Asymmetries of Innocence and the Cultural Politics of Child Development<\/em><\/a> was recently published by Rutgers University Press.<\/p>\n\u201cHere, queerness describes that which is not recognized as innocent,\u201d says Dyer, noting that although \u201cthe figure of the child is often summoned to represent hope and the future, not all children are equally hailed by notions of childhood innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is Dyer\u2019s goal to bring to the forefront these \u201casymmetries\u201d of innocence \u2014 which might be based on ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion or traumatic events like war or forced migration \u2014 by centring the experiences of marginalized children in the context of studying child development.<\/p>\n
\u201cCritically studying the rhetoric of childhood innocence becomes\u00a0indispensable to supporting children who experience homophobia, war, or racism, for example,\u201d explains Dyer. \u201cWhen taken seriously,\u00a0these children’s acts of imagination and aesthetic\u00a0expressions such as drawing and play\u00a0can help adults rethink what we know about their experiences, feelings and insight.\u201d<\/p>\n
In order to pursue these ideas, both in her book and in her current SSHRC-funded project collecting, analyzing and exhibiting children’s drawings, Dyer has taken a transdisciplinary approach to her research, incorporating methods from both the humanities and the social sciences.<\/p>\n
The results have gained recognition in the field of child studies for the ways that her scholarship \u201cattends to both the needs of real children and the discourses of childhood at once,\u201d as Dyer describes it.<\/p>\n
Dyer credits her history of working to support marginalized and vulnerable children and youth, many of whom identify as queer, trans and non-binary, with helping shape her theories about the expressive potential of art in or about childhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that it is in art and cultural production that we come closest to imagining what justice feels like for these children and youth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to Assistant Professor Hannah Dyer in the Department of Child and Youth Studies, a child\u2019s picture really can be worth a thousand words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":63525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,4,38],"tags":[45,522,7497,82],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63524"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63541,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63524\/revisions\/63541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}