Children’s Museology: Call for Papers for an edited book

Submissions are invited from researchers, curators, museum practitioners, artists, and other interested parties for an edited book on the emergent field of Children’s Museology, defined as “the production of museum content and programming not just for or about children, but also by and with children in ways that engage them as valued social actors and knowledge-bearers” (Patterson 2020).

Deadline for submissions: March 30, 2022

Contact email: childrensmuseologyvolume@gmail.com

Editors: Monica Eileen Patterson Assistant Director, Curatorial Studies, Institute for the Comparative Study of Literature, Art, and Culture/Associate Professor, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies (Childhood and Youth Studies) Carleton University Ceciel Brouwer Research Associate Research Centre for Museums and Galleries School of Museum Studies University of Leicester

Focus and key questions • How can children’s active participation and contribution foster change in museum practice? • What are the possibilities and challenges of bringing child-centred praxis into museology? • What examples and future possibilities exist for museums to engage children as valued social agents, knowledge-bearers, and active contributors rather than mere receivers of museum content and programming provided for them by adults? • How can museums better share authority with children and break from the adultdominated status quo? • What can children’s museology do? What is the value and potential impact of this work?

For the past several decades, scholars, artists, and community members have challenged the exclusive traditions upon which museum practice is based. Calls for a ‘new’ (Vergo 1989), ‘critical’ (Shelton 1990), and ‘post’ (Hooper-Greenhill 2000) museology have been accompanied by increasing interventions and demands from members of historically marginalized communities to democratize and diversify all aspects of museum practice, including collections, exhibitions, programming, visitorship, staff, and governance. Through participatory ways of working, much progress has been made in the ways in which museums engage with difference, who is empowered to participate, and how museums harness their resources to combat inequality. Children, however, have rarely been engaged by museums as collaborators or contributors in substantive, non-hierarchical ways, despite their increasing visibility as rights holders, global leaders, and impactful advocates for socio-political change. Outside of the creative spaces of some children’s museums and a few innovative examples of co-production, most cultural institutions continue to view children as mere receivers or consumers of knowledge and programming, or, as Elee Kirk argued, ‘little learners’ rather than active participants and co-creators.

Even when 2 museums include children’s perspectives and cultural production, they often do so as heavy-handed interlocutors, exerting a great deal of curatorial authority. In understanding children to be crucial members of society who hold tremendous capacity for dialogue, creativity, and innovation, the proposed volume explores the largely untapped potential of the contributions that children can make to cultural institutions. It builds on a body of work that has sought to better understand children’s experiences in museums and advocates for taking children’s ideas seriously by providing them with the resources and more direct pathways to participation needed to enrich museum practice in transformative ways. The book’s focus is not just on the value that these collaborations may have for children, but, in turn, on the exciting new possibilities that arise when young people are enabled to reframe or uncover previously hidden histories, create lasting change in how institutions relate to their audiences, and forge more inclusive, engaging, and human-centred museum spaces. We are particularly interested in examples from the global south, historically marginalized communities, and underserved/underprivileged populations. Contributions from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), LGBTQIA2S+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual, and two-spirit) folks, and people with disabilities/disabled people are especially welcome.

