Althea Tait ( M.A., The University of Tulsa; Ph.D., Morgan State University)is an Assistant Professor of African American Literature at SUNY, the College at Brockport.  Her teaching and research interests revolve around Black Women’s Literature, African American Children’s and YA literature, Black poetry and poetics, Black Women and Girls Studies, and Popular Culture at undergraduate and graduate levels. In the spirit of activism these fields inherently espouse, she has taken her research and scholarship to diverse groups such as incarcerated women concluding their debts to society, to women and children in addiction centers, and to children thriving through studies and the creation of poetry in spaces such as the former Black Wall Street--the location of the Tulsa Race Riots. She has delivered presentations on Black Literature and Culture across the nation ranging from Margaret Walker’s legacy at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi to Toni Morrison’s import to an asset-based approach to understanding Black culture and literature at Harvard University. She has published works focusing on Black poetry, Toni Morrison studies, and the ways black women writers move from their usual focus on adult fiction into the field of African American children’s literature. Her most recent publications include “Empathy: ‘The [Probing] Problem We all Live With’” to be released in The Lion and the Unicorn,and “Sound is the DNA: Teaching Anthems of the Harlem Renaissance and Hip Hop” in the MLA Approaches to Teaching the Harlem Renaissance collection. Recently she co-edited the collection of critical articles and creative scholarship in the forthcoming anthology from the University Press of Mississippi, I Die Daily: Police Brutality, Black Bodies, and the Force of Children’s Literature. She is currently completing a monograph on intergenerational longing and resilience in Black culture and literature. Her narrative approach to scholarship reflects her passion for sound and catching sound in song or playing her acoustic guitar with what has been described as the soul of a piece: “three chords and the truth.”

In 2018 ChLA raised over $2,400 on Giving Tuesday. These donations help to support diversity initiatives, international initiatives, graduate students, and research. The generosity of our supporters does make a difference!

Visit the our website for more information regarding Giving Tuesday.

Theme: Sustainability Through Story: Eco-Justice, Children's Literature, and Childhood

Did you miss the 2019 ChLA annual conference, or want to rewatch Michelle Martin's Butler lecture?  It is now available online!

ChLA is looking for sponsors who are seeking to reach an international organization of children’s literature scholars and teachers with more than 1000 members. Our mission is to encourage high standards of criticism, scholarship, research, and teaching in children's literature.  We hope that you might consider purchasing an exhibit table, sponsoring an item, or donating to ChLA.

Fall’s arrival in my longtime home of Louisville, Kentucky makes me think of my beloved childhood trips out West, which as a native St. Louisan, meant car travel to Oklahoma City, where my mother grew up. It brings thoughts of my childhood desire to venture even farther West—to meet her cousins who’d moved from Oklahoma to California and to replicate my St. Louis grandmother’s visit to Colorado. These thoughts resonated with my responses to children’s book author and civil rights activist Mildred Pitt Walter’s interview for the Library of Congress, in which she details her move from small-town Louisiana to Los Angeles. As one of many African Americans who were part of the Great Migration, Walter speaks movingly about how she carved out a place for herself in her new home city and, as a teacher and activist, worked to empower the students at her largely African American public school and to make businesses and institutions responsive to the city’s growing African American population.

ChLA-Sponsored Sessions at the MLA 2020 Convention

ChLA will begin accepting online nominations and applications for our awards and grants beginning December 15, 2019 and continuing through February 1, 2020.  If you know someone whose undergraduate or graduate work deserves to be recognized by ChLA, please consider nominating them for the Carol Gay Award or the Graduate Student Essay Award.  Is there someone within ChLA that has contributed in significant ways to enhance others’ scholarship and/or professional careers within the field of children’s literature?  Nominate them for the Mentoring Award!