CFP: “After the War, A New Beginning? A Comparative Examination of Reading Primers Published and Used in 1945 in Europe”
Workshop, Germany, Nov. 2015

Reading primers are among the educational media that are of particular significance in times of emphatic political change. 70 years after the end of World War II the development, design, content and use of reading primers in European countries in 1945 will be addressed, from a comparative perspective, in a workshop scheduled for November 13-14, 2015 in Braunschweig (Germany).

The workshop is jointly organised by the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (GEI), the Research Library for the History of Education (BBF) at the German Institute for International Educational Research (Berlin) and the Reading Primers Special Interest Group (RP-SIG) of the “International Society for Historical and Systematic Research on Textbooks and Educational Media e.V.”

The organisers wish to draw together scholarship from various countries to represent a truly European range of approaches and findings in an underdeveloped field of inquiry.
Submissions – in English or German – may address one or more of the following aspects:

• actors: authors, illustrators, publishers, political authorities, teachers and learners, including specific target groups such as linguistic minorities or pupils with special needs
• content: examples might be the repercussions of war, reconstruction after war, politics, childhood, gender roles, ideas of national belonging, etc.
• educational aspects (elements of pedagogy): for instance, approaches to teaching and learning; approaches to tasks and evaluation, etc.
• materiality and design: for example possible restrictions related to the supply of paper; “old” and “new” designs, etc.
• processes: from development, production and dissemination to the use of primers, including economic, social and political conditions surrounding these issues.

In addition to sessions with paper presentations a special session will give room for a panel discussion that will address both comparative aspects of the workshop theme and general issues of researching the history of primers in a comparative perspective.

The full Call for Papers can be downloaded here.

Important Dates
Deadline for title & abstract submission (c. 400 words): EXTENDED to May 3, 2015
Authors of successful proposals will be notified by: May 24, 2015
Deadline for first draft submission: October 11, 2015

Please send your proposals and any queries to Simona Szakacs: szakacs@gei.de.

Memories of (Post)Socialist Childhood and Schooling

Editors
Iveta Silova, Lehigh University, USA
Zsuzsa Millei, University of Tampere, Finland & University of Newcastle, Australia
Olena Aydarova, Michigan State University, USA
Nelli Piattoeva, University of Tampere, Finland

Call for Chapter Proposals

“Memory is not history. Memory is lived process of making sense of time and the experience of it.” (Keightley, 2010, p. 56)

This book aims to bring together those who had first-hand experiences with and accounts of (post)socialist schooling and childhood as cultural insiders to engage in remembering and (re)narrating their experiences. We understand —memory not as history but as “a lived process of making sense of time and the experience of it” to explore “relations between public and private life, agency and power, and the past, present and future” (Keightley, 2010, p. 55-56). The focus is on the exploration of how childhood and schooling were constituted and experienced in (post)socialist contexts and (re)narrated at the present. Childhood as a socio-historical construct provides an analytical incision into the social issues and concerns regarding historical socialism, cultural/ideological changes, and subject formation. As Gonick & Gannon (2014, p.6) argue, “rather than truth of particular lives, … we are interested in using memory stories to examine the ways in which individuals are made social, how we are discursively, affectively, materially constituted in particular moments that are inherently unstable” and to open up ways to explore “how things come to matter in the ways they do” (Davies et al., 2013).

By reflecting on their own and others’ experiences of (post)socialist schooling and childhood through the narration of lived experiences, memories, and artifacts of schooling as experienced in different geographical locations, contributors will critically re-examine the assumed monolithic (and authoritarian) nature of the (post)socialist education systems, while revealing contradictions and complexities inherent in (post)socialist education and open up to new insights. We are interested in exploring the following questions:

• What were the materialities and spaces of socialist childhood(s) and schooling?
• How did uniforms, school structures (buildings, hierarchies, policies, timetables, rules, roles), other school objects structured the daily practices, experiences, emotions, and sensations of children?
• How was childhood and schooling constituted and experienced in (post)socialist contexts? How were children made social and political?
• How were pedagogies of space, time, and ideology experienced in children’s everyday lives (including schools, specialized/elite schools, camps, collective farms, after-school activities, etc.)?
• What childhoods were produced in familial, teaching, and other caring relations (including teachers, nurses, doctors, welfare agencies, etc.)?
• How was childhood constructed in relation to other generations and geographies?
• How were differences – language, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, race, (dis)ability, and other – were constructed and experienced?
• How do these memories contribute to and/or challenge the existing accounts and interpretations of socialist childhood and schooling?
• What do these memories tell us as researchers about how we have mastered (and been mastered by) particular theories and understandings of (post)Soviet/socialist transition, education, and childhood?

We hope that the book will create an interdisciplinary space for further collaboration, dialogue, and critical conversations to embark on projects of collective biography, autoethnography, autobiography, or oral history. We call for a range of research paradigms to interrogate childhoods and schooling that work within and against dominant discourses and constructions of childhoods. Following research traditions that challenge the canons of positivism and empiricism, we also call for research that aims to remove the distance between the researcher and the researched (Davies & Gannon, 2006; Ellis, 2004) and erase the boundaries between the personal and the political (Holman Jones, 2008).

