Workshops

The terms 'urban tribes' and 'neo-tribalism' were coined by Michel Maffesoli to denote urban subcultures that are formed through nostalgia and 'archaic rites'. Arjun Appadurai, too, posits that the process of globalization gives rise to the formation of novel social groups that are characterised by the presence of shared sentiments. In Appadurai's theoretical framework, the imagination is predominantly influenced by desire and memory. This perspective is informed by the notion that migrants often possess nostalgic sentiments towards their place of origin. It is evident that nostalgia plays a significant role in the context of global migration and culture.

This workshop will focus on transnational communities that can be characterised as 'urban tribes' (Maffesoli) or 'communities of sentiment' (Appadurai) in the context of children's and young adults' literature and culture. The workshop will commence with an introductory phase, which will be followed by a short contextualising lecture. Subsequent to this, we will discuss different examples and contemplate prospective avenues for future research.

In preparation for the forthcoming class, students are required to read the texts by Dawes and Appadurai, and to consider the following questions: How does children’s and young adult literature participate in the formation of urban tribes or communities of sentiment? Which role does nostalgia play in children’s and young adult literature in general? Can you find examples of urban tribes or communities of sentiment in children’s and young adult literature (or media)? Furthermore, please bring a book (or another example) that contains depictions of an urban tribe/neo-tribalism. You will be asked to present your example in class.

Required reading list

Appadurai. A. (2008): How Histories Make Geographies: Circulation and Context in a Global Perspective: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/transcultural/article/download/6129/1760

Dawes, S. (2017). Introduction to Michel Maffesoli’s ‘from Society to Tribal Communities’. The Sociological Review, 64(4), 734-738. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12433 (Original work published 2016) (available on BlackBoard)

Assignment for students taking ECTS credits

Please find an example of a community of sentiment and/or an urban tribe, whether from a book, a film, or real life.

Write three to four pages about the question of how transnationalism and transculturalism shape this (fictive or real) community. The deadline for submission is 1 June, send your paper to julia.benner[at]hu-berlin.de.

Since the 1980s, the genre of Holocaust picturebooks and graphic novels have developed within the United States, Europe and other places and gained a significant place within Holocaust literature and trauma narratives. Over times, the developing styles and techniques of the visual narratives reflect unique approach of artists from various cultural and national backgrounds, and even more, reflect on (trans)national approaches to the memory of the Holocaust. Picturebooks and graphic novels about the Holocaust have gone through significant developments as genres, especially evident in deepening visual and thematic approaches to traumatic representation over the last forty decades or so. 

Drawing on Kenneth Kidd’s statement that of “all contemporary genres of children’s literature, the picture book offers the most dramatic […] testimony to trauma, precisely because the genre is usually presumed innocent” (Kidd 2005, 137), this workshop pays attention to the genre of inter- and transnational Holocaust picturebooks and graphic novels, which have introduced new visual and literary approaches both for children and adult readers. Since Roberto Innocenti’s Rose Blanche (1984), Holocaust picturebooks foster a connection with the innocent by introducing juvenile first-person narrators and children’s viewpoints; however, the genre has developed more complex modes to address Nazi atrocities, such as intergenerational dialogues and national specifics in introducing depictions of trauma, migration, and death to young readers. In this workshop we will discuss the potential of transnational perspectives and approaches in various examples, such as the graphic novels Irmina by the German illustrator Barbara Yellin, Alte Zachen by American writer Ziggy Hanaor and Brirish illustrator Benjamin Phillips, as well as picturebooks by Spanish author Antón Fortes’s and Polish illustrator Joanna Concejo’s Smoke (2009), as well as Michael Rosen’s and Benjamin Phillips’ One Day (2025; British), in order to exemplify the critical issues raised by this truely transnational genre of children’s world literature.

Required Reading List

Ada Bieber & Daniel Feldman (02 Dec 2025): 'Migrating Memory' in Children’s Literature of the Holocaust, Holocaust Studies, DOI: 10.1080/17504902.2025.2594232

Ada Bieber: 'Jewish Identity in Metropolitan New York: Urban Wandering and Memory in the Graphic Novel Alte Zachen*Old Things' (will be published 2026)

Ziggy Hanaor and Benjamin Phillips Alte Zachen (see Blackboard)

Michael Rosen’s and Benjamin Phillips One Day (see Blackboard)

Antón Fortes’s and Joanna Concejo “Smoke” (see Blackboard)

Excerpts from Barbara Yellin “Irmina” (see Blackboard)

Assignment for students taking credits

Please, choose one example of the required books and produce a 10 minute long video (recording on Zoom or any other program), which presents your own discussion of how the Holocaust is relevant to the story and how it is visible in the story and the images.