We seek to include a diverse set of studies exploring children’s agentive participation in a wide range of museological sites: from established, well-known galleries and museums to small, independent, local institutions, and everything in between. We are also open to submissions that focus on child-centred museological approaches taking place outside museum walls in vernacular spaces, festivals, community events, commemorations, pop-up or informal exhibitions, cultural programs, and beyond. We welcome experimental and critical perspectives, and encourage contributions that are co-authored with or draw directly on children’s contributions. Other forms of creative response may also be considered. The book aims to make a valuable intervention in several fields including museum studies, curatorial studies, heritage studies, and child studies. The proposal will be submitted to Routledge’s Museum Meanings series. Contributions may explore (but are not limited to) the following topics: • Critical reflections on case studies, methodologies, and theory • New and old forms of child-centred museological praxis – including co-creation, coproduction and co-design with children – both in and outside museum spaces including exhibitions, programming, digital environments, design, and architecture • Children’s involvement in governance, strategic decision-making, and institutional change • Intersectional projects and approaches to children’s museology • Insights and innovation around children and disability, difference, and accessibility • Curatorial dreams that imagine future curatorial interventions or projects (Butler and Lehrer 2016) • Critical curating; curating from the margins • Social justice, difficult knowledge, and contested histories • Ethics, including issues of consent, authorship, and the negotiation of (institutional) censorship in relation to children’s contributions • Perspectives that address current theoretical debates on agency, standpoint theory, ageism, children’s rights, race and racism, decolonisation, and curating • The role of the digital in enabling children and young people to participate more prolifically and publicly 3 Proposal Guidelines Proposals may offer case studies of children’s museology from specific institutions, exhibitions, programs, or initiatives, or present methodological approaches, theoretical analyses, curatorial dreams, personal reflections, or creative works. All museum and gallery types (history, art, science, children’s, etc.), including non-collecting, cultural, and community-based institutions may be explored, in addition to sites and events outside of museum spaces. All ages, from infancy, early childhood, adolescence, and youth are within our purview. Proposals may be grounded in all disciplines, historical periods, and geographical locations, and we welcome submissions from academics, students, museum practitioners from all departments and backgrounds, designers, curators, artists, writers, educators, or others.

If you are interested in contributing, please send a Word compatible doc with the information listed below by March 30, 2022 or get in touch with the editors to discuss your ideas for a chapter at childrensmuseologyvolume@gmail.com.

Your proposal should: • include a 100-word bio for each author; • include a working title; • convey the author’s/authors’ thesis and how the proposed article would relate to the issue’s theme; • indicate the approaches, strategies, or knowledge that readers would take away from the article; • convey how the article would raise questions or illuminate larger issues that are widely applicable (especially if the proposal focuses on a single project); • take into account that articles will be expected to provide critical, candid discussions about issues and challenges Timeline

Abstracts due: March 30, 2022 Invitations to submit full papers will be sent by May 15, 2022

CfP: Because It Lasts: Time and Space in Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Media

University of British Columbia | Unceded traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Vancouver, Canada | Friday 17 June – Sunday 19 June 2022

Call for Paper Proposals

Deadline for submission: 1 March 2022

A peer-reviewed graduate student conference

From ancient epic tales like Beowulf, The Odyssey, and The Epic of Gilgamesh, where young men adventure through foreign lands, to recent youth movie adaptations featuring time or space travel like Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ender’s Game, and Marvel’s Endgame, numerous titles have engaged with the themes of time and space in children’s and young adult literature and media. Time and space are paradoxically tangible yet elusive; we experience them within our everyday life, yet they are never truly in one’s control. The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified this conflict, forcing nations to close their borders and people to lock themselves within their homes. In times when unprecedented levels of migration and ease of mobility led many to believe that the world did not have many barriers, such a prolonged global confinement has led to increased feelings of loneliness, disorientation, and powerlessness. This, combined with the sense of losing time—or track of it—will definitely affect old and newer generations. Because It Lasts: Time and Space in Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Media aims to discuss these topics and showcase graduate students’ academic and creative work on the matter.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

· History/ Historicity

· Memory

· Futurity

· Death

· Displacement in time and space

· Diverse experiences of time and space

· Liminality and marginality

· Spatiality and mobility

· Subjectivity, agency, and identity

· Growing up or refusing to grow up, coming of age, anxieties of adulthood

· Homelessness, gendered times and spaces

· BIPOC, diaspora, and immigrant experience

These topics are suggestions, as we are open to proposals on any aspect of time and space in children’s and young adult literature, media, education, and culture.

Academic Paper Proposals

Please send a 250-word abstract, including the title of your paper, 5-8 keywords, and 3-5 academic references. Your name should not appear on the proposal. Attach a 50-word

biography, including your name, preferred pronouns, student status, university affiliation, home country, and email address. Save the proposal and the biography as two separate Word files (.DOC or .DOCX) and use the format “Academic_Name_PaperTitle” in the email subject line.

