ccowdy


Cheryl Cowdy

Photo of Cheryl Cowdy

Associate Professor
UPD, Department of Humanities

Office: 204 Vanier College
Phone: (416)736-2100 Ext: 77021
Email: ccowdy@yorku.ca

Media Requests Welcome
Accepting New Graduate Students


Cheryl's current research investigates the discursive constructions of settler-colonial and Indigenous childhoods in historical Canadian children's print culture. She is also interested in the possibilities of readerly experience created by transmedia texts for young people. In addition, her work explores the psychogeographical, examining the relationship between spaces and subjectivity in English-Canadian suburban texts for adults and young people. She is dedicated to interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research.

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Degrees

PhD, English Literature, York University
MA, English Literature, Carleton University
BA, English & History, University of Toronto

Professional Leadership

Secretary/ Treasurer, ARCYP (Association for Research in Cultures of Young People); Co-convenor, 22nd Biennial Congress of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, York University, Toronto, 2017.

Research Interests

Children and Youth , Culture and Cultural Studies, children's and young adult literature and culture, Canadian literature and the suburbs
  • SSHRC Insight Development Grant - 2015

Current Research Projects

Transmedia Texts, Young People, and Cultural Change.

    Summary:

    This two-year project explores the possibilities of readerly experience created by multimedia and transmedia texts, those created by children and disseminated on the internet, as well as those created by adults for consumption by children and young people. It considers the possibilities of experience created by textual narratives and by their various digital extensions. Primary texts in the study include digital stories created by children and young people, digital novels such as the_Inanimate Alice_ project, and the multimedia book by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral, _Chopsticks_, in addition to the latter’s various digital extensions, including a tumblr site, and interactive iPad application.

    Description:

    How do electronic and digital media affect children’s critical and aesthetic literacy and complement or detract from their experiences of the literary? In what ways do young people's experiences with multimedia and transmedia texts constitute radical changes in their reading practices that might evoke equally radical cultural and or social changes? Using as a theoretical framework Marshall McLuhan’s theories concerning media effects (_The Medium is the Massage_), acoustic space, ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ media (_Understanding Media_) and the significance of changing “sense ratios” created by the extension of new technologies “into the social world” (_Gutenberg Galaxy_), my project extends the contributions of recent scholarship in media and literacy studies by considering the innovative potentialities of multimedia texts; how do they go beyond pedagogical utility when literacy meets literary in the contexts of cultural studies and McLuhan’s thought? It is my hypothesis that experiences with these multimedia or transmedia texts invite readers to encounter words, images, music, sound, and video in ways that have the potential to create new or changing “sense ratios” in cultures of the Global North from which they are currently produced; that these have cultural and social implications beyond the individual, and that multimedia texts compel those who participate in their narrative process to be self-reflexive about their involvement in the narrative and meaning-making processes.

    See more
    Role: Principal Investigator

    Start Date:
      Month: Jul   Year: 2013

    End Date:
      Month: Jun   Year: 2015

    Funders:
    SSHRC
Books

Publication
Year

Canadian Suburban: Reimagining Space and Place in Postwar English Canadian Fiction. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022.

2022

Book Chapters

Publication
Year

“Grammars of New Media: Interactive Trans-Sensory Storytelling and Empathic Reading Praxis in Jessica Anthony’s and Rodrigo Corral’s Chopsticks.” Translating and Transmediating Children’s Literature. Eds. Björn Sundmark and Anna Kérchy. Palgrave MacMillan, 2020: 213-224.

2020

“Everybody calls me Roch: Harvey, The Hockey Sweater and the Invisible Québécois Child.” Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives. Eds. Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley. Waterloo, ON: WLU Press, 2016: 267-296.

2016

2001 “Carolina Maria de Jesus.” Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001: 501-502.

2001

2000 “‘An Acadia Within:’ Carnivalizing the Epic Impulse in Antonine Maillet’s Pélagie.” Women in Storytelling. Ed. Afra Kavanagh. Sydney, NS: UCCB Press, 2000: 155-169.

2000

Book Reviews

Publication
Year

“Coming Home to Canada.” Review of Starkie Mak’s Coming to Canada. Canadian Literature. 25 August 2022. Web.

2022

Review of Lisa Moore’s Flannery. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 31:2 (Fall 2016): 377.

2016

2009 "Lines, Horizons, Fissures, Fixtures." Review of Emotional Geographies. Space and Culture: the international journal and weblog dedicated to social spaces of all kinds.

2009

Journal Articles

Publication
Year

“Grammars of New Media: Interactive Trans-Sensory Storytelling and Empathic Reading Praxis in Jessica Anthony’s and Rodrigo Corral’s Chopsticks.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. Special Issue on Translation and Transmedia in Children’s Literature. 56:1 (2018): 20-27.

2018

Guest editor and Introduction (with Alison Halsall), “Possible & Impossible Children: Intersections of Children’s Literature & Childhood Studies,” IRCL (International Research in Children’s Literature) 11:2, Ed. Kimberly Reynolds, December 2018.

