San Diego Junior Theatre Alumni

June Cummins

June Cummins was active in Junior Theater for 10 years, from ages 8 to 18. After she graduated from San Diego High, a stone throw from Casa del Prado, she went to the University of California, Berkeley and then to Columbia University, where she obtained her Ph.D. in English literature. While her dissertation was on modernist British writers such as Virginia Woolf, she is now a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University specializing in children's literature. She feels quite certain her interest and now expertise in this genre stems from her involvement with J.T. Her first published article was about the film adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, and she has published many more articles on topics ranging from Beatrix Potter to Harry Potter. At SDSU, she has taught several different children's literature classes, including a graduate seminar on children's literature and film. Recently, she has been developing a second specialization in Jewish-American literature, an interest that has grown out of the biography she is writing of author Sydney Taylor, who wrote the All-of-a-Kind Family books (the first mainstream books to depict Jewish children). She is married to a completely non-theatrical person, and they have three sons, ranging in age from 9 to 17. She fondly remembers her J.T. years and friends.

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