National Library of Australia - Gateways>

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 46 | August 2000


Folklore and children’s literature

Carole CarpenterA distinguished Canadian folklorist, Carole Carpenter, recently arrived in the Library to take up a 2000 Harold White Fellowship.

Dr Carpenter is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at York University, Toronto for many years. She is currently Professor of Humanities and teaches children’s literature and culture, childhood culture studies, folklore and Canadian culture. Her doctoral thesis was published as Many Voices: Folklore Activities in Canada and Their Role in Canadian Culture (1979) and in the intervening years her teaching and research have dealt with the various intersections of identity and folklore amongst individuals, distinct groups and the nation. She has written on such subjects as ‘Ethnic joke-telling among Canadian children’, ‘Folklore as a tool in multiculturalism’and ‘Developing an appreciation for the cultural significance of childlore’.

In 1994–95 Dr Carpenter was the J.P. Robarts Professor of Canadian Studies, a research position in which she studied images of childhood in Canadian culture and their relevance to Canadian identity. The research was summarised in In Our Own Image: The Child, Canadian Culture and Our Future (1996). Most recently her work has dealt with children’s literature. In 1997 she received the Frances E. Russell Award from the Canadian Section of the International Board on Books for Young People for a study on ‘Folklore in Canadian Children’s Literature’. This project has led to a comparative study of children’s literature in English in Canada, South Africa and Australia.

As a Harold White Fellow, Dr Carpenter will be spending three months in the Library identifying and analysing Australian children’s books that incorporate folklore in the texts or illustrations. She is also likely to make use of the extensive folkloric recordings in the oral history collection.

Above right: Canadian folklorist and Harold White fellow, Carole Carpenter has joined the Library for three months. Photograph: Damian McDonald

| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |

Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au

Gateways logo