Gabrielle Halko
Professor; Assistant Chair for Faculty Evaluations and Elections
Main Hall 543
GHalko@wcupa.edu
610-436-2371
Education
- Ph.D., Western Michigan University
- M.F.A., Bowling Green State University
- B.A., College of William & Mary in Virginia
Interests
- Building scholarly collaboration and community – including with students!
- Diversity and Representation in Childhood Studies
- Children's Experiences of War/Internment/Occupation in Children's Literature
- Japanese American Incarceration in Children's Literature
- Pedagogy of Poetry
- American Poetry
Selected Scholarship
I have two forthcoming book chapters.
The first, "This Work Is Ours: Confronting Whiteness, Race, and Resistance in Children’s Literature" will appear in I Die Daily: Police Brutality, Black Bodies, and the Force of Children’s Literature, edited by Michelle Hite and Althea Tate.
The second, “Recovering Resistance: Social Justice, Multimodality, and Reader Activism in Fred Korematsu Stands Up and We Hereby Refuse,” will appear in Drawing Protest, Youth Activism, and Social Justice: An Introduction, edited by Michelle Abate and Frederick Luis Adama.
In 2025, Dr. Laura M. Jiménez and I co-authored a chapter, "Race," published in Children's Literature and Culture, edited by Rebecca Rowe.
In 2024, my chapter "Reclaiming History: The Contradictory Work of Picture Books About Japanese American Incarceration" was published in Alt Kid Lit, edited by Kenneth Kidd and Derritt M. Mason.
In 2016 I co-founded a new scholarly journal, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, and served as inaugural co-editor for Volumes 1-4 (2016-2021). RDYL is online, peer-reviewed, and open access; our mission is to publish scholarship attending to issues of diversity, equity, social justice, inclusion, and intersectionality in youth literature, culture, and media.
As part of my research into children's lives during World War II, I created the website “War Stories: Children’s Experiences of Occupation & Internment in WWII.” This site is a unique resource that offers crucial insight into what children’s lives were like under occupation and internment in the U.S., Canada, and throughout the Pacific. https://kidsandwar.com/
In addition, I present my work at national and international conferences, including those held by the Children's Literature Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the International Research Society for Children's Literature.