We are seeking contributions from scholars working with the following research methodologies – (1) autoethnographies (or ethnographic biographies), (2) collective biographies and (3) oral histories.

Autoethnographic accounts

Autoethnography removes the distance between the researcher and the researched (Ellis, 2004) and erases the boundaries between the personal and the political (Holman Jones, 2008). Drawing on personal memories, interviews, and visual data (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2010), the researchers will construct ethnographic accounts of their experiences of (post)socialist schooling. Autoethnographic exploration affords an embedded theory-building that explains experiences with the help of contextually relevant categories and concepts.

Collective biography

The collective biography research project brings participants together to collectively explore their memories in relation to (post)socialist schooling and childhood through the shared process of telling, listening, and writing. Positioned in post- paradigms (post-structuralism, post-modernism, post-colonialism), collective biography is a form of critical narrative research that generates memories not typically acknowledged as an objective truth (Davies & Gannon, 2006). Following collective biography reflection/writing processes, the participants share their memories and collectively explore varied meanings that can be identified in the narratives, the dominant discourses of schooling that are present and what is constructed as “normal” and “natural” in the narratives, as well as the subject positions available for the subject in the stories in relation to child and/or other children, teachers, and institutions. Writing collective biography allows the participants to explore affective attachments and assemblages that shape our understandings of the (post)socialist childhood and education.

Oral histories

Drawing on qualitative interviews and emphasizing participants’ perspectives, oral history is one of the forms of memory-making. It focuses on the broader cultural meanings of oral narratives. In sociology of education, oral histories can be used to link individual (microlevel) experiences to historical, cultural, and structural (macro-level) phenomena.

Please submit one-page abstracts by September 1, 2015.
Full manuscripts should be submitted by February 1, 2016.
For more information or to express your interest to participate in this book project, please contact Iveta Silova (isilova@gmail.com), Zsuzsa Millei (zsuzsa.millei@uta.fi), Olena Aydarova (aydarova@msu.edu).

References

Davies, B., De Schauwer, E., Claes, L., De Munck, K., Van De Putte, I. & Verstichele, M. (2013). Recognition and difference. A collective biography. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 680-691.
Gonick, M. & Gannon, S. (2014) Becoming girls: Collective biography and the production of girlhood. Toronto, ON: Women’s Press.
Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Ellis, C., Adams, T., & Bochner, A. (2010). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1). Retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095
Holman Jones, S. (2005). Autoethnography: Making the personal political. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 763-791). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Keightley (2010) Remembering research: memory and methodology in the social sciences. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 13(1), 55–70.

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS:

35TH IBBY CONGRESS
(International Board on Books for Young People)
18-21 August 2016
VENUE: Auckland, New Zealand

This is the first time this prestigious conference for those interested in children’s literature and literacy has been held in the Australasia-Oceania area – a once in a life-time opportunity.

KEY DATES

Call for Presentations open: 1 May 2015
Call for Presentations closes: 30 September 2015
Notification of Presentation acceptance: 31 January 2016
Early Bird Registration: 1 September 2015 – 31 March 2016
Standard Registration: 1 April 2016 – 30 June 2016
Late Registration: from 1 July 2016

CONGRESS THEME

Literature in a Multi-literate world: Explores topics relevant to young people’s lives

Sub themes

• Global, local and indigenous literature
• Diverse literary forms and formats
• Engaging readers

FEATURED SPEAKERS

For featured speakers who have been confirmed as at the beginning of March, 2015 please go to the website: www.ibbycongress2016.org.

Email: ibbycongress2016@tcc.co.nz

Call for contributions
International seminar, 5 and 6 November 2015 (Paris)

La Revue des livres pour enfants is 50 years old: A window on reviewing in children’s literature

An international seminar organised by the Bibliothèque nationale de France/ Centre national de la littérature pour la jeunesse and the Sorbonne Paris Cité University, with the support of the Association française de recherche sur les livres et objets culturels de l’enfance (Afreloce).

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of La Revue des Livres pour enfants, the Centre national de la littérature pour la jeunesse (BnF), in collaboration with Afreloce and the Sorbonne Paris Cité University, questions the role and place of reviewing in children’s literature.

Defined by a dissymmetrical communication between adult producers and mediators, and a young recipient, children’s literature indeed exists only by the functions we assign to and the esthetical or educational values we associate with this specific communication. In other words, children’s literature cannot exist without an accompanying discourse defining its limits, characteristics and issues. However, this reviewing is not homogenous because it illustrates the formulators’ position. The point is not to question only the reviews made by the journalists or the academia, but to look into that made for instance by artists, teachers, librarians, booksellers and more and more frequently those of bloggers, of the reading communities made possible by the internet. All these areas of reviewing are built on assumptions and definitions that are so different that they often seem opposing one another. Nevertheless, the diversity in the approaches and the conflicts that may rise among them highlight the importance of the critical discourse in the definition of its scope, uses, limits and hierarchies.

