The inaugural ‘Tony Watkins Annual Lecture on Children’s Literature, Culture, Media was delivered by Professor Fred Inglis, then from the University of Sheffield, on 19th of June, 2003. The subject was ‘Educational Narratives and the Good Society’. The lecture was given on the occasion of Tony Watkins’s retirement from the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading in 2003, to mark his great role in the shaping of children’s literature studies, and his founding role in making Reading an international leader in this field through founding and running the MA in Children’s Literature (the first accredited MA in this field in the UK, in 1984), and the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood (http://www.circl.co.uk/about.htm).
The Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood was established in the English Department at the University of Reading in Reading, England, in October 1996. Known as CIRCL for short, the Graduate Centre aims to promote and coordinate international and interdisciplinary academic research in childhood, focusing particularly on research in children and culture, children’s literature, and children and the media.
For details of this year’s lecture, please go to http://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/DEAL/The_Tony_Watkins_Lecture_2012.pdf
