Wednesday, April 7, 2010

“Child Abuse: Real vs. Fiction”
Presented by Wendy Smith, Ph.D.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
6:30 - 8 p.m. (doors open at 6 p.m.)
McGuire Hall East
Light refreshments will be served

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This colloquium event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Literacy, Language, and Culture at Loyola University Maryland.

Lecture Abstract:
Members of Loyola's Institute for Literacy, Language, and Culture frame learning as social and dialogical inquiry within communities of practice. The work of the Institute is explicitly situated in social justice, made real by the continual struggle about what it means and how it is enacted in urban schools and communities. The Institute supports collaborative and interdisciplinary initiatives that focus on issues of literacy. The abuse of children domestically and globally is not one that can be ignored by educators. This discussion will highlight both picture books and intermediate fiction that deal with abuse of children, delineate how teachers can approach children who may be experiencing abuse and, finally, include ideas for opening up the topic of social justice for children in elementary schools.

About the speaker:
Wendy Smith, Ph.D., is from Western New York State, where she received her B.A. degree from SUNY Geneseo. After two years in the Peace Corps in South Korea, she earned a M.Ed. from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and then a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wyoming. She has worked as a special education teacher at a rural elementary school in North Carolina and as an executive director of the Arc of Alamance County, advocating for people with cognitive disabilities. Prior to coming to Loyola in 2003, Dr. Smith was an instructor and assistant professor at the University of Wyoming's off-campus program in elementary education in Casper, Wyoming. She has published and presented on the use of books depicting children with cognitive disabilities and children who are abused or under stress from family violence and war. She has adopted two children who have disabilities and/or histories of abuse. Having served as the director of Loyola's literacy programs, she is currently an associate professor and chair of the teacher education department.

Some of her recent publications include Topics of Stress and Abuse in Picture Books for Children (PDF) and War: Interpretations Through Children’s Literature (PDF). Also check out her article, Topics of Stress and Abuse in Children’s Literature for Intermediate Readers (PDF), which appeared in the International Journal of Education.