About

Cara Byrne’s teaching and research interests are centered around studying literary and visual texts, as well as exploring race, gender, and age. She has published articles about police presence in James Baldwin’s picture book Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood, picture book adaptations of Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological work, and fourth wave feminism in popular YA fiction. In 2018, she received the emerging scholar award from the Children’s Literature Association. Her current book project, Illustrating the Smallest Black Bodies: The Creation of Childhood in African American Children’s Literature, 1836-2015, analyzes visual representations of black childhood in picture books. Prior to earning her PhD and MA in English at Case Western Reserve University, she earned a BA in English and a BS in secondary education at Bowling Green State University and worked at an educational non-profit in Akron, Ohio. She currently serves as the Research Advisor on Diverse Children’s Literature for the Schubert Center for Child Studies.