of this is straightforward, even before considering the books’ co-author, Wilder’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane, an established writer and biographer, and one of the founding members of the Libertarian Party. I will attempt to unpack possible approaches and provide tools to interrogate texts that resist tidy readings.
"But It Was a Different Time Then!" Own and Other Voices in Wilder’s Little House books: teaching and talking about Wilder, Lane, and beyond.
Zoom
When the ALSC board voted in 2018 to change the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, their statement cited Little House’s “dated cultural attitudes toward Indigenous people and people of color....” Public responses were swift, and took sides on a too-simplistic binary of gatekeeping. These responses overlooked the texts’ incredible complexities, their production, and their afterlives in popular culture, literature, and American- and world history. None of this is straightforward, even before considering the books’ co-author, Wilder’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane, an established writer and biographer, and one of the founding members of the Libertarian Party. I will attempt to unpack possible approaches and provide tools to interrogate texts that resist tidy readings.
Comments
Moderated by Valerie Patterson.