CFP – Red Feather Journal: Children in Popular Culture

CFP: Children in Popular Culture

Red Feather Journal (www.redfeatherjournal.org), an online, peer-reviewed, international and interdisciplinary journal of children in popular culture.

Red Feather Journal seeks well-written, critical articles for the Fall 2015 issue (deadline October 31, 2015) on any aspect of the child in popular culture. Some suggested topics include: children in film, television, the Internet; children in popular literature or art; the child in gaming, cosplay, cons, or fan cultures; children and social media; childhood geography or material culture; or any other aspect of the child in popular culture.

Red Feather Journal welcomes international submissions, and submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. Red Feather Journal is published twice a year, in Spring and Fall, and adheres to the MLA citation system. Authors are welcome to submit articles in other citations systems, with the understanding that, upon acceptance, conversion to MLA is a condition of publication. Red Feather Journal is indexed through EBSCO host and MLA bibliography.

Interested contributors please submit the article, an abstract, and a brief biography (with full contact information) as attachments in Word to debbieo@okstate.edu.

Deadline for submissions for the Fall 2015 issue is October 31, 2015.

2015 Children’s Literature in Education Emerging Scholar Award Call for Applications

During its long history, the journal Children’s Literature in Education has often benefited from the refreshing ideas and original approaches of young and new scholars in the field of children’s literature. In the current academic climate, the Humanities are under financial pressure in various countries. The competition for (post)doctoral scholarships is keen and tenured positions are becoming rare. CLE, with the support of its publisher, Springer, therefore launched the Children’s Literature in Education Emerging Scholar Award (CLEESA) in 2013, which will run annually.

We are pleased to announce that the 2014 Children’s Literature in Education Emerging Scholar Award has been presented to Meagan Lacy, an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Information Literacy Services & Instruction at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, a CUNY school in New York, New York, for her essay “Portraits of Children of Alcoholics: Stories that Add Hope to Hope,” which will be published in the December 2015 issue of CLE.

Each year, the prestigious winner receives a prize of $500 and their article is published exclusively in Children’s Literature in Education, with an appropriate acknowledgement of its award-winning status. Excellent essays that do not win the award will still be considered for publication in CLE.

Applicants must submit an essay of 6-8,000 words to the Children’s Literature in Education website before 31 December 2015 (http://www.editorialmanager.com/clid/). For anyone unfamiliar with the journal, details and a preview can be found there, together with a PDF guide to the journal’s house style: http://www.springer.com/education+%26+language/linguistics/journal/10583?detailsPage=pltci_1060388. All submitted articles must conform to this house style.

Submissions must be original works that have not been published previously (including in conference proceedings) and that are not currently under consideration with another journal or edited collection.

For the purpose of eligibility for this award, an Emerging Scholar is defined as someone who meets the following criteria:

  • has not defended a Ph.D. before 31 December 2012
  • has not published books, chapters or peer-reviewed articles on children’s literature before 31 December 2010

Submissions should be accompanied by a brief note indicating that the article is to be considered for the Emerging Scholar Award, and affirming that the author meets these criteria.

CFP – Harry Potter Studies

CALL FOR PAPERS
HARRY POTTER STUDIES

37th Annual Conference of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association
Feb. 10-13, 2016
Hyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center
Albuquerque, New Mexico

SWPACA invites scholars to submit papers to the vibrant and diverse Harry Potter Studies Area of the Southwest PCA/ACA conference. The Harry Potter Studies Area is an interdisciplinary/cross-disciplinary field that focuses on both the novel and filmic versions of J.K. Rowling’s work. Papers may address the work as a whole, specific characters, themes, relationships, social and/or cultural implications, individual texts within the series, etc.

Paper and/or panel proposals are welcomed. Any and all types of scholars, including independent scholars, graduate students, non-tenured, tenure-track, tenured and emeritus faculty are encouraged to submit. The Harry Potter Studies Area aims to emphasize a diversity of scholarship opportunities and is open to innovation in approach to research about the Potterverse. Networking among Potter scholars with an eye toward post-conference collaboration and publication is a key goal of the Harry Potter Studies Area.

Papers from the Harry Potter Studies Area presented at conferences since 2012 have been gathered into four (4) published, edited volumes released in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Papers submitted to the Harry Potter Studies Area are eligible for the SWPACA Travel Fellowships and the Richard Tuerk “Out of This World” Paper Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy. Dual submissions to the Area and the awards are highly encouraged. For application information, see http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/.

Please consider submitting to the official SWPACA journal, entitled Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy. For more information, please visit http://journaldialogue.org.

For individual paper proposals, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to the official SWPACA database at http://conference2016.southwestpca.org/. Please also include a biographical note about each author in lieu of a full CV.