Please base the discussion on a short thesis on the question how central aspects of the Holocaust are narrated through verbal and visual text. The thesis is based on your own reading and analytical understanding. Also include information about setting, plot, focalization, cultural context, as well as central arguments and examples to support your thesis.

Please send the video via wetransfer.com to ada.bieber@hu-berlin.de before 15 July 2026.

To what degree are ideas concerning childhood transnational in children’s literature, and what happens to them when they travel? Scandinavian children’s literature has a reputation for being ‘challenging’ and difficult to sell to publishers outside the Nordic countries. However, translations of author-illustrator Jakob Martin Strid’s Den fantastiske bus (2023, The Incredible Bus) were quick to appear in many languages, including Chinese, Croatian, Ukrainian, French, Faroese, Norwegian, German, and more coming up. This is even more surprising, given that the book is a very long, very heavy, and quite expensive book. Furthermore, the book addresses the complicated lives of liminal characters, including homeless children, children with mental and physical illnesses, and alcoholics, all living in a post-war and post-natural disaster context.

At the workshop, based on analyses of the characteristics of this book as a medium, the dystopian and utopian elements of the narrative, and the characteristics of liminal characters, we will discuss questions such as: To which degree does the popularity of the book reflect a new kind of ‘transnational’ child and transnational ideologies concerning reading and the book as a medium? And/or to what degree does the book balance between Western ‘universal’ ideas of childhood and influence from especially Asian cultural contexts, thereby perhaps also presenting new ideals of childhood and children’s literature, also based on ‘epistemologies of the South’?

Required reading list

Jakob Martin Strid’s picturebook Den fantastiske bus/ Le bus fantastique/Der fantastische Bus (The Incredible Bus, 2023)

García González, Macarena. (2022). Cultural Diversity and Social Justice: Readings form the South. In A Companion to Children’s Literature, ed. Karen Coats et al. NY Wiley & Sons, 287-298

Arizpe, Evelyn (2021). Transnational. In Philip Nel, Lissa Paul, & Nina Christensen (Eds.), Keywords for Children’s Literature, Second Edition (p. 187). NYU Press, 187-190

Assignment for students taking ECTS credits

First read Jakob Martin Strid’s book and the required reading. Then choose one of the following statements or questions and write a 500-word essay about it. Send it to nc@cc.au.dk before 20 June 2026.

1.         The characters In Jakob Martin Strid’s picturebook represent different age groups and characters on the margin of society. Analyze at least two characters including their relationships and discuss why such characters have been able to ‘travel’ to a variety of transnational contexts.

2.         In “Transnational” (2021) Evelyn Arizpe accounts for different meanings and uses of the term “transnational”. Discuss these in relation to Jakob Martin Strid’s Den fantastiske bus/ Le bus fantastique/Der fantastische Bus (The Incredible Bus, 2023). Which of Arizpe’s perspectives do you find most relevant or interesting in relation to the book and why?

3.         Account for the reception of Strid’s Picturebook in one cultural context/country, for instance referring to reviews in print or on social media such as Instagram. Which elements of the book does the reception highlight and downplay, and what is your opinion about these priorities?

The concept of a ‘global’ children’s literature is not new. As early as the 1930s, French scholar Paul Hazard put forth the idea of a ‘universal republic of childhood’. Meanwhile, in the United States, advocates of internationalism touted children’s books as a path towards world peace: through children, and the books they read, they believed that different nations could overcome their differences. Contributors to a ‘global’ children’s literature later recognized that the idealism surrounding both global childhood and global children’s literature was problematic and fraught with many tensions: in the words of Polish American educator Anne Pellowski, the circulation of global children’s literature was often a ‘one-way passage’ which ‘stifle[d] the creative impulse to search for new and better forms’ of transnational exchange.

Our workshop begins from these various premises, using the example of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival to explore the conceptual underpinnings of a global children’s literature. We will ask questions such as, ‘how has the academic study of children’s literature contributed to the formation of a global children’s literature?’, as well as consider the hybrid forms and stylistic techniques and approaches used by children’s literature authors and illustrators as a means of raising global issues with young readers. While our content will engage heavily with key terms such as ‘diasporic’, ‘multicultural’, ‘transnational’ and, of course ‘global’, which are essential to any such conversations, our exploration of The Arrival will allow for a more experiential approach to these critical concepts. We will employ, as one example, the popular ‘seminar walk’ approach from Antwerp University’s Children’s Literature Summer School to see, hear, smell, possibly even taste, parts of the city of Antwerp and relate these experiences to our own understanding of Tan’s wordless picturebook.

Required reading list

• Tan, Shaun. The Arrival.
• Bradford, Clare. ‘Children’s Literature in a Global Age: Transnational and Local Identities.’