In a time when children’s literature continues more than ever to be the object of discourses and speeches that exploits it according to political and social debates, evaluating the issue of reviewing based on crossover approaches does not seem superfluous in 2015. This seminar will be an opportunity to retrace the history of reviewing in children’s literature from an international and namely European perspective, and to investigate the diversity of its forms and functions as well as its actors in the XX et XXI centuries. La Revue des livres pour enfants, which dedicates a very large space to it, bears witness to the sustainability and vitality of a discipline that is more than ever necessary.

The call for contributions is thus oriented towards the following topics:

• Professional reviewing: the progressive specialization of librarians, in the 1920s, has aroused, favoured and conditioned the emerging of a critical discourse destined to the professionals of children’s literature, whose history, the particularities of different countries and the current issues may be investigated. The question of the interactions with other forms of reviewing, and their ideological and institutional logics, should be addressed too.
• Academic reviewing: based on the general orientations of contemporary academic reviewing, epistemological approaches may be developed in order to understand its orientations, its specificity when compared to other forms of reviewing but also its connections with other academic works. We will intent to show how the organisation of the various disciplines (literature, history of art, education, sociology, psychology) favours the development of concurrent discourses.
• Journalistic reviewing: how do the media take over and have taken over children’s literature? Why some media rather than others? Is there one form or are there many forms of journalistic reviews? What are the privileged analytical criteria? How does this reviewing position itself compared to other fields of cultural journalism? What relationship does it have with the editorial field?
• Authors’ reviewing: Albert Thibaudet showed the importance of this reviewing form on the definition of legitimacies on the long run. More and more artists talk about their practices, comment on their pairs’ work or refer to models, thus offering a critical discourse that assumes its partisan nature in the creative game. What is the function of this type of discourse? Does it play a role in the artification process of children’s literature? Doesn’t it also reveal the dominated character of productions for children in the cultural field? Is it homogeneous or does it vary based on the genres, expression modes and the medium in which the authors distinguish themselves?
• Amateur reviewing: with the development of the internet, amateur reviewing is becoming increasingly important. The amateurs become prescribers and their work is sometimes recognized by a large audience. They can be parents, young readers or older readers. They may or not be organizes in interpretive communities, but in all instances, they use different expertise systems, with their own logic and hierarchies. The objective is to study these contributors’ status, the sociability logics associated with them, the networks they belong to and the evaluation, description and prescription systems they put forward.
• An effort will be made to confront these different reviewing forms. An attempt will be made to determine their respective contribution to the cultural and social field. Which concurrent criteria are used? Do they lead to different hierarchies? How do they interact with each other? What is the balance of power between these different speech forms? In other words, we will seek to understand how to determine a paradigm of reviewing through competing discursive series.
• Finally, for the sake of comparative studies, reviews made in different countries may be compared. The means by which reviewing takes into account cultural globalisation, international domination, (namely Anglo-Saxon) and the place it gives to dominated cultures will be addressed too.
• The seminar is open to academics as well as professionals in children’s literature, both French and foreign.

Participation terms

The seminar will be held at the BNF Paris on Thursday 5 November 2015 and at the Sorbonne Paris on Friday 6 November 2015.

Languages: French, English.

All communications will be recorded in order to be put later on the BNF’s website. Communications are limited to 25 minutes.

Submission deadline: communication proposals (title and a 1000 sign abstract), and a short bio-bibliographical presentation should be emailed before the 15 May 2015 to: Marion Caliyannis: marion.caliyannis@bnf.fr.

Children’s Literature – Changing Paradigms and Critical Perspectives in Ireland and Beyond
Deadline: August 31, 2015

Before and after the emergence of children’s literature as a distinct branch of print culture in the late 18th century, books for young readers have reflected varying adult concerns and values. Boundaries for what has been considered “proper” for inclusion in children’s books have shifted, and continue to shift considerably, reflecting broader sociocultural changes and developments. Critical approaches to children’s literature have been similarly influenced by shifting ideological imperatives. The sixth issue of Breac will situate Irish children’s literature within broad historical, cultural and literary frameworks by critically exploring changing attitudes to children and their books. Guest editors Anne Markey and Aedín Clements invite contributions that consider how changing paradigms in children’s literature and/or children’s literature criticism reflect changing constructions of childhood while illuminating other cultural concerns and adult anxieties.

Topics might include:

• The beginnings and expansion of Irish children’s literature
• The development of criticism of Irish children’s literature
• Changing publishing paradigms in Ireland and beyond
• Transnational/comparative approaches to children’s literature
• Children’s literature as a vehicle of education
• Changing emphases and changing priorities in Ireland and beyond
• Irish historical fiction for children
• A changing Ireland in children’s literature

This issue of Breac will include work by Valerie Coghlan, Karin B. Lesnik-Oberstein, Roni Natov, Maria Nikolajeva, Lissa Paul, and Kimberley Reynolds.

Typical articles for submission vary in length from 3,000-8,000 words, but we are happy to consider pieces that are shorter or longer. We particularly welcome submissions that are suitable to a digital format. The deadline for submissions is August 31, 2015. All submissions will be peer-reviewed. Full submission instructions are available at http://breac.nd.edu/submissions/. Please send all submissions to submissions@breac.org. Questions are welcome and should be sent to info@breac.org.