UST Department of Literature Chair Prof. Joyce L. Arriola, PhD presented a paper during the 4th Literary Studies Conference which focused on Children’s Literature in Southeast Asia, held on October 19 and 20, 2016 at the Universitas Sanata Dharma in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Arriola’s paper, entitled “The Child-Themed Family Drama in Selected 1950s Filipino Komiks-to-Film Adaptations,” examines two extant komiks series from the 1950s and their film adaptations as part of a longer work to theorize on Filipino film adaptation. Furthermore, the sample texts will serve as springboard to examining these as domestic fiction, as family drama, how they reflect bourgeoisie ethos and how they project a sort of national allegory in the 1950s.
The conference was participated in by more than 60 paper presenters. The literatures for children and young adult were interpreted to be contingent to issues related to education such as values, pedagogy, reading skills, literacy and development psychology. Folklore and fairytales from both the West and the East were re-examined according to how they will fare when subjected to feminist, deconstructivist, psychoanalytic and postcolonial criticism. The literatures for children were furthermore discussed alongside issues pertinent to popular culture, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, politics, ideology, identity issues and indigenous knowledge. A number of papers delved on the use of children’s literature in the social sphere such as the peace process and performance studies; and children’s literature has been examined to promote multiculturalism and respect for cultural difference.
The Literary Studies Conference is held annually at the Universitas Sanata Dharma, in cooperation with Ateneo de Manila University. This year, there were 11 participants from the Philippines.
