Laureen Tedesco  specializes in Children's Literature and collects out-of-print children's books. She has published three essays on gender roles in early Girl Scout handbooks and is now pursuing research on an underappreciated evangelical author of the nineteenth century, Isabella MacDonald Alden, who published under the pseudonym “Pansy.”  In a similar vein, she has written on another nearly forgotten nineteenth century writer for children, Jane Andrews.  She pioneered a class on "Race and Ethnicity in Children's Literature" in 2006 as a special topics course at undergraduate level and now teaches it as an on-line version of ENGL 6515: Advanced Studies in Children’s Literature.  She is a member of the Children's Literature Association and serves on the English Department’s Graduate and Personnel committees. 

Degrees
B.A. Nicholls State University
M.A. University of Southwestern Louisiana
Ph.D. Texas A&M University

Primary Areas of Research/Teaching
Children's Literature
19th & Early 20th Century Girls' Fiction
Gender in Children's Literature

Courses Taught
6515: Advanced Studies in Children's Literature
4950: Literature for Children
4540: Special Topics Seminar
3300: Women in Literature
3010: British and American Literary History II
1100: Composition

Selected Publications and Presentations
"Progressive Era Girl Scouts and the Immigrant: Scouting for Girls (1920) as a Handbook for American Girlhood." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 31 (2006): 346-68.

"Models of Girlhood."  Rev. essay.  Nineteenth Century Studies 20 (2006): 183-89.

"Sarah Dessen's Cautiously Optimistic Realism: Decades beyond the Teen Problem Novel." North CarolinaLiterary Review 15 (2006): 53-63.

"The Lost Manhood of the American Girl: A Dilemma in Early Twentieth-Century Girl Scouting."  Children's Folklore Review 27 (2004-2005): 89-107.

E-mail & Website Links
Course Index Page