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In this presentation, Dr. Jaye Johnson Thiel, PhD will explore what she has learned from working with young people in both urban(ish) and rural community spaces over the past decade. She will highlight how the harmful effects of neoliberalism call for new narratives of childhood -- ones that are shaped by listening to young people's everyday practices. By centering an attention to embodied literacies, she will show how we can begin to reimagine who children are, what they value, and how they engage with and shape the world around them.

BIO: Jaye Johnson Thiel, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Alabama. Her scholarship explores children and youth hobbies, art making, and play to rethink how communities might develop practices and policies that expand understandings of the constructions of childhood in the Southeastern United States. During her Fulbright, she focuses on the relationships between young people and agriculture in rural Alberta, Canada. This project will contribute to a larger study, the Rural Southern Childhoods Project that was funded in part by the Collaborative Arts Research Initiative at UA. Jaye has published many articles and chapters in her field, including coediting the book: Posthumanism and Literacy Education: Knowing/Being/Doing Literacies. Jaye received her PhD at the University of Georgia. Before receiving her PhD, she was an educator (PK-grade 5) and before that she proudly worked in the service industry, including taking orders for bus parts, sweeping hair, and serving food at a local restaurant.