Lovaas '07 honored with Fraker Prize

Author: Gretchen Schrafft

"What do we see happening here?" asked Mateal Lovaas '07, referring to an illustration from the children's book "Make Way for Ducklings." With a slideshow of images from childhood picture books, Lovaas challenged a group of students and professors gathered in Chellis House to remember such images fondly while simultaneously evaluating them critically.

"Eighty-five percent of the main characters in children's stories are male," explained Lovaas, citing a 1995 census, and emphasizing the theme of her presentation.

Lovaas was the winner of this year's Alison Fraker Prize, an award given to honor the memory of Alison Fraker, who died in a car crash prior to her graduation in 1989. explained Sujata Moorti,

"Her legacy is preserved through the presentation of the award to the Middlebury student who writes the strongest essay addressing issues of women and gender," said Sujata Moorti, chair of the Women's and Gender Department.

Sponsored by Chellis House and the Women's and Gender Studies Department, the selection process invites faculty from across the disciplines to nominate the student work they believe to be the strongest in the class.

Moorti pointed out that the ceremony was held on Mar. 8, International Women's Day, so as to honor the tradition of celebrating the achievements of women worldwide. She praised all eight submissions and acknowledged the difficulty of the selection process.

Lovaas' winning essay entitled, "Öto the Moon and Back: Gender Construction in Children's Literature," was written for Assistant Professor of Anthropology Michael Sheridan's sociology course, "Language and Power." In the course, which is designed to examine the relations between linguistic and political practices within society, Lovaas crafted a final project that analyzed the gender biases inherent in children's literature.

In discussing Lovaas' work, Sheriden praised it as, "theoretically daring, taking literature to a place it had never been before."

An International Studies major with a self-declared passion for language, children and writing, Lovaas crafted an essay representing a combination of her greatest interests. Through interviews with children and close reading of texts such as "Angelina Ballerina," "Runaway Bunny" and "Are You My Mother?", Lovaas endeavored to answer the question - "How are popular children's books gender-biased?"

Drawing upon copious examples, Lovaas' presentation showcased very telling facts and statistics about how children's literature represents gender. Her own research unearthed a pattern within children's literature of female characters being represented as passive - differing dramatically from the active qualities attributed to male characters.

Citing a passage from "Where the Wild Things Are," Mateal read "That night, Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind, and another. His mother called him 'WILD THING' and Max said 'I'LL EAT YOU UP!' So he went to bed without anything."

"Children's picture books hammer in gender biases through male-dominated covers, titles, main character positions, secondary character positions, and active character positions," explained Lovaas. By portraying female characters as "needy," "small," "frightened" and "beautiful," authors are "reinforcing society's hegemonic gender cages regarding characteristics, actions, careers, and emotions."

Lovaas' presentation evidenced a deep attachment to her subject matter and indeed she admits it has impacted her profoundly. "Very few popular children's picture books attempt to subvert these biases and open a world of possibilities to all children," she explained. Ultimately, Lovaas attributes the process of researching and writing the essay "as being instrumental in my decision to turn down a job offer in international development, a field more directly related to my major, and to consider careers such as teaching or children's book writing."