Preparatory task for all participants

Read Shaun Tan’s The Arrival and Clare Bradford’s ‘Children’s Literature in a Global Age’, and make notes useful for analysing the Tan’s text (e.g. you might bring in pictures of historical images or art work that you associate with the illustrations in The Arrival), paying close attention to the techniques Tan employs to create a bridge across and between both language and culture. I encourage you to do multiple readings of Tan’s text, in order to take in the detail of the illustrations in his book.

Assignment for students taking ECTS credits

Referring to secondary source(s) from the reading list, do a close reading of one illustration in Tan’s text and compare it to a real-world image (as above, this could be a historical photograph, an artwork, or other image from your visual repertoire).  You are welcome, and even encouraged, to select images specific to your culture or country. The text should not exceed 700 words, but feel free to include any number of images. Send the Word or Pages file to emily.murphy@newcastle.ac.uk before 1 June.

Stretching as far back as the mid-eighteenth century, children’s literature has been seen as a tool in creating peace. As your instructor will discuss, historical peace activists experimented with various ways of assembling children’s books, stories, and periodicals that promote this objective, often intriguingly moving between interpersonal and international scales, and walking a line between sentimental, sensational, disturbing, and critical content. As pacifist movements developed and moved toward larger objectives that included transnational coordination, they began producing global canons of books and book awards (such as the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award), designed to achieve world peace. As idealism has clashed with the continuation of conflict, it has become clear that there are various kinds of pacifism and that pacifism can be used to a variety of ends, especially as pacifism dovetails with the concept of pacification (integral to many understandings of adult relationships with children, as well as colonial relationships). This workshop invites students to critically analyze narratives, ideologies, and images of peace in children’s books. Students will be asked to investigate the interaction between peace activism and children’s literature in their countries, including by seeing which children’s books appear on early canons designed to promote transnational relationships and by bringing an example of a peace-related book that they would like to discuss. Some questions that we will explore together include:

• How do children’s texts define peace and what intellectual and cultural histories do they draw on in doing so? 
• What ideas and images of transnational relationships emerge in these texts and how do they imagine these relationships functioning? 
• How have transnational structures and organizations, including those in which children participate, played a role in the creation of children’s literature designed to promote peace?
• What roles have children’s texts had in promoting peace within and beyond national frameworks? 
• What are the limitations of these pacifist texts; how might they, at times, reinforce adult or colonial control and/or acceptance of political oppression (consider, for instance, the shared root with the words “pacifier” and “pacification”)? Where might they suppress difference/dissent vs. allowing for difference/dissent to peacefully proliferate?
• Where and how does children’s literature simplify or sugarcoat history to present tensions in the name of peace?
• How might children’s texts invite children to “think deeply about peace” (the criteria of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, given to books that effectively engage children in thinking about peace)?

This workshop explores how schools and classrooms serve as “Third Spaces” in children’s historical fiction, emphasizing the experiences of immigrant and diasporic children who navigate liminal identities. Using selected chapters from Gabriele Goldstone’s Waltraut (2024), participants will examine how classrooms – both literal and metaphorical – become what Homi Bhabha calls the “Third Space of enunciation”: a place where cultural meanings are negotiated rather than inherited, and where the idea of a fixed national identity is questioned. We will discuss how children’s historical fiction reflects and challenges Canada’s image as a tolerant and diverse nation, and how it portrays the classroom as a synecdoche of Canadian multiculturalism – where mimicry, adaptation, and resistance coexist. The session will feature close reading, theoretical framing, and collaborative analysis to examine how young diasporic characters navigate the complexities of belonging, identity, and cultural translation.

Primary sources

Goldstone, Gabriele. Waltraut. Heritage, 2024. (selected chapters)

Secondary sources

Pultz Moslund, Sten. “Cultural Hybridity and Migration: From Extraordinary States of In-Betweenness to Everyday Phenomenon.” The Routledge Companion to Migration Literature, edited by Gigi Adair, Rebecca Fasselt, and Carly McLaughlin. Routledge 2024, pp. 23-34.

Nyman, Jop. “Cultural Identity: Toward Spatiotemporal Processes of Identity Formation in Migration Literature.” The Routledge Companion to Migration Literature, edited by Gigi Adair, Rebecca Fasselt, and Carly McLaughlin. Routledge 2024, pp. 35-45.

Preparatory task for all participants

Read the assigned chapters of Waltraut and the secondary sources.

Assignment for students taking ECTS credits

Create a five-minute video explaining how the concepts of diaspora, cultural hybridity, and cultural identity can be applied to your analysis of a recent children’s or young adult book of your choice. Submit the paper to mateusz.swietlicki@uwr.edu.pl by July 1.