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Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo, a University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu assistant professor of English, published her “Can the Child Speak? Childhood in the Age of Nation-States, Childrens Rights and the Role of Childrens Literature” as part of The Middle Ground Journal’s series on literature and the world.
In “Can the Child Speak?” Nolte-Odhiambo establishes that the institutions of childhood and children’s books in particular, contain the child as both a controlled subject and a disruptive presence.
She notes the potential of children’s literature for fostering a dialogical engagement between child and adult voices within as well as outside the texts.
More on Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo
Nolte-Odhiambo teaches courses that draw on her research in comparative literature, children’s literature, queer theory and cultural studies at UH West Oʻahu.
She is currently co-editing a collection of critical essays, Childhood and Pethood: Representation, Subjectivity, and the Cultural Politics of Power.
—By Julie Funasaki Yuen