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Lara Saguisag

Lara Saguisag

Georgiou Chair in Children's Literature and Literacy | Associate Professor

Teaching and Learning

lara.saguisag@nyu.edu

Lara Saguisag is Associate Professor and Georgiou Chair in Children’s Literature and Literacy in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Prior to joining NYU, Saguisag taught at the College of Staten Island-City University of New York. She earned her PhD in Childhood Studies from Rutgers University-Camden; MFA in Creative Writing from The New School; MA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University; and BA in English from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. 

Climate justice and energy justice movements inform Lara’s current research, teaching, and community projects. Through a new book project, she is investigating the ways children’s cultural forms naturalize and interrogate human relationships with fossil fuels. With Dr. Marek Oziewicz, she co-founded Climate Lit, an open-access web resource for teaching climate change and climate justice through children’s and young adult literature.

Dr. Saguisag is also committed to the development of global Filipino Studies. She is particularly interested in studying how Filipino/American children's literature consider issues of labor, race, and the Philippines' colonial relationship with the United States. As a member of the steering committee of Sulo: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU, she works to promote interdisciplinary and community-oriented scholarship. One of her projects under Sulo is the public syllabus Here Lies Love in Critical Contexts, which she co-authored with Dr. Nerve V. Macaspac (Queens College-CUNY).

Dr. Saguisag’s monograph Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics (Rutgers UP, 2018) examines how the intertwined discourses of childhood, citizenship, and nationhood were expressed in and complicated by Progressive Era newspaper comics. It received the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society, the Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Single Work from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, and an Eisner nomination for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. Dr. Saguisag is also the author of several children’s books, including Animal Games and the award-winning Children of Two Seasons: Poems for Young People.

Dr. Saguisag is an active member of the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA). She is currently Vice-President/President-Elect of ChLA. She is also a founding Editorial Board member of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (2017-2022) as well as Associate Editor of Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society (2024-2026).

Selected Publications

Monograph

  • Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics. Rutgers UP, 2018. 248 pp.
    • Charles Hatfield Book Prize (Comics Studies Society).
    • Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Single Work by One or More Authors (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association).
    • Eisner Nominee for Best Academic/Scholarly Book (San Diego Comic Con)

 

Journal Articles

  • “Labor in the Margins: Filipino Comics Workers in the US Comics Industry.” INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society. INKS 7.3 (2023): 257-276.
    • Honorable Mention, Comics Studies Society Article Prize
  • “Blood in the Water: Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Bayou Magic as Children’s Petrofiction.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. 5 May 2021 (pre-print), 10.1353/jeu.0.0015. 1-23. [Print version: 14.1 (2022): 13-31].
    • Children’s Literature Association Article Award (Outstanding Article of Literary Criticism Published in 2022).
  • “X-Rated: Childhood and the ‘Adults Only’ World of Underground Comix,” special issue on The Counterpublics of Underground Comix, edited by Margaret Galvan and Leah Misemer. INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 3.1 (2019): 70-91.

 

Book Chapters

  • “Stories of Struggle and Solidarity: Reading Nonfiction by Young Climate Activists,” in Empowering Youth to Confront the Climate Crisis in English Language Arts, edited by Richard Beach, Jeff Share, and Allen Webb. Teachers College Press and National Writing Project, 2024. 74-80.
  • “Zombie Komiks in a Cacique Democracy: Patay Kung Patay and the Undead Revolution,” in The Politics of Horror, edited by Damien K. Picariello. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 129-145.
  • “Picturebooks and Comics” in The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks, edited by Bettina Kuemmerling-Meibauer. Routledge, 2018. 315-324.
  • “Consuming Childhood: Peanuts and Children’s Consumer Culture in the Postwar Era” in The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life, edited by Jared Gardner and Ian Gordon. UP of Mississippi, 2017. 65-78.
  • “RAW and Little Lit: Resisting and Redefining Children's Comics” in Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics, edited by Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis. U of Texas P, 2017. 128-147.
  • “Comics, Children’s Literature, and Childhood Studies” in The Routledge Companion to Comics, edited by Roy Cook, Frank Bramlett and Aaron Meskin. Routledge, 2016: 433-442.

 

Editorial Work

  • Guest editor (with Marek Oziewicz), Special Issue on Children’s Literature and Climate Change, The Lion and the Unicorn 45.2 (2021).
  • Guest editor (with Matthew B. Prickett), Special Issue on Children’s Rights and Children’s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn 40.2 (2016).

 

Children’s Books

  • Kara at Play. Adarna, 2016.
  • Animal Games. Anvil, 2016.
  • Ninoy Aquino: A Courageous Homecoming. Bookmark, 2010.
  • Children of Two Seasons: Poems for Young People. Anvil, 2007.

 

Public Scholarship