2018

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/ircl.2018.0268

2018

“Pedagogical Encounters with The Inanimate Alice Project: Digital Mobility, Transmedia Storytelling and Transnational Experiences.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. Special Issue on Mobility. 8.1 (Summer 2016): 154-179.

2016

2013. "Do Something! Disciplinary Spaces and the Ideological Work of Play in James De Mille's _The B.O.W.C._ and Richard Scrimger's _Into the Ravine_. _Jeunesse_ 5:1 (Summer 2013): 16-37.

2013

"Do Something! Disciplinary Spaces and the Ideological Work of Play in James De Mille's _The B.O.W.C._ and Richard Scrimger's _Into the Ravine_. _Jeunesse_ 5:1 (Summer 2013): 16-37.

2013

2012. “Resistant Rituals: Self-Mutilation and the Female Adolescent Body in Children’s Fairy Tales and Young Adult Fiction.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. Special Issue: Trauma in Children’s Literature. 50:1 (2012). 42-52. Print.

2012

2011. "The Visual Poetics of Play: Childhood in three Canadian graphic novels.” Special Issue: Childhood in Literature, Media, and Popular Culture. Global Studies of Childhood 1:4 (2011): 291-301. www.wwwords.co.uk/GSCH . Web.

2011

2011. "Ravines and the Conscious Electrified Life of Houses: Margaret Atwood's Suburban Künstlerromane." Special Issue: Adolescence in Canadian Literature. Studies in Canadian Literature 36:1 (2011): 69-85. Print.

2011

2006 “‘The Bomb is Only a Metaphor Now:’ Barbara Gowdy’s Falling Angels.” Descant 132 Vol. 37:1 (Spring 2006): 64-71.

2006

1999 “Becoming Masks: The Life and Times of Captain N at n-1 Dimensions.” Henry Street 8.1 (Spring 1999): 7-25.

1999

1999 “Lines of Flight: Negotiating The Life and Times of Captain N.” With Douglas Glover. Henry Street 8.1 (Spring 1999): 26-42.

1999

Conferences

Publication
Year

“Possible & Impossible Children: Intersections of Children’s Literature & Childhood Studies,” IRSCL (International Research Society for Children’s Literature) Biennial Congress 2017, hosted by the Children’s Studies Program at York University, 29 July-2 August, 2017.

2017


Current Courses

Term Course Number Section Title Type
Fall/Winter 2023 AP/CCY3998 6.0 A The Child & the Book: Research Methods SEMR
Fall/Winter 2023 AP/CCY4998 6.0 A The Child & the Book: Research Project BLEN



Cheryl's current research investigates the discursive constructions of settler-colonial and Indigenous childhoods in historical Canadian children's print culture. She is also interested in the possibilities of readerly experience created by transmedia texts for young people. In addition, her work explores the psychogeographical, examining the relationship between spaces and subjectivity in English-Canadian suburban texts for adults and young people. She is dedicated to interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research.

Degrees

PhD, English Literature, York University
MA, English Literature, Carleton University
BA, English & History, University of Toronto

Professional Leadership

Secretary/ Treasurer, ARCYP (Association for Research in Cultures of Young People); Co-convenor, 22nd Biennial Congress of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, York University, Toronto, 2017.

Research Interests

Children and Youth , Culture and Cultural Studies, children's and young adult literature and culture, Canadian literature and the suburbs

Awards

  • SSHRC Insight Development Grant - 2015

Current Research Projects

Transmedia Texts, Young People, and Cultural Change.

    Summary:

    This two-year project explores the possibilities of readerly experience created by multimedia and transmedia texts, those created by children and disseminated on the internet, as well as those created by adults for consumption by children and young people. It considers the possibilities of experience created by textual narratives and by their various digital extensions. Primary texts in the study include digital stories created by children and young people, digital novels such as the_Inanimate Alice_ project, and the multimedia book by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral, _Chopsticks_, in addition to the latter’s various digital extensions, including a tumblr site, and interactive iPad application.

    Description:

    How do electronic and digital media affect children’s critical and aesthetic literacy and complement or detract from their experiences of the literary? In what ways do young people's experiences with multimedia and transmedia texts constitute radical changes in their reading practices that might evoke equally radical cultural and or social changes? Using as a theoretical framework Marshall McLuhan’s theories concerning media effects (_The Medium is the Massage_), acoustic space, ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ media (_Understanding Media_) and the significance of changing “sense ratios” created by the extension of new technologies “into the social world” (_Gutenberg Galaxy_), my project extends the contributions of recent scholarship in media and literacy studies by considering the innovative potentialities of multimedia texts; how do they go beyond pedagogical utility when literacy meets literary in the contexts of cultural studies and McLuhan’s thought? It is my hypothesis that experiences with these multimedia or transmedia texts invite readers to encounter words, images, music, sound, and video in ways that have the potential to create new or changing “sense ratios” in cultures of the Global North from which they are currently produced; that these have cultural and social implications beyond the individual, and that multimedia texts compel those who participate in their narrative process to be self-reflexive about their involvement in the narrative and meaning-making processes.

