Virtual Workshop "The Picture in Picture Books – Its History and Pedagogical Significance in a Transnational Perspective"
The workshop aims to examine picture book illustrations, especially designed for children, in terms of their history, their characteristic forms and their transformation, as a medium for imparting knowledge and – ultimately – in terms of their significance for the formation of literacy, i.e. their ability to understand the world and its representations.
Today, picture books are regarded as central to the development of children's ability to understand the world and to make it accessible. As the first books to be read and explained to them, they introduce children to the world and its cultural representations. At the same time, in a historical perspective, their distribution and use is not equally distributed among all population groups and not everyone uses them; for example, results of the study published in October 2020 by the Stiftung Lesen (=Reading Foundation) show that 32 % of parents in Germany hardly ever read to their children at all. At first glance, pictures in particular, and thus picture books, appear to be less culturally localised and less strongly bound to language – but there is much to indicate that this is simply not true in a historical and transnational perspective.
The first – mostly religious – book illustrations were found in Europe and North America, mainly in Bibles or devotional literature. The famous “Orbis sensualium pictus” first published in 1658 by the Czech Johann Amos Comenius was the beginning of the illustrated children's picture book, and many children's picture books that followed were based on this book, even in different national and cultural contexts. "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book" by John Newbery from 1744 is regarded as the earliest illustrated English storybook for children. At the end of the 18th century Friedrich Justin Bertuch began publishing his “Bilderbuch[s] für Kinder”. It was written in many different languages and was published in different places. In it, he not only described the picture book as "indispensable" for the upbringing of children, but also pointed out that the child's eye was still in the process of developing and that the illustrations should take this into account.
Convenors: Dr. Stefanie Kollmann, Lars Müller und Prof. Dr. Sabine Reh
Registration:
For registration please contact Stefanie Kollmann (phone: +49 (0)30 293360-637). There is no admission fee but the number of participants is limited. Deadline: April, 30, 2021
Programm
Friday, May 7, 2021
10:00
Welcome
10:15 – 11:00
Pedagogical image knowledge in historical children’s books. A genre comparison with computer vision algorithms
Chan Jong Im, Thomas Mandl, Wiebke Helm and Sebastian Schmideler
Implicit bias in children’s book illustrations
Vanessa Joosen, Thomas Smits
12:00 – 13:00
Confronting youth with the realities of human atrocities: Illustrations of slavery and slave ships in children's picture books (1794 –1807)
Jürgen Overhoff and Sebastian Lange
The math textbook: Mozambique first picture book
Sónia Vaz Borges
14:00 – 15:30
Fairy tales
Jens Bennedsen
Willem Gerrit van de Hulst (1879–1963)
Jacques Dane
Dark and monochrome picture book illustrations
Annika Berndtsen
15:30
Closing discussion