A Summer Repository Research Fellow Lecture with Michelle Ann Abate

Please join us for a presentation by Michelle Ann Abate, Associate Professor of Literature for Children and Young Adults at The Ohio State University, who will discuss her work on two research projects at the Lilly Library.

The first project, entitled “Youthful Convictions: Piety and Imprisonment in NineteenthCentury American Children’s Literature,” begins with the premise that the word conviction can refer both to a religious belief and to a prison sentence. Accordingly, Professor Abate examines what happens when these two usages are brought together and considered in tandem in U.S. children’s fiction, chapbooks, and religious texts from the 1800s.

The second project, entitled “Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender Iconoclasm in Classic American Comics Starring Girls, 1920 – 1960,” seeks to complicate longstanding perceptions about gender politics in the early decades of comic book production in the United States.

Professor Abate’s presentation will take you on a journey from chapbooks to comic books, and from the holdings in the Elizabeth Ball collection to those from the collection of Robert Klein.