Creative Writing Proposals

All creative writing genres and forms are welcome, including novel chapters, poetry, picture books, graphic novels, scripts, amongst others. Please send a sample of your work that is no more than 12 pages long, double-spaced. Include the title, a list of references (if applicable), and a 150-word description identifying the topic, genre, targeted age group, and relevance to the conference themes. Your name should not appear on the sample. Attach a 50-word biography, including your name, student status, preferred pronouns, university affiliation, home country, and email address.

Save the sample and description as one Word file and the biography as a separate Word file (.DOC or .DOCX). Use this format “Creative_Name_SampleTitle” for the email subject line.

Participants are welcome to submit both academic and creative proposals. Each proposal will be adjudicated separately, and you may be accepted for one or both streams. Please follow the guidelines for both submissions above and send them in separate emails.

For Out of Province/Country Submissions

For presenters who plan to travel to Vancouver, Canada for this conference, please include “Travel” in the email subject line. e.g. “Travel_Academic_Name_PaperTitle” and we will be in touch with you shortly.

Dates and logistics

Deadline for proposal submission: 1 March 2022

A notification of acceptance will be sent by the end of March 2022.

All submissions will be blind reviewed by the members of the Review Committee.

Contact Us · Send all submissions to submit.ubc.conference@gmail.com.

· If you have any questions regarding the submission or the conference, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ubc.conference.2022@gmail.com. · Follow us on Twitter @ MACLconference and visit our conference website https://blogs.ubc.ca/timespace2022/ for conference updates.

About Us

The Master of Arts in Children’s Literature (MACL) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) is the only graduate program in children’s literature in Canada and one of the most multi-disciplinary children’s literature programs in the world. It is offered through the UBC

iSchool (Library, Archival, and Information Studies) with joint participation from the Department of English Language and Literatures, the Department of Language and Literacy Education, and the School of Creative Writing. As one of the few venues in Canada that showcases emerging scholarship in children’s and young adult literature, this conference provides a platform for new scholars and writers from different backgrounds, especially for graduate and upper-division undergraduate students, and creates cross-disciplinary associations that may inspire new and innovative connections to support writing and research in this area.

About the Conference

The first Graduate Student Conference in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Media and Culture took place in 2008. In addition to paper and creative writing presentations, the conference invites renowned scholars and authors as our keynote speakers. Featured keynote speakers from past conferences include Dr. Maria Tatar, Dr. Philip Nel, Dr. Elizabeth Marshall, Dr. S.R. Toliver, Dr. Angel Matos, Dr. Naomi Hamer and best-selling authors Rachel Hartman and Richard Van Camp. This year, students from the Master of Arts in Children’s Literature Program at UBC’s iSchool will come together to host the ninth edition of the event.

CFP: Motherhood and Mothering in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Motherhood is a concept in motion. For the past decade it has gained many new and contradictory meanings, and as a result mothering has also come to be linked to an increasing number of subjects.

To this theme in Barnboken: Journal of Children’s Literature Research, we invite submissions that explore motherhood and mothering in relation to literature for children and adolescents through different approaches and theoretical perspectives. The aim is to highlight the relevance of children’s and young adult literature as well as children’s literature research in the context of the contemporary discourse on motherhood. We welcome submissions that address older as well as contemporary Nordic children’s and young adult literature.

Guest editors of this theme are Malin Nauwerck, the Swedish Institute for Children’s Books, and Tuva Haglund, Uppsala University.

Deadline for abstracts is 8 April 2022.

Read more about the call here.

CFP: The Child of the Future

“…the symbiont children developed a complex subjectivity composed of loneliness, intense sociality, intimacy with nonhuman others, specialness, lack of choice, fullness of meaning, and sureness of future purpose.”

(Haraway, 2016, Staying With The Trouble, p.149)

After living through a once-in-a-generation pandemic, whilst in the midst of a slowly-evolving climate crisis, our expectations about what the future of humanity will look like have been called into serious question. These disruptions have impacted the world of children perhaps more than that of adults. In the wake of lockdowns and school closures, children’s development, interpersonal connections, and engagement with media, learning and play have become increasingly unstable and unpredictable. More concretely, populations are declining around the world, calling into question how many children of the future there will be and where we might find them.

