معرفی
Professor Karen Coats is a leading scholar in children’s and young adult literature at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, directing the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature. Her work examines how texts shape worldview through interdisciplinary lenses, integrating psychoanalysis, cognitive poetics, and continental philosophy.
- Education: PhD (Human Sciences, George Washington University, 1998), MPhil (Human Sciences, George Washington University, 1996), MA (English, Virginia Tech, 1996), BA (English Education, Virginia Tech, 1985)
- Research Foci: Multimodal discourse analysis, cultural theory, religion in literature, and the intersection of aesthetics and ethics
Her research explores how children’s texts reflect and influence societal values, with emphasis on embodied cognition, material culture, and relational ethics. Recent projects include contributions to the Cambridge History of Children's Literature and Routledge Companion to Young Adult Literature.
Awards include the 2024 Children’s Literature Association Edited Book Honor, 2022 Mem Fox Visiting Research Fellowship, and 2018 Children’s Literature Association Award. She mentors PhD students in areas like cognitive poetics, psychoanalysis, and YA literature.
Teaching includes MPhil courses on critical approaches to children’s literature and postgraduate research methods. She co-edits the Cambridge Journal of Education and serves on advisory boards for Children’s Literature and Culture (Palgrave) and Children’s Literature, Culture and Cognition (John Benjamins).
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