Tyler Bickford teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in children’s literature and childhood studies in the Department of English. He advises graduate students working in those fields, as well as students studying media and technology and using ethnographic methods. Trained as an ethnomusicologist, his research focuses on contemporary children's media, especially popular music and digital technology, using ethnographic and cultural studies methods. He is the author of Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture (Duke University Press, 2020) and Schooling New Media: Music, Language, and Technology in Children's Culture (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Over the next two years, Pitt’s Children’s Literature Program will partner with the Children’s Literature Unit at Newcastle University in the UK to launch a global scholarly network focused on children’s literature and social justice. The Children’s Literature Programs at Pitt and Newcastle have collaborated closely since 2018, and the Global Academic Partnership award will allow them to grow their network to include partner institutions in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. They will host a series of virtual and in person events (including simultaneous interpretation) focused on exploring the diverse meanings of social justice in children’s literature from different regions and sharing works that have not been translated into English. They hope to launch a critical series of translations of children’s books with social justice themes that have not been recognized by traditional publishers.