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Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein

MA (Bristol), MA (Amsterdam), PGCE (Amsterdam), PhD (Bristol)

Director of CIRCL and Coordinator of the MA in Children's Literature

Karin Lesnik-Oberstein has taught Children's Literature to undergraduates and post-graduates at the universities of Oxford, Roehampton, Warwick, and Reading. Her research interests are in critical theory, cultural studies, and feminist theory. Karin's publications in the field include:

Karin's books:

Children's Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child Clarendon Press, 1994, repr. 2000.
Children in Culture: Approaches to Childhood as editor and contributor, Macmillan (now Palgrave)/ St Martin's Press, 1998, now available on demand from the publisher; with contributions from other CIRCL members.
'Children in Literature', volume 32 of the 'Yearbook of English Studies' as editor and contributor, Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association, 2002; with contributions from other CIRCL members.
Children's Literature: New Approaches as editor and contributor, with contributions from other CIRCL members. Palgrave, 2004.
The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair as editor and contributor, with contributions from other CIRCL members Manchester University Press, 2006. The Last Taboo is now out in paperback!
On Having an Own Child: Reproductive Technologies and the Cultural Construction of Childhood, Karnac Books, 2008.
Children in Culture, Revisited: Further Approaches to Childhood as editor and contributor, with contributions from other CIRCL members. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Karin's articles and chapters in the field include:

'Defining Children's Literature and Childhood' in: Peter Hunt (ed.), The International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children's Literature, Routledge, 1996.

'Children's Literature and the Environment', in: Neil Sammels and Richard Kerridge (eds), Writing the Environment, Zed Books, 1997.

'The Body of the Child in Dutch and English Children's Literature' in: Cedric Brown and Therese Fischer-Seidel (eds), Cultural Negotiations: Sichtweisen des Anderen, A. Francke Verlag, Tubingen, (Germany), 1998.

'Fantasy, Literature,and Childhood: In Pursuit of Wonderlands', in: Barbara White and Ceri Sullivan (eds), Writing Fantasy, Longman, 1999.

The editing and introducing (with Tony Watkins and Catriona Nicholson) of the January 1999 volume (23.1) of 'The Lion and the Unicorn' on 'Contemporary British Children's Literature'.

'The Psychopathology of Everyday Children's Literature Criticism', in: 'Cultural Critique', vol. 45, Autumn 2000, 222-42.

'Oliver Twist: The Narrator's Tale', in: 'Textual Practice', March 2001, 87-100.

(co-authored with Dr Stephen Thomson): 'What is Queer Theory Doing with the Child?', in: 'Parallax', vol. 8, no. 1, 2002, 35-46.

'Holiday House: Grist to The Mill on the Floss or Childhood as Text', in: 'Children in Literature' ,special section of The Yearbook of English Studies, ed. Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Volume 32, Number 1, 1 January 2002 , pp. 77-94.

'On "Wanting a Child", or: An Idea of Desire', in: Indeterminate Bodies, eds. Naomi Segal, Lib Taylor and Roger Cook, Palgrave, 2003.

'The Philosophical Investigations' Children', in 'Educational Philosophy and Theory', 4:35, October 2003, 381-94.

'The Owned Child and Commodification', in 'New Antigone', 1:1, October 2005, 20-7.

'Children's Literature', an overview article for the on-line Literary Encylopedia, 25-08-2008.

'Childhood, Queer Theory, and Feminism' in 'Feminist Theory', 11:3, December 2010, 309-21.

Karin Lesnik-Oberstein teaches the Theory Core Course of the MA in Children's Literature, convenes the Myth and Folktale option module and contributes to the Nineteenth Century Children's Literature core course. She is also the designer and web-mistress of this web-site.

Karin being awarded the Faculty Student Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching and Learning 2010 (on 1st July 2010)

 

E-mail address: K.B.Lesnik-Oberstein@reading.ac.uk

See also her web-page: Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein's Home Page on the Academic Criticism of Children's Literature.