Colonial girls\u27 literature and the politics of archives in the digital age

In this paper we examine the politics of print and digital archives and their implications for research in the field of historical children\u27s literature. We use the specific example of our comparative, collaborative project \u27From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Australian, New Zealand and Canadian Print Cultures, 1840-1940\u27 to contrast the strengths and limitations of print and digital archives of young people\u27s texts from these three nations. In particular, we consider how the failure of some print archives to collect ephemeral or non-canonical colonial texts may be reproduced in current digitising projects. Similarly, we examine how gaps in the newly forged digital "canon" are especially large for colonial children\u27s texts because of the commercial imperatives of many large-scale digitisation projects. While we acknowledge the revolutionary applications of digital repositories for research on historical children\u27s literature, we also argue that these projects may unintentionally marginalise or erase certain kinds of children\u27s texts from scholarly view in the future

Colonial Girls’ Literature and the Politics of Archives in the Digital Age

The history of colonial children’s literature is intriguingly complex. Most of the books and magazines that colonial children read, by both British and colonial authors, were produced in London and then shipped to the colonies. Yet alongside these texts are others that were written and published in the colonies themselves, only occasionally making their way back to the metropole. Some colonial novels for young people remain well known, like Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong series or L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. But what of the many other texts, the ones that were published in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, and seem to have disappeared from the history of children’s literature? Attempts to recover this history are complicated by the canonisation of particular children’s texts, a process that narrows the definition of the field to texts popularised by the academy through teaching and research. Moreover, historical children’s literature can be difficult to make accessible to scholars and students because many of the texts are out of print, which may have contributed to the under-representation of certain texts in undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Critical editions of historical children's literature tend to concentrate on frequently taught texts, which reinforces those texts as the most interesting and important in the field

Introduction: Special Issue Emotion in Children’s Literature

This special issue emerges out of the 2014 Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research (ACLAR) conference held at Deakin University, which brought together scholars from around the world to discuss affect, ideology, and texts for young people. The ‘affective turn’ in the humanities, the emergence of the field of cognitive poetics, and recent research in the history of emotions have revived interest in the representation of emotion in literary texts and their capacity to elicit affective responses in readers and promote empathy. According to Lawrence Grossberg, ‘It is the affective investment which enables ideological relations to be internalized and, consequently, naturalized’ (1992, p. 83). This is of particular interest in relation to children’s literature, not least because the appeal to the reader of fiction for children and young adults is as likely to be emotional as it is cognitive or rational. A young reader’s affective investment in the existence and events of the fictional world can be manipulated in the service of the didactic agendas of the text. As such, the representation of emotion and the role of affect in reader positioning are categories of analysis that require critical scrutiny

Ecological values of Hamilton urban streams (North Island, New Zealand): constraints and opportunities for restoration

Urban streams globally are characterised by degraded habitat conditions and low aquatic biodiversity, but are increasingly becoming the focus of restoration activities. We investigated habitat quality, ecological function, and fish and macroinvertebrate community composition of gully streams in Hamilton City, New Zealand, and compared these with a selection of periurban sites surrounded by rural land. A similar complement of fish species was found at urban and periurban sites, including two threatened species, with only one introduced fish widespread (Gambusia affinis). Stream macroinvertebrate community metrics indicated low ecological condition at most urban and periurban sites, but highlighted the presence of one high value urban site with a fauna dominated by sensitive taxa. Light-trapping around seepages in city gullies revealed the presence of several caddisfly species normally associated with native forest, suggesting that seepage habitats can provide important refugia for some aquatic insects in urban environments. Qualitative measures of stream habitat were not significantly different between urban and periurban sites, but urban streams had significantly lower hydraulic function and higher biogeochemical function than periurban streams. These functional differences are thought to reflect, respectively, (1) the combined effects of channel modification and stormwater hydrology, and (2) the influence of riparian vegetation providing shade and enhancing habitat in streams. Significant relationships between some macroinvertebrate community metrics and riparian vegetation buffering and bank protection suggest that riparian enhancement may have beneficial ecological outcomes in some urban streams. Other actions that may contribute to urban stream restoration goals include an integrated catchment approach to resolving fish passage issues, active reintroduction of wood to streams to enhance cover and habitat heterogeneity, and seeding of depauperate streams with native migratory fish to help initiate natural recolonisation

Creating virtual classrooms for rural and remote communities

Rural and remote communities, in the United States as well as in other countries, often have only limited access to higher education. In order to pursue professional training or advanced degrees, people in these communities must leave home. This causes more than just a financial burden. Those with commitments to jobs, families, and traditional roles in the community find it difficult to leave home to further their education. This is especially true for indigenous and native people. These people often live in villages or communities far from large cities and towns. Although they’re increasingly integrated with the modern world through travel, telecommunication, and technology, these people are deeply rooted in their traditional cultures