For panel proposals, please feel free to send an initial query email, or to propose the panel directly. Please include all of the information requested for an individual paper proposal for each member of the panel, as well as a working title for the panel and an additional description of no more than 300 words explaining the purpose/theme of the panel.

Please submit all questions to Dr. Christopher Bell (cbell3@uccs.edu), chair of the Harry Potter Studies Area. All proposals must be submitted to the database by November 1, 2015. Proposals sent to the chair via email will be returned and you will be asked to submit via the database. Information on the SWPACA and the conference can be accessed at http://southwestpca.org/.

CFP – The Literature of Children and Young Adults: Contemporary Challenges and Future Aspirations

Call for papers
The Literature of Children and Young Adults: Contemporary Challenges and Future Aspirations
One-Day International Conference
Al-Ain, Wednesday, 18 November 2015

The United Arab Emirates University’s English Literature Department is pleased to announce the first One-Day International Conference on The Literature of Children and Young Adults, under the patronage of Prof. Saif Al Qaydi, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The event will take place on the UAEU campus in Al-Ain, on Wednesday, 18 November 2015. Submission of abstracts is invited from scholars and graduate students of all disciplines in and beyond the Humanities.

Conference topics include (but are not limited to) theoretical, philosophical, historical, anthropological and sociological approaches; comparative studies; author studies; bibliographic and archival studies; ideology and censorship; representations of gender and coming-of-age issues; female heroism; fairy tales; picture books and graphic novels; fan fiction; novels, drama and poetry for children and young adults; children’s literary development and productivity; nonfiction, film, television and new media for children and young adults.

Suggested Topics for Presentations

  • Writing for Emirati Children and Young Adults in the Post-Globalization Era
  • Identity and Gender Construction in Children and Young Adult Fiction
  • Global Literature for Children and Young Adults in Arabic Translation
  • Centralizing Heritage and Tradition in Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature
  • Toward the Formation of Literary Critical Theories for Children’s Writing
  • Narrating the Child: Issues of Family and Childhood
  • Children’s Theatre: New Perspectives
  • Contemporary Narratives and Authors of Children’s and Young Adult Literature
  • Children’s Narratives: Socio-psychological Vision and Coming of Age
  • Refugee Children in Literature, Cinema, and Art
  • Teaching Children’s Literature: Pedagogical Viewpoint
  • Adventure in Children’s Literature
  • Science Fiction Narratives in Children’s Short Stories
  • Children’s Literature: Linguistic and Stylistic Issues
  • Violence in Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature

Abstracts of a length between 200 and 250 words should be submitted by e-mail. Kindly save your abstract in a Word file and and send it to ENG.conference@uaeu.ac.ae or to the Department Chair Dr Saddik Gohar s.gohor@uaeu.ac.ae, no later than 25 September 2015.

All abstracts should include the participant’s name, affiliation, postal address and mobile phone number. Electronic copies of CV, passport, and a recent personal photo are also required. Notice of acceptance will be given three days after your abstract is received.

Papers may be published either in conference proceedings, or in the CHSS refereed journal. There is no registration fee. All participants from outside Al Ain will be offered accommodation for two nights, and air tickets may be provided for some participants from abroad. All participants from abroad will be offered free transportation from and to the airport. The conference program will include a sightseeing tour to nearby Jebel Hafeet.

CFP – Shared Emotions: Children’s World & Cinema

CALL FOR Book Chapters
Shared Emotions: Children’s World & Cinema
Editors: Maria Irene Aparício, Ph.D; Dina Mendonça Ph.D

The field of Cinema and Philosophy is a growing field of research, and it has been the subject of several thematic volumes, both edited and monographs. These volumes explore the connection of Philosophy of Cinema, as well as Cinema as Philosophy and Cinema and Philosophy. Though these approaches are quite different, one can hold them as complementary intellectual efforts. The proposed volume takes the connection in a new direction by looking into the way in which we grow up with cinema. The expression growing up with cinema holds an ambiguity: growing up with Cinema means that we grow up from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood and then to the elderly stages to life with cinema and, in addition, it also means that, by seeing movies, we learn and change our way of seeing the world and life and acquire maturity in the process. This ambiguity makes cinema a privileged ground to think of different types of development, and not only interpret it as a pedagogical tool for thinking but also as a crucial tool of growth. Thus, it is reasonable to see how films are mediums for passing down knowledge to younger generations while at the same time they format their epistemological stance. Likewise, movies illustrate and recommend sets of values while valuing.

