Maria Nikolajeva: an introduction.
Levy, Michael
Maria Nikolajeva was born in the soviet union and has an ma from
Moscow Linguistic University. There she was trained in semiotics and was
particularly influenced by the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. She received her
PhD from Stockholm university in Comparative Literature in 1988.
Dr. Nikolajeva taught children's literature and critical
theory at Stockholm university for 25 years before accepting a position
on the Faculty of Education at Cambridge university in 2008. She's
been a visiting professor at the university of Massachusetts (on a
Fulbright, one of numerous international awards she's won); a
research fellow at the International Youth Library in Munich; visiting
chair at Abo Akademi University, Finland; a visiting professor at San
Diego State university; and an honorary professor at the university of
worcester in England. A former president of the International Society
for Children's Literature and an active member of the
Children's Literature Association, she was also a senior editor for
the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. In 2005, she was
the winner of the International Brothers Grimm Award for lifetime
achievement in children's literature research.
Among Dr. Nikolajeva's recently published scholarly essays are
"Harry Potter and the Secrets of Children's Literature"
(2008), "Play and Playfulness in Postmodern Picturebooks"
(2008), and "Voice, Gender and Alterity in George MacDonald's
Fairy Tales" (2007). She is also the author, co-author, or editor
of 15 books, including Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for
Young Readers (2009) and From Mythic to Linear: Time in Children's
Literature (2000).
Although Dr. Nikolajeva and I are both long-time members of the
Children's Literature Association and may well have been present at
the same ChLA conferences over the years, and although I've read a
number of her books and essays, my first more or less first-hand
encounter with her occurred a few years ago when my wife, Sandra Lindow,
and I submitted essays to her for the Oxford Encyclopedia of
Children's Literature. Sandy's piece was on Leo and Diane
Dillon. Mine was on children's and young adult science fiction. We
both found Dr. Nikolajeva to be a meticulous and intelligent editor,
perhaps the most careful editor either of us has ever worked with. Dr.
Nikolajeva and I had a particularly interesting series of email
exchanges concerning the overlap between science fiction and dystopian
literature.
In one of several profiles of Maria Nikolajeva that I consulted in
preparing this introduction, she lists her personal interests as
including, not surprisingly perhaps, literature, children's
literature, myth, folktales, travel, and classical music. The rest of
her list is a bit more distinctive, however, as it includes caves,
waterfalls, wildlife, cooking, gardening, miniature dollhouses,
papermaking, and pottery. She also asked that I mention that she has ten
grandchildren.
On her blog, which centers on her reactions to moving to England
after so many years in Sweden, Maria Nikolajeva mentions a particular
love for three classic novels, The Magic Mountain, Don Quixote, and Moby
Dick. Her favorite book of all time, however, is Winnie-the-Pooh.
