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.
Degrees
PhD, English Literature, York UniversityMA, 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
- SSHRC Insight Development Grant - 2015
Current Research Projects
-
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.
Start Date:
- Month: Jul Year: 2013
End Date:
- Month: Jun Year: 2015
Funders:
SSHRC
“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.
“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.
2001 “Carolina Maria de Jesus.” Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001: 501-502.
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.
“Coming Home to Canada.” Review of Starkie Mak’s Coming to Canada. Canadian Literature. 25 August 2022. Web.
Review of Lisa Moore’s Flannery. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 31:2 (Fall 2016): 377.
2009 "Lines, Horizons, Fissures, Fixtures." Review of Emotional Geographies. Space and Culture: the international journal and weblog dedicated to social spaces of all kinds.
“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.
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.
“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.
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.
"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.
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.
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. "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.
2006 “‘The Bomb is Only a Metaphor Now:’ Barbara Gowdy’s Falling Angels.” Descant 132 Vol. 37:1 (Spring 2006): 64-71.
1999 “Becoming Masks: The Life and Times of Captain N at n-1 Dimensions.” Henry Street 8.1 (Spring 1999): 7-25.
1999 “Lines of Flight: Negotiating The Life and Times of Captain N.” With Douglas Glover. Henry Street 8.1 (Spring 1999): 26-42.
“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.
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/CCY3998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Methods | SEMR |
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/CCY4998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Project | BLEN |
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/CCY3998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Methods | SEMR |
| Fall/Winter 2024 | 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 UniversityMA, 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
Awards
- SSHRC Insight Development Grant - 2015
Current Research Projects
-
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: FundedRole: Principal Investigator
Start Date:
- Month: Jul Year: 2013
End Date:
- Month: Jun Year: 2015
Funders:
SSHRC
All Publications
“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.
“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.
2001 “Carolina Maria de Jesus.” Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Ed. Margaretta Jolly. London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001: 501-502.
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.
“Coming Home to Canada.” Review of Starkie Mak’s Coming to Canada. Canadian Literature. 25 August 2022. Web.
Review of Lisa Moore’s Flannery. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 31:2 (Fall 2016): 377.
2009 "Lines, Horizons, Fissures, Fixtures." Review of Emotional Geographies. Space and Culture: the international journal and weblog dedicated to social spaces of all kinds.
“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.
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.
“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.
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.
"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.
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.
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. "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.
2006 “‘The Bomb is Only a Metaphor Now:’ Barbara Gowdy’s Falling Angels.” Descant 132 Vol. 37:1 (Spring 2006): 64-71.
1999 “Becoming Masks: The Life and Times of Captain N at n-1 Dimensions.” Henry Street 8.1 (Spring 1999): 7-25.
1999 “Lines of Flight: Negotiating The Life and Times of Captain N.” With Douglas Glover. Henry Street 8.1 (Spring 1999): 26-42.
“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.
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/CCY3998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Methods | SEMR |
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/CCY4998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Project | BLEN |
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/CCY3998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Methods | SEMR |
| Fall/Winter 2024 | AP/CCY4998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Project | BLEN |
