On 20th November 2024 at 1 pm we held an event to ‘unveil’ the sign naming Edith Morley Lecture Theatre G27 in honour of (the late) Mr Tony Watkins, who founded the MA in Children’s Literature here forty years ago (in 1984) as the first MA in the UK (and probably the world) to teach Children’s Literature from cultural and critical studies’ angles rather than from an educational or library studies perspective. Tony not only founded the MA in Children’s Literature in 1984, but had worked at the University of Reading since 1969, initially teaching at the (then) School of Education at Bulmershe, and then moving to English Literature in 1993. Tony also introduced to English Literature the Part 3 module in Children’s Literature which is also still running today and remains one of the largest modules at Part 3. Finally, Tony in 1996 also founded the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL), under whose aegis the MA (now MRes) in Children’s Literature and the CIRCL PhD programmes are run.
The event was attended by Mr Tony Watkins’s wife, Dr Barbara Watkins (who herself did her PhD in Zoology here as it happens) and Tony’s two sons, Marcus and Ben and granddaughter Rose as well as our Head of School (Humanities), Professor Gail Marshall, our Heads of Department (English Literature) Dr Chloe Houston and Dr Paddy Bullard as well as most of the Children’s Literature teaching staff and several of the Children’s Literature PhD students and former PhD students. It was an emotional occasion, but also a celebration of forty years of Children’s Literature at English Literature at the University of Reading.