The Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures

The Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures (CRYTC) supports scholarly inquiry into literary, media, and other cultural texts for children and youth. Directed by Dr. Mavis Reimer with assistance from the Project Manager and Research Coordinator, Dr. Melanie Braith, the Centre provides a focus for research in the field at the University of Winnipeg, facilitates the development and management of collaborative national and international research projects, hosts visiting speakers and researchers, and maintains links with other research centres in children’s studies internationally.

CRYTC was established by the University of Winnipeg in 2006, in order to recognize, organize, and extend the expertise in the study of texts for children and youth that had developed at the University, principally through the Department of English, over more than thirty years. Key figures in the history of the field at the U of W include Dr. Kay Stone, who offered the first course in children’s literature in the Department in the 1970s and whose article “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us” stands as one of the most quoted pieces of research in the field; Dr. Perry Nodelman, whose many books and articles have put him in the first ranks internationally of critics and theorists in the field; and Dr. Mavis Reimer, who was awarded the Canada Research Chair in the Culture of Childhood in 2005, was the founding director of CRYTC. The continuing vitality of the field at the U of W and at the Centre is fuelled by the lively exchanges of ideas among faculty researchers and teachers, student researchers and research assistants, and visitors.

CRYTC is affiliated with the International Research Society for Children’s Literature and the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People.