Correspondingly, the ways in which we conceptualise the child are shifting. In parallel to world events, theoretical discourse in the fields of childhood studies have experimented with viewing children as ontologically fluid. Scholars are increasingly thinking outside of the temporal binary implied by the words “adult” and “child”, instead refiguring childhood and the wider spectrum of age as complex assemblages and entanglements; the child with greater time left (Beauvais, 2018 p.77), the child enfolded in matter and meaning across time (Barad, 2007), the human and the nonhuman inextricably linked (Haraway, 2016).

This shift can be seen in children’s literature and media studies’ more recent interest in posthumanism, new materialism, spectrality and other adjacent theories which read childhood through the more abstract complication of animals, plants, objects, texts and technologies.

This conference aims to bring together these burgeoning conversations that are increasingly evident across disciplines at a time where these connections are more relevant than ever before. We are looking to explore the many and varied ways that scholars may conceptualise the idea of ‘the child of the future’. We hope to hear papers that interpret the topic in many different ways, those that consider the ‘child of the future’ as both real and imagined, actual and fictional.

In addition to a focus on the child of the future, proposal topics may include (but are in no means limited to):

  • Posthumanism
  • The Anthropocene and/or Chthulucene and/or Capitalocene
  • New Materialism
  • Nonhuman modes of being (animal, plant, microorganism, robot, etc.)
  • Spectrality and hauntology
  • Environments, bodies and spatiality
  • Spirituality/religion
  • Engaging with the past/ theorising the future
  • Adaptation and transformation
  • Memory
  • Sci-fi, fantasy and non-mimetic media
  • Technology and materiality
  • Intergenerationality
  • Pedagogy

We welcome papers of a duration of 20 minutes that will be arranged into thematic panels. Papers that blend the creative and the critical will be considered, and interdisciplinary papers and panel proposals are also encouraged. We particularly wish to offer opportunities for graduate students and other early-career scholars. If you fall into this category, please indicate in your application if you wish to be considered for one of our funded conference bursaries.

Please send an abstract of 300 words, a short biography (100 words) and 5-8 keywords in a Word document to thechildofthefuture2022@gmail.com with the following subject line: ‘The Child of the Future abstract’.

Submissions must be received by 5th January 2022. Notification of acceptance will be sent out at the start of February 2022.

University of Cambridge, St John’s College | Thursday June 30th – Friday July 1st, 2022

In line with COVID-19 guidance and regulations, we anticipate that this conference will go ahead as planned in person at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. However, we are conscious of the safety of all speakers and attendees and as such will update you of any changes should they arise.

Thank you for considering this CFP, and we look forward to hearing from you!

CFP: Black Spaces in International Children’s Literature

Sociologist Elijah Anderson has astutely observed that in spite of the influence of the United States’ civil rights movements, racial segregation remains central to U.S. society. Anderson has noted that while public spaces have officially or nominally become open to all, “the wider society is still replete with overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, restaurants, schools, universities, workplaces, churches and other associations, courthouses, and cemeteries, a situation that reinforces a normative sensibility in which Black people are typically absent, not expected, or marginalized when present” (10).

This concept of white space extends to children’s books and media, publishers, and scholarship. Yet Anderson’s conception of more inclusive “cosmopolitan” and Black spaces is also relevant for theorizing and understanding African and African Diasporic writing for young people. These rich and diverse bodies of literature, film, and other media comprise spaces that center on and portray the power of Black identities, cultures, and histories.

For this special issue of IRCL, the journal of an organization whose membership includes very few Black scholars from Africa and the African Diaspora, we, Karen Chandler and Michelle Martin, African American guest editors and senior scholars who want to foster more BIPOC scholarship in the field, intend this issue as an invitation into more scholarly conversations by and about Africa and the African Diaspora. We invite international contributions that expand upon this notion of Black Space in children’s literature, film, and related media of African societies and the African Diaspora–spaces that afford attention to Black identities, cultures, and histories. In adapting Anderson’s ideas about White and Black Space, we are most interested in moving beyond conventional thinking that equates Black space with dysfunction and lack (e.g. the American ghetto), the “primitive/barbaric or natural/romantic” (e.g. patterns in West African children’s books that Vivian Yenika-Agbaw has analyzed), or other emphases that simplify or distort Black experience.

