The Women’s Classical Caucus invites abstracts for the 2026 WCC Panel: A Monster of Our Creation: Rethinking Classical Reception in Children’s Literature. The paper presentations for this panel will examine how classical mythology is retold in children’s literature with a critical view towards how these retellings create distorted views of race, gender, and sexuality.

The controversy surrounding the casting of Leah Sava Jeffries, a young black actress, as Annabeth Chase in the Disney+ series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” only scratches the surface of the problems that plague classical reception in children’s literature. While Riordan wholeheartedly and publicly endorsed the casting of Jeffries as Annabeth Chase, it does not detract from the fact that the book series portrays Annabeth, a ‘child’ of Athena, as a girl with white skin and blond hair. What this controversy brings to the forefront is the problematic question who the rightful inheritors of classical mythology are (if anyone), and how this has been represented and negotiated, historically and in the present day, in children’s literature (Murnaghan and Roberts 2018).

The genre of children’s literature also brings forth the complexities of how mythology is made suitable for children and to what effect (Lovatt 2009). ‘Inappropriate’ mythological content is easily altered or obscured for children, but it is often done without consideration of the dangerous subtexts such alterations can create as when, for example, Persephone’s violent abduction is substituted with consent. Children’s literature has the unique quality of exposing the social and moral fault lines of society, because nothing demonstrates our adult anxieties more than the stories we tell our children (Nodelman 2008, Stephens and McCullam 2013).

This panel would welcome papers on classical reception in children’s literature from around the globe, especially from literary traditions historically marginalized by the discipline of Classics. We also seek papers that delve into questions regarding the representation of the ‘inheritors’ of classical mythology, particularly in American and European children’s literature. After all, according to Riordan, the Greek gods have settled over the Empire State building as their ‘logical’ new home. But we ask, why can’t the Greek gods settle over Burj-al-Khalifa? Reception in children’s literature, especially in America and Europe, is not simply the re-telling of ancient mythology. It is the transmission of a discipline fraught with insularity concerning race, gender, and sexuality—it is a monster of our creation.    

We invite submissions that delve into the problems of classical reception in children’s literature and that offer new ways to analyze, assess and rethink this growing field of classical reception. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• classical reception in global children’s literature

• cultural inheritance or cultural ‘othering’

• depictions of the racial identity of mythological figures and/or their fictional descendants

• handling of sexual and gendered violence or nonconsensual episodes

• portrayal of monstrosity

• role of gender and sexuality

• inclusion or exclusion of neurodiversity

• representation of disability