    Project Type: Funded
    Role: Principal Investigator

    Start Date:
      Month: Jul   Year: 2013

    End Date:
      Month: Jun   Year: 2015

    Funders:
    SSHRC

All Publications


Book Chapters

Publication
Year

“Grammars of New Media: Interactive Trans-Sensory Storytelling and Empathic Reading Praxis in Jessica Anthony’s and Rodrigo Corral’s Chopsticks.” Translating and Transmediating Children’s Literature. Eds. Björn Sundmark and Anna Kérchy. Palgrave MacMillan, 2020: 213-224.

2020

“Everybody calls me Roch: Harvey, The Hockey Sweater and the Invisible Québécois Child.” Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives. Eds. Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley. Waterloo, ON: WLU Press, 2016: 267-296.

2016

2001 “Carolina Maria de Jesus.” Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001: 501-502.

2001

2000 “‘An Acadia Within:’ Carnivalizing the Epic Impulse in Antonine Maillet’s Pélagie.” Women in Storytelling. Ed. Afra Kavanagh. Sydney, NS: UCCB Press, 2000: 155-169.

2000

Book Reviews

Publication
Year

“Coming Home to Canada.” Review of Starkie Mak’s Coming to Canada. Canadian Literature. 25 August 2022. Web.

2022

Review of Lisa Moore’s Flannery. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 31:2 (Fall 2016): 377.

2016

2009 "Lines, Horizons, Fissures, Fixtures." Review of Emotional Geographies. Space and Culture: the international journal and weblog dedicated to social spaces of all kinds.

2009

Books

Publication
Year

Canadian Suburban: Reimagining Space and Place in Postwar English Canadian Fiction. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022.

2022

Journal Articles

Publication
Year

“Grammars of New Media: Interactive Trans-Sensory Storytelling and Empathic Reading Praxis in Jessica Anthony’s and Rodrigo Corral’s Chopsticks.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. Special Issue on Translation and Transmedia in Children’s Literature. 56:1 (2018): 20-27.

2018

Guest editor and Introduction (with Alison Halsall), “Possible & Impossible Children: Intersections of Children’s Literature & Childhood Studies,” IRCL (International Research in Children’s Literature) 11:2, Ed. Kimberly Reynolds, December 2018.

2018

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/ircl.2018.0268

2018

“Pedagogical Encounters with The Inanimate Alice Project: Digital Mobility, Transmedia Storytelling and Transnational Experiences.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. Special Issue on Mobility. 8.1 (Summer 2016): 154-179.

2016

2013. "Do Something! Disciplinary Spaces and the Ideological Work of Play in James De Mille's _The B.O.W.C._ and Richard Scrimger's _Into the Ravine_. _Jeunesse_ 5:1 (Summer 2013): 16-37.

2013

"Do Something! Disciplinary Spaces and the Ideological Work of Play in James De Mille's _The B.O.W.C._ and Richard Scrimger's _Into the Ravine_. _Jeunesse_ 5:1 (Summer 2013): 16-37.

2013

2012. “Resistant Rituals: Self-Mutilation and the Female Adolescent Body in Children’s Fairy Tales and Young Adult Fiction.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature. Special Issue: Trauma in Children’s Literature. 50:1 (2012). 42-52. Print.

2012

2011. "The Visual Poetics of Play: Childhood in three Canadian graphic novels.” Special Issue: Childhood in Literature, Media, and Popular Culture. Global Studies of Childhood 1:4 (2011): 291-301. www.wwwords.co.uk/GSCH . Web.

2011

2011. "Ravines and the Conscious Electrified Life of Houses: Margaret Atwood's Suburban Künstlerromane." Special Issue: Adolescence in Canadian Literature. Studies in Canadian Literature 36:1 (2011): 69-85. Print.

2011

2006 “‘The Bomb is Only a Metaphor Now:’ Barbara Gowdy’s Falling Angels.” Descant 132 Vol. 37:1 (Spring 2006): 64-71.

2006

1999 “Becoming Masks: The Life and Times of Captain N at n-1 Dimensions.” Henry Street 8.1 (Spring 1999): 7-25.

1999

1999 “Lines of Flight: Negotiating The Life and Times of Captain N.” With Douglas Glover. Henry Street 8.1 (Spring 1999): 26-42.

1999

Conferences

Publication
Year

“Possible & Impossible Children: Intersections of Children’s Literature & Childhood Studies,” IRSCL (International Research Society for Children’s Literature) Biennial Congress 2017, hosted by the Children’s Studies Program at York University, 29 July-2 August, 2017.

2017


Current Courses

Term Course Number Section Title Type
Fall/Winter 2023 AP/CCY3998 6.0 A The Child & the Book: Research Methods SEMR
Fall/Winter 2023 AP/CCY4998 6.0 A The Child & the Book: Research Project BLEN