We aim to bring Anderson’s conception of Black Space into conversation with texts created by authors from Black African societies and the Black Diaspora who are writing for young readers. We are interested in scholarship on children’s and young adult literature that portrays Black Space as generative, creative, secure, joyful, nurturing, and more. Outdoor spaces, porches, kitchens, barbershops, markets, salons, churches, schools, and other communal spaces often form metaphorical “villages” where mutual care takes place, where Black young people find nurture and community, and where they locate the resources to learn to be and express themselves.

Some contemporary Black creators to consider include Ghanaian author Portia Dery; Nigerian author Mary Ononokpono; African American Patricia McKissack (Porch Lies and Other Tales), Joyce Carol Thomas (adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston stories with Chris Myers and other illustrators) and Mildred D. Taylor (Logan family saga); British Malorie Blackman (Noughts & Crosses series); Ivorian-French Marguerite Abouet’s Aya series (Aya of Yop City); Nigerian American Nnedia Okorafor (the Akata Witch and Binti series); Kwama Mbalia (Tristan Strong series), and Toni Adeyemi (Children of Blood and Bone series); Canadian American Zetta Elliott (Dragons in a Bag series); Haitian American Edwidge Danticat (Untwine, The Last Mapou); and the many crafters (e.g. Reginald Hudlin, Jesse Holland, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ryan Coogler) of the Afrofuturistic world of Black Panther. We are also interested in earlier children’s literature and applicable/relevant theory, such as that by J. O. de Graft Hanson, Chinua Achebe, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

Essays on historical or contemporary texts might pursue some of the following:

  • Black spaces: places (real or imagined) where Black people are able to thrive, to create, to build, to regenerate
  • Black creativity: representations of Black individuals or groups making things, creating art, gardening, cooking, being ingenious, making music, dancing, talking and telling stories, performing comedy
  • Conflicts related to class, ethnicity, religion, gender identities, etc. among different communities of the Black Diaspora
  • The environment, ecology, land, air, parks and gardens, and sustainability related to how and where Black people live and work
  • Food justice in Black communities
  • The motif of the underground as spaces of escape or safety for people of the African Diaspora
  • Genres and formats as spaces, including spaces that have yet to be inhabited by publishing houses and Black authors in a substantive way. While Black YA authors’ urban street lit and historical nonfiction and historical fiction find routes to publication, what genres are still relatively rare or non-existent for Black authors, and what might that future look like?
  • Publishing traditions and constraints vs. Black artistic integrity: national settings can sometimes dictate what genres are most common and what children’s literature looks like; how might more international conversations between writers for children and young adults from different locales within the African Diaspora push the boundaries of what is possible for all?
  • The role of literary prizes (e.g. The Golden Baobab Award, Children’s Africana Book Awards, Coretta Scott King Award, etc.), archives, and curation in sustaining the availability of Black books both for enjoyment and for study
    Own Voices as a contested space: tensions have long existed between texts written from outside of a lived experience vs. texts written from an Own Voices perspective
  • Problematizing conceptualizations of Blackness to examine its diversity and complexity; and exploring books from different parts of Black Diaspora
    Texts as sites for cross-cultural collaborations, as when a co-writer who brings the story to light amplifies the voice of the teller or when a Black writer or illustrator collaborates with a non-Black artist
  • Translations or adaptations of Black texts for young people
  • Intersections between Blackness and Indigeneity within shared spaces, and Black individuals’/groups’ relationship to Native cultures, heritage, tribal lands, sovereignty, citizenship, etc.
  • Protests/protesting, histories and revisionist histories informing protests; particular cultural practices that are forms of protest
  • Speculative fiction as revisionist history and/or as prophecy

Please send your proposal to the guest editors (karen.chandler@louisville.edu, mhmarti@uw.edu) and the journal editor, Roxanne Harde (rharde@ualberta.ca) by 1 January 2022.

Completed articles will be due 1 April 2022.

Email subject: “IRCL Special Issue Black Spaces.”

The submission should include an abstract of no more than 300 words, a brief bio (100 words) and 3-5 key words.

Please follow the IRCL style guide.

