Fellowship allows graduate student to pursue picturebook research

Doctoral student Eun Young Yeom is a recipient of a national fellowship to support research into children's literature.

Yeom, a first-year Ph.D. student in the UGA College of Education's department of language and literacy education, recently received an Arne Nixon Center research fellowship. The award, which is based at California State University-Fresno, aims to encourage "innovative and robust inquiry into the varied aspects of children's literature."

For Yeom's research, she will compare represented and underrepresented Korean immigrant families' experiences and characters depicted in picturebooks published in the United States from the 1990s to today. "I will examine what experiences gain more attention, who makes frequent presences and who plays significant roles in the stories according to the picturebooks' published dates," she added. "My research will explore how Korean immigrants' voices are spoken out loud or silenced, or how the characters advocate for or silence themselves."

The Arne Nixon Center awards two fellowships each year, which pays for expenses for scholars to travel to Fresno, California to conduct their research. The Arne Nixon Center is a leading resource for the study of literature for young people—its collection includes more than 60,000 books, periodicals, manuscripts, original art and papers of authors and illustrators. The collection also includes the largest selection of LGBTQ books for young people in the country and books in more than 50 different languages. The center's collection also features an extensive collection of books and materials by Lewis Carroll as well as the Helen Monette Amestoy collection of more than 6,000 books on cats.