Communications

Professor

College of Arts & Humanities - English

Bio

Dr. Gabrielle Halko studies fraught moments in history and how they shape American identity and memory. Her current book project, Insistent Innocence: Fraught Histories, Cultural Memory, and Children’s Literature of World War II and 9/11, traces representations of Japanese American incarceration and 9/11 in children’s picture books.

As part of her archival research into children's lives during wartime, Halko created the website “War Stories: Children’s Experiences of Incarceration, Occupation & Internment in WWII” (www.kidsandwar.com). The site offers multimedia resources to explore children’s lives under incarceration/occupation/internment in the Americas and throughout the Pacific.

Halko's recent publications include the 2021 article “Baseballs, Blue Jays, Bracelets, and Barbed Wire: Picture Books and the Visual Iconography of Japanese American Incarceration” in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. She has two forthcoming book chapters: “Docile Bodies in the Classroom: Invisibility, Erasure, and the Racial Violence of Children’s Literature” in I Die Daily: Police Brutality, Black Bodies, and the Force of Children's Literature; and “Reclaiming History: The Contradictory Work of Picture Books About Japanese American Incarceration” in Alt KidLit: What Children’s Literature Has Been, Never Was, and Might Yet Be.

In 2016, Halko co-founded the scholarly journal, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, and served as co-editor from 2016-2021.

Expertise

• Diversity and Representation in Youth Literature
• American Patriotism and Identity in Children’s Literature
• Children's Experiences of Internment/Occupation
• Japanese American Incarceration in Children's Literature
• 9/11 in Children’s Literature
• Children’s Poetry

Education

• B.A., The College of William and Mary
• M.F.A., Bowling Green State University
• Ph.D., Western Michigan University