Media Guide to WCU Faculty Experts
Dr. Gabrielle Halko
Professor
College of Arts & Humanities - English
Bio
Dr. Gabrielle Halko studies fraught moments in history and how they shape American identity and memory. Her current book project, Insistent Innocence: Fraught Histories, Cultural Memory, and Children’s Literature of World War II and 9/11, traces representations of Japanese American incarceration and 9/11 in children’s picture books.
As part of her archival research into children's lives during wartime, Halko created the website “War Stories: Children’s Experiences of Incarceration, Occupation & Internment in WWII” (www.kidsandwar.com). The site offers multimedia resources to explore children’s lives under incarceration/occupation/internment in the Americas and throughout the Pacific.
Halko's recent publications include the 2021 article “Baseballs, Blue Jays, Bracelets, and Barbed Wire: Picture Books and the Visual Iconography of Japanese American Incarceration” in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. She has two forthcoming book chapters: “Docile Bodies in the Classroom: Invisibility, Erasure, and the Racial Violence of Children’s Literature” in I Die Daily: Police Brutality, Black Bodies, and the Force of Children's Literature; and “Reclaiming History: The Contradictory Work of Picture Books About Japanese American Incarceration” in Alt KidLit: What Children’s Literature Has Been, Never Was, and Might Yet Be.
In 2016, Halko co-founded the scholarly journal, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, and served as co-editor from 2016-2021.
Expertise
- Diversity and Representation in Youth Literature
- American Patriotism and Identity in Children’s Literature
- Children's Experiences of Internment/Occupation
- Japanese American Incarceration in Children's Literature
- 9/11 in Children’s Literature
- Children’s Poetry
Education
- B.A., The College of William and Mary
- M.F.A., Bowling Green State University
- Ph.D., Western Michigan University