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Nithya Sivashankar - Dissertation .pdf (2.51 MB)

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“A line of humans like ants crossing the desert”: Empathy and the Ethics of Representation in Picturebooks about Displacement and Refugee Experiences

Sivashankar, Nithya
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607039142506791

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, EDU Teaching and Learning.
This study offers a framework to scholars, educators, parents, librarians, and other book professionals to critically engage with and evaluate picturebooks, which they, in turn, could employ to facilitate sensitive reading practices with children. My framework juxtaposes theories of rhetorical narratology (which views narrative as a medium of communication between authors/illustrators and their audiences); narrative ethics (which is concerned with the ethics of what is being told in the narrative; of storytelling; and of the audience’s response to characters and situations in the narrative), and narrative empathy (which examines how strategic formulation of narratives could evoke empathy). I argue that this schema is beneficial to our understanding of empathy as a response that needs to be critically investigated, especially with regards to literature for children that features diverse characters. Using picturebooks about the current refugee crisis set in the Middle East, I demonstrate how this framework can be employed to analyze representations of refugees and events of forced displacement, and more broadly, to examine the production, mediation, and consumption of these texts. My work calls for scholars, educators, and readers of picturebooks to view the verbal and visual narratives as a medium of communication among authors/illustrators and audiences. It illustrates how picturebooks are rhetoric; constructs crafted for particular purposes by authors and illustrators to convey specific ideas to their audiences, and questions the ethics of what is being told, how it is being told, by whom it is being told, and the audiences’ responses to these three aspects of storytelling. My research illustrates that picturebooks on refugees are purposefully designed with the aim of eliciting empathy from child and adult readers while simultaneously distancing them from the conflict and/or the refugee characters not only in the main visual and verbal narratives, but also in the peritext. Using rhetorical devices such as first-person and third-person narrators, minimalist illustrations, and descriptors of time and varied media, the implied authors and implied illustrators of these picturebooks offer opportunities for the reader to bond with or break away from refugee-characters and events of deracination. My framework encourages adults to engage in “ethical reading”—the tenets of which I define in this dissertation—while mediating these stories with youth so that they may pay attention to the ethics of writing and production, reading and reception. Finally, I contend that a framework rooted in analyses of empathy and ethics of representation will open a new critical dialogue with adults about children’s agency, as readers and advocates, when they discover the realities of displacement.
Patricia Enciso (Advisor)
James Phelan (Committee Member)
Michelle Abate (Committee Member)
Sarah Park Dahlen (Committee Member)
229 p.
Asian Literature; Early Childhood Education; Education; Ethics; Literature; Multicultural Education; Rhetoric; Teaching
Picture books; literature for children; rhetorical narrative theory; narrative ethics; narrative empathy; refugees; diverse literature; forced displacement; youth literature; immigration; rhetoric; narratology; education; multicultural literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Sivashankar, N. (2020). “A line of humans like ants crossing the desert”: Empathy and the Ethics of Representation in Picturebooks about Displacement and Refugee Experiences [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607039142506791

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Sivashankar, Nithya. “A line of humans like ants crossing the desert”: Empathy and the Ethics of Representation in Picturebooks about Displacement and Refugee Experiences. 2020. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607039142506791.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Sivashankar, Nithya. "“A line of humans like ants crossing the desert”: Empathy and the Ethics of Representation in Picturebooks about Displacement and Refugee Experiences." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607039142506791

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1607039142506791
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.