Erasmus Mundus Grad Student, University of Glasgow
The Children's Literature Program illuminated curiosities that I may not have realized as a standard English major. The frameworks established in Children and Culture tugged at my mind while I sat through biology and philosophy classes, inspiring questions like, What makes a parent? How much of childhood is an experience of the body? These questions intersected with daily life as well: Why is cereal branding for children so neon? What makes a children’s song a song for children?
I appreciated that courses were not confined to the classroom; professors were excited to bridge academia and society. An elective called American Childhoods Since 1865, for example, focused on topics like Americanization, child labor, and public education. We close read pictures from the Historic Pittsburgh archive and developed informational modules for a literacy non-profit. I’ll never forget pointing out children's graves on a class trip to the Homewood Cemetery.
Courses like these enriched and inspired other academic pursuits. After my junior year, I worked as a children’s programming intern at WGBH alongside fellow Pitt alumna Madeleine Shelley. The following year, I received an Archival Scholar Research Award (ASRA) to study the scripts, videos, and photographs in the Lovelace Marionette Theatre Company Records. Alongside this research, I was taking the certificate's capstone course. Readings and conversations with Dr. Bickford pushed my critical analysis forward – begging questions about the strings that lift the limbs of both childhood and puppetry.
Not only has the certificate taken me through such varied places as cemeteries, production studios, and archives, it has also helped distinguish me as a unique grad school applicant. In fact, I’m writing this introduction from a cafe at the University of Glasgow – the first university I will attend as an Erasmus Mundus student in a Children’s Literature, Media, and Culture program. Aside from Glasgow, I will spend the remainder of my two-year master’s studying at Aarhus University, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Wrocław.
I am so grateful for the students, staff, and faculty in the children’s literature program. I’ll be fortunate to find such sparkling minds across the Atlantic!