The symposium was broadcast live on Ibn Haldun University’s corporate Youtube account (https://www.youtube.com/ibnhalduni).
At the opening of the symposium, which showcases students scholarly and creative work, Assist. Prof. Melike Günyüz from the Department of Comparative Literature gave a speech. Günyüz reminded that “Children’s Literature” which is an elective course open to all students, is stemming from the university’s comparative understanding of education that urges the department to focus on achievements such as cultural literacy, creating intercultural synergy, gaining a social awareness about global issues, and transforming literary knowledge and understanding into social inclusiveness. She added: “We encourage our students from different disciplines to deal with the issues in a unique style, while also working towards the dissemination of intellectual knowledge. One of the main achievements of our course is that students realize the cultural, political and social effects of Child and Youth Literature, and evaluate the children's literature texts within the framework of different theories of social sciences."
Continuing her speech with a brief review on children's literature, Günyüz concluded her speech with the hope that the symposium, which is the first-ever to be organized by the department, will serve the goal of raising researcher students, and that the papers presented at the symposium will contribute to academic studies on children's literature.
Following the speech of Assist. Prof. Melike Günyüz, the symposium sessions, which were moderated by the students, started and witnessed the presentations of the students. In the first session moderated by Dilara Maraba, Tuba Ecer deliverd a presentation titled, "Examining the Drawing Languages of Immigrant Characters in Illustrated Migration Books," while Cennet Tuğba Kıllı presented, "Psychological Analysis of Immigrant Characters in Migration Themed Children's Books," and İrem Sülük gave a presentation on "How is the Representation of the Virus in the Children's Books on COVID-19 Published in Turkish During the Pandemic?" On the other hand, Nurevşah Kaya gave a presentation titled "The Marginalized Characters in Children's Literature: How do Authors Express Marginalized Characters?".
The moderator of the second session was Cennet Tuğba Kıllı, where Halise Merve Samur presented "Analysis of the use of color and light in the fiction of Dede Korkut stories,” Şeymanur Kaya presented "Investigation of Faruk Gülşen's Book Zuvata Lost Friend within the Framework of Kubler-Ross Grief Processes and Psychoanalytic Theories," Zeynep Şentürk delivered a presentation titled “Similarities and Differences in the Use of Mythological Elements in the Sea Earth Wizard and the Kingdom of Lost Names," Mukaddes Kutlu concluded the 2nd session with her presentation "Explaining and Comparing Right and Wrong According to Children in Philosophy Books Written for Children."
In the third session, where the presentation language was English, Şeymanur Kaya was the moderator, while Zahide Sena Akmeşe, Aişa Buljubasıc, İkrame İbrahimi and Dilara Maraba presented papers titled: “The analysis of Magical Circle by Susanna Tamaro within the Context of Deindividualization and Social identity,” “Reader Response Theory and the Implementation of It In the Classrooms,” “The representation of Alice in Academic Texts on Alice in the Wonderland: Exploited or the Exploiter?” “The analysis of the book Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt in Existentialist approach through death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness.”
