Professor Jean Webb
Professor of International Children's Literature
English Media and Culture
email: j.webb@worc.ac.uk
tel: 01905 85 5459
Jean Webb is Director of the International Forum for Research in Childrens Literature which provides a focus for literary, cultural and socio-historical scholarly enquiry into writing for children, internationally. She teaches a broad range of undergraduate modules on nineteenth and twentieth century literature, and is responsible for specialist modules in children's literature. She is also an experienced PhD supervisor and examiner.
Jean has given conference papers and keynote lectures across the world: she was a Board member of the International Research Society for Children's Literature and the Children's Literature Association, India and was an Executive Board Member of ChLA. She was a contributor to the British Academy-funded research project Reading Fictions: how representations of books and readers in children's literature reflect perceptions of the power and purpose of literacy (2011-2014).
Jean's publications include: (with Deborah Cogan Thacker) Introducing Children's Literature: Romanticism to Postmodernism, London, Routledge, 2002; the edited collection A Noble Unrest: contemporary essays on the work of George MacDonald, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007; ‘Food: Changing Approaches to Food in the Construction of Childhood in Western Culture’ in Yan Wu, Kerry Mallan, Roderick McGillis, (Eds.) (Re)imagining the World: Children's literature's response to changing times, Springer 2013; ‘Health, Sickness and Literature for Children’in Maria Nikolajeva and Clementine Beauvais (ed.) The Edinburgh Companion to Children’s Literature Edinburgh University Press 2017; ‘Alice and Paddington: Digital Migrants From Book To Film’ in Irena Barbara Kalla, Patrycja Poniatowska, Dorota Michulka (eds) On the Fringes of Literature and Digital Media Culture Brill, 2018; ‘Fantasy, Fear and Reality: tracing pathways between Carroll, Kingsley, and MacDonald leading to the lnklings.’ In Michael Partridge and Kirstin Jeffery Johnson (ed) Informing the Inklings Winged Lion Press, 2018: and ‘Environmental havoc in teen fiction: Speculating futures.’ In Janice Bland (ed) Using Literature in English Language Education: Challenging Reading for 8-18 Year Olds. Bloomsbury 2018. She is currently working on disability in children’s literature in English for the forthcoming Cambridge History of Children’s Literature in English. Vol.3 1914 to Present.