Gabrielle Halko

Professor; Assistant Chair for Faculty Evaluations and Elections
Main Hall 543
GHalko@wcupa.edu
610-436-2371

Education

Ph.D., Western Michigan University
M.F.A., Bowling Green State University
B.A., College of William & Mary in Virginia

Interests

Building scholarly collaboration and community – including with students!
Diversity and Representation in Childhood Studies
Children's Experiences of War/Internment/Occupation in Children's Literature
Japanese American Incarceration in Children's Literature
Pedagogy of Poetry
American Poetry

Selected Scholarship

I have a forthcoming chapter, "Race," co-authored with Laura M. Jiménez. Our chapter will appear in the collection Children's Literature and Culture edited by Rebecca Rowe and published by Routledge.

In 2016 I co-founded a new scholarly journal, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, and served as inaugural co-editor for Volumes 1-4. RDYL is online, peer-reviewed, and open access; our mission is to publish scholarship attending to issues of diversity, equity, social justice, inclusion, and intersectionality in youth literature, culture, and media.

As part of my research into children's lives during World War II, I created the website “War Stories: Children’s Experiences of Occupation & Internment in WWII.” This site is a unique resource that offers crucial insight into what children’s lives were like under occupation and internment in the U.S., Canada, and throughout the Pacific. https://kidsandwar.com/

In 2024, my chapter “Reclaiming History: The Contradictory Work of Picture Books About Japanese American Incarceration” was published in the collection Alt Kid Lit, edited by Kenneth Kidd and Derritt M. Mason.

“Docile Bodies in the Classroom: Invisibility, Erasure, and the Racial Violence of Children’s Literature” will appear in the collection I Die Daily: Police Brutality, Black Bodies, and the Force of Children's Literature from the University Press of Mississippi.

In 2021, my article “Baseball, Blue Jays, Bracelets, and Barbed Wire: Picture Books and the Visual Iconography of Japanese American Incarceration” was published in a special issue of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly edited by Ramona Caponegro.

In addition, I present my work at national and international conferences, including those held by the Children's Literature Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the International Research Society for Children's Literature.