NEWS: Call for Submissions – The Dragon Lode

Submissions are invited for the Spring 2022 issue of The Dragon Lode, the journal of the Children’s Literature and Reading SIG of the International Literacy Association (ILA).

Manuscripts that explore contemporary issues and questions, genre study, literary theory, and research related to children’s literature and reading are invited.

Manuscripts due: December 15, 2021

Please visit http://www.clrsig.org/dragonlode.html for more information and submission guidelines, or email the Editors at thedragonlode@gmail.com with any questions about the submission process.

CFP: The Child and the Book Conference

The Call for Papers for The Child and the Book Conference [May 2022] closes on the 15th November.

We are accepting paper, panel, and poster proposals. More details are available here:

https://www.um.edu.mt/events/childandbook2022

The conference will be delivered in hybrid format because we wish to make it as accessible as possible. Both in person and online formats will feature keynotes, panel discussions, roundtables, and other inspiring activities.

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

CFP: New Articles on Poetry in Barnboken

Barnboken: Journal of Children’s Literature Research presents four new articles within the theme “Poetry for Children and Youth.”

Berit Westergaard Bjørlo takes a closer look at examples of visual and verbal humour in two contemporary Norwegian poetry picturebooks, with particular emphasis on the interplay between the poems and illustrations. Reading nonsense poetry as play and creative thinking, Claus K. Madsen and Lea Allouche highlight the different uses of nonsense in Danish Birgitte Krogsbøll and Kamilla Wichmann’s Funkelgnister.

Johan Alfredsson examines the function of poetry and the picture book format in Tove Jansson’s classic The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My, demonstrating how the combination of these aspects can influence how child readers make sense of the narrative. Exploring the transferral of poetry from book to stage, Silje Harr Svare and Anne Skaret analyze a stage performance for children based on Norwegian author Rolf Jacobsen’s poetry which originally was published for adults. The four articles are written in Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, with abstracts in English.

Guest editors of “Poetry for Children and Youth” are Johan Alfredsson (PhD, University of Gothenburg, Sweden), and Anne Skaret (Professor, University of Applied Sciences, Norway).

We also publish seven new reviews of recently published theoretical literature, such as Derritt Mason’s Queer Anxieties of Young Adult Literature and
Culture and Verbal and Visual Strategies in Nonfiction Picturebooks. Theoretical and Analytical Approaches edited by Nina Goga, Sarah Hoem Iversen, and Anne-Stefi Teigland. The seven reviews are written in Swedish and Norwegian.

Barnboken is an Open Access journal. All content is available for free downloading. Read all the articles and reviews here.

CFP: Children’s Literature in Education – Special Issue Aesthetic Approaches to Baby Books

Aside from Perry Nodelman’s landmark article “The Mirror Staged: Looking at Pictures of Babies in Baby Books” (Jeunesse, 2010) and chapters in Emergent Literacy (edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, 2011), few studies have paid attention to the aesthetics of books for infants up to three years old.

While, to some extent, baby books can be examined and analysed using the usual tools of picture book analysis and general narrative, stylistic and critical theories, it is puzzling that this huge and varied category of texts has not yet been granted its own theorisation. This may be, in part, because academic interest in the infant, who etymologically – as we are told ad nauseam – “does not speak”, is less obvious in literary fields than in the fields of neuropsychology or medicine, for which babies are an almost obsessive focus. Yet babies’ incommensurable differences in size, perception, literacy, comprehension, motricity, status, etc., to their peers even a couple of years older, warrant special examination, too, of the aesthetics of texts dedicated to them.

In this special issue, we want to consider the literariness and the artistic aspects of books intended for that very specific audience. We are looking for contributions on topics such as – though not limited to:

  • The poetics of books for babies
  • Theorising baby books
  • Genre, format and medium
  • Visual, sensory and tactile aspects of baby books
  • Bath books, pushchair books, toy-books and other object-books
  • Books for newborns
  • Characters in baby books
  • Baby books of colours, shapes, numbers, letters, etc.
  • Pop-up books for babies
  • Wordless baby books
  • Musical books and sound books for babies
  • Classic baby books and baby books as presents
  • Ideological or political approaches to baby books
  • Cognitive poetics and the baby book
  • Historical studies of baby books
  • Baby books in translation

Please send a 400-word abstract to Clémentine Beauvais, clementine.beauvais@york.ac.uk, before February 1st, 2022.

Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by February 15th, 2022 and a first draft of the article will be due on October 1st, 2022, for publication in 2023.

Selective bibliography

Bernstein, R. (2020). “You Do It!”: Going-to-Bed Books and the Scripts of Children’s Literature. PMLA, 135(5), 877-894.

Beveridge, L. (2017). Chewing on Baby Books as a Form of Infant Literacy: Books are for Biting. In More Words about Pictures, ed. P. Nodelman, M. Reimer & N. Hamer (pp. 18-29). Routledge.

Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. (Ed.). (2011). Emergent literacy: children’s books from 0 to 3 (Vol. 13). John Benjamins Publishing.

Nodelman, P. (2010). The Mirror Staged: Images of Babies in Baby Books. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 2(2), 13-39.

Pereira, D. (2019). Bedtime books, the bedtime story ritual, and goodnight moon. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 44(2), 156-172.

Sundmark, B. (2018). The Visual, the Verbal, and the Very Young: A Metacognitive Approach to Picturebooks. Acta Didactica Norge, 12(2), Art. 12, 17 sider. https://doi.org/10.5617/adno.5642

CFP: Children’s Literature in Place – Surveying the Landscapes of Children’s Culture (an Edited Edition)

 

In Place: A Short Introduction, human geographer Tim Cresswell argues that “place” is space that people have made meaningful. While landscapes can be observed objectively, and spaces may be abstract, places are imbued with personal and cultural meaning and attachment. The landscapes, spaces, and places of children’s culture are varied and diverse. Here we propose a survey of the changing landscapes of children’s culture, the expected and unexpected spaces and places that emerge as and because of children’s culture.

We invite submissions for an edited collection dedicated to individual, international, and interdisciplinary considerations of the changing landscapes of contemporary children’s literature, media, and culture, from methodology to content. In particular, we seek explorations of “place” in all of its forms: the places of fiction; physical and virtual children’s places; finding one’s place in children’s culture; the new and expanding places of children’s culture; the places from which scholars approach, assign value to, and collaborate on children’s culture; and even children’s culture’s place in popular culture.

It is our aim to build on the impressive body of international research on children’s literature, media, and culture by considering essays on literary and media phenomena as well as individual case studies focused on the changing landscapes of children’s culture, the places and spaces that make up today’s children’s cultural geography in a time of change.

Chapter topics might include:

  • The place of children’s culture in popular culture
  • Significant landmarks in/of children’s culture
  • Cross- and transmediated places and spaces (e.g., amusement parks, theme parks, film sets, virtual tours)
  • Children’s book festivals and children’s places
  • Children’s literature and travel worldbuilding
  • Visual landscapes
  • Toy landscapes
  • Adaptation, publishing, and diversity
  • Digital era access and collaboration
  • Showcasing and display
  • Ecocriticism and children’s literature and culture
  • Expanding landscapes: new places, cartographies, and pathways
  • New ways of seeing children’s literature through collaboration / interdisciplinarity
  • Crossover spaces

By featuring a variety of forms and approaches to storytelling, including different literary and media formats, modalities, and practices, we hope to gain a variety of insights into the changing landscapes of children’s culture, its spaces, places, and contexts. We would especially like to encourage interdisciplinary scholarly collaborations, international multi-author projects, and, in the spirit of this collection, academic conversations about aspects of children’s culture that don’t have an obvious scholarly place.

Deadline for abstract submissions: December 1, 2021

Contact: Željka Flegar, flegarzn@longwood.edu; Jennifer Miskec, miskecjm@longwood.edu

Essays should be 5,000-7,000 words in length, in MLA format.

Proposals (no more than 1,000 words, including a short bio) are due on December 1, 2021 to the editors: flegarzn@longwood.edu and miskecjm@longwood.edu

*We are currently working with a publisher. We hope to make decisions about accepted articles by mid-January. Full articles would be due by August 1, 2022.