Predicted possible topics include “Perception, Knowledge and Recognition,” “The Meaning of Shared Values,” “Growth, Aggression and Violence” or “Laughing and Crying at the Cinema.” We welcome approaches from different philosophical and film theory perspectives, as well as approaches related to other scientific areas and subjects beyond philosophy and film theory while holding philosophical and film theory insights. Also, we hope this volume will not be limited to content of reflection based on any specific period of Cinema or Philosophy, nor any specific genre, and we hope that the final product will provide a rich plural perspective of the topic. The volume will be a good contribution to the Cinema and Philosophy Studies by deepening the pedagogical and educational meaning of Cinema, while it will also contribute to the reflection on just how Cinema and Philosophy have similarly impact on attitudes and values.

Submission: Minimum 500-750 words abstracts (without bibliography) by September 26, 2015 and a short CV (for each author/co-author) to Dina Mendonça (mendonca.emotion@gmail.com) and Maria Irene Aparício (aparicio.irene@gmail.com).

Please make sure that the argument is clearly stated and that you indicate in what way it contributes for the topic.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES AND DATES
Submission of abstract: 26 September 2015
Notification of decisions: 30 October 2015
Deadline for Chapters:14 February 2016
Redraft of Chapters: 30 May 2016
Deadline for Revised Chapters: 31 July 2016
Manuscript Submission Date:1 September 2016
Publication date: November 2016

Contact Info:
Dina Mendonça, Ph.D.
http://www.ifilnova.pt/pages/dina-mendonca
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem

Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Av. de Berna, 26 C
1069-061 Lisboa, Portugal
email: dmendonca.ifl@fcsh.unl.pt

Maria Irene Aparício, Ph.D.
http://www.ifl.pt/pages/maria-irene-aparicio
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Av. de Berna, 26 C
1069-061 Lisboa, Portugal
email: aparicio.irene@gmail.com

CFP – The Fantasy of Social Justice

CALL FOR PAPERS
Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
March 11-12, 2016

The Fantasy of Social Justice
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Dr. Farah Mendlesohn, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

What is social justice? How do we understand it within literary, gender and cultural studies, history, and the political sciences, as well as from psychological and pedagogical perspectives? Is social justice a possibility, or simply a fantasy carried on through human history? We encourage applicants to talk about their interpretation of social justice.

Social justice is an enormously broad and continuously relevant issue, but difficult to define and pin down, as it belongs to almost every discipline. This conference seeks to explore the existing fantasies our society has about justice. Beyond that, we would like to examine how fantasy literature, one of the most popular literary genres nowadays, can contribute to the dialog on racial, cultural, gender and class discrimination.

We aim to bring together scholars, graduate students as well as faculty members, activists, and story tellers from North America and overseas in order to observe the range of perspectives on social justice within the humanities and social sciences. We invite participants to create a unique interdisciplinary dialog on equality, discrimination and social change within and outside of the academy, with the ambition to strengthen interdisciplinary research and connect a wide variety of scholars.

POSSIBLE TOPICS MAY INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED BY:

  • Imagining social justice
  • Alterity, inequality and social justice
  • Class, race, gender, identity problematics and the contemporary understanding of justice
  • The historical evolution of the concept of social justice
  • The place of social justice in the environmental discourse
  • The dialog on social justice in fantastic and fantasy literature
  • Social changes that are discussed and cultivated in fantastic literature
  • Fantasy literature as a tool for raising awareness about social justice
  • Apocalyptic and dystopian novels and their unique way of exploring social justice issues
  • The consumption of fantasy literature as the most popular genre of the 21st century
  • Children’s/Young adult’s understanding and concern with social justice
  • Pedagogical implication of using literature to talk about social justice

CONFERENCE STRUCTURE
This conference will include one panel plus keynote address on Friday and three additional panels on Saturday. Each presentation should take no longer than 20 min, followed by discussion and question time. Aside from regular presentations we encourage a presentation-response format, where a presentation will be addressed by a 15 min response by a faculty member. Please let us know if you would be interested in receiving a direct response to your paper and we will put you in touch with a UBC faculty member from a similar field. If you would like to write a response yourself, please indicate this in your email. Throughout the event participants will be provided with coffee and refreshments, as well as lunch on Saturday. This conference is being generously sponsored by the graduate residential college “Green College,” and the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at UBC.

PROPOSALS
Please send a 250-350 word abstract along with a biographical statement (word.doc), to fsj.conference2016@gmail.com by November 15, 2015. Selected participants will be notified by November 30, 2015.

You can find further information about the hosting department at http://cenes.ubc.ca/, and the conference venue at http://www.greencollege.ubc.ca/.

Note: Limited housing is available with UBC students upon request, please inquire if interested.

CFP – The Representation of Youth in Contemporary French Cinema

NeMLA 2016
The Representation of Youth in Contemporary French Cinema

Proposals are now being accepted for the NeMLA conference that will be held in Hