Rebekah Fitzsimmons

PhD, English

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Publications


Coedited Collection

Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary YA Literature. Co-edited with Casey Wilson. University Press of Mississippi. April 2020.

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Book Chapters

“Exploring the Genre Conventions of the YA Dystopian Trilogy as 21st Century Utopian Dreaming.” Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary YA Literature. Co-edited with Casey Wilson. University Press of Mississippi. April 2020.

“Boom! Goes the Hyper-Canon: On the Importance of the Overlooked and Understudied in Young Adult Literature.” Co-authored with Casey Wilson. Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary YA Literature. Co-edited with Casey Wilson. University Press of Mississippi. April 2020.

“Prizing Popularity: How the Blockbuster Book has shaped Children’s Literature.” Prizing Children’s Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children’s Book Awards. Ed. Kenneth Kidd and Joseph Thomas. Routledge, 2016.

“Creating and Marketing Early Reader Picture Books.” The Early Reader in Children’s Literature and Culture. Ed. Jennifer M. Miskec and Annette Wannamaker. New York: Routledge, 2015.

 

Refereed Articles

 “YA Twitter versus Handbook for Mortals: A Casey Study in Bestseller List Manipulation, Controversy, and the Effects on Library Acquisition.” Co-authored with Karen Viars and Liz Holdsworth. Lion and the Unicorn 43 (1) 108-132. 2019.

“Possibly Impossible; Or Teaching Undergraduates to Confront Digital and Archival Research Methodologies, Social Media Networking, And Potential Failure.” Co-authored with Suzan Alteri. Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy: Issue 14: Themed Issue on Teaching and Research with Archives. 7 January 2019.

“Testing the Tastemakers: Children’s Literature, Bestseller Lists, and the ‘Harry Potter Effect.’” Children’s Literature 40.1 (2012): 78-107. (Available through Project MUSE)

“Dialectical “Complexifications”: The Centrality of Mary Malone, Dust, and the Mulefa in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 22.2 (Feb 2012): 212-33.

 

Book Reviews

 “A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child by Joe Sutfliff Sanders (review).” The Lion and the Unicorn. vol. 42 no. 3, 2018, p. 381-384. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/uni.2018.0035.

“Human Rights in Children’s Literature: Imagination and the Narrative of Law (review).” The Lion and the Unicorn 40:3 (2016). 353-357. (Available through Project MUSE)

“The Nineteenth-Century Child and Consumer Culture (review).” The Lion and the Unicorn 35.2 (2011): 185-189. (Available through Project MUSE)

“Theodor SEUSS Geisel by Donald E. Pease (review).” ImageText 6:1, (2011): np.

 

Blog Articles

TechStyle: An online forum for digital pedagogy and research by the Brittain Fellows at Georgia Tech. http://techstyle.lmc.gatech.edu/

  • Teaching with Twitter: The Pedagogical Benefits to using Social Media in the Composition Classroom: 19 October 2017

 

Swampish: The blog of the University of Florida’s Center for Children’s Literature and Culture.  The Center is devoted to the exploration of children’s literature and culture through critical and creative investigations, symposia, seminars, and the development of innovative ways to make the interdisciplinary research and concerns of our members available to the general public.

  •  “Dear NPR: Hazel is not Spiderman. (A response to the Diane Rhem Show’s“Readers’ Review of The Fault in Our Stars”)” 14 Sept 2014.
  • “Mechanical Miracles and Little Infinities: A review of The Fault in Our Stars.” 13 June 2014
  • “Reading Elizabeth Wein: A Comparative Review of Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire.” 28 Jan 2014.
  • “Review: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” 17 January 2014.

 

Kid Lit @ UF: A blog dedicated to children’s literature and culture as seen through the eyes of the graduate students in children’s literature from the University of Florida’s English department (This blog has since been merged into Swampish).

  • “Parallel worlds in Once Upon a Time.” 25 October 2012.
  • “A Review in 3 Parts: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Series: The Ugly.”2 October 2012.
  • “A Review in 3 Parts: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Series: The Bad.” 27 September 2012.
  • “A Review in 3 Parts: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Series: The Good.” 25 September 2012.
  • “On Archery.”5 July 2012.
  • “Rewriting Myth: Pullman takes a crack at the Bible.” 26 June 2012.
  • “Trauma and Recovery: A Fantasy about Recovery and Reconciliation.” (An analysis of Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore). 19 June 2012.
  • “The Problem with Marketing Categories: Trilogy style.”5 June 2012.
  • “Review: Insurgent by Veronica Roth.”29 May 2012.
  • “Childhood Favorites: The Phantom Tollbooth.” 22 May 2012.
  • “Review: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi.” 17 April 2012.
  • “The Mockingjay Problem Solved.” 10 April 2012.
  • “Fairy Tale TV.”8 December 2011.
  • “It’s Time to Play the Music, It’s Time to Light the Lights.” 29 November 2011.
  • “Fearing Children’s Literature.”13 October 2011.

 

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Recent Posts

  • “Exploring Children’s Literature with Text Mining and Stylometrics” at Children’s Literature and Digital Humanities
  • Coming Soon:Beyond the Blockbusters
  • YA Twitter versus Handbook for Mortals: A Case Study in Bestseller List Manipulation, Controversy, and the Effects on Library Acquisition.
  • New Position at Carnegie Mellon
  • Children’s Literature Association 2019 Presentations

Archives

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  • October 2019
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  • January 2019
  • September 2018
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  • January 2018
  • November 2017
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  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2014

Courses

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Contact Information

Heinz College - Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Hall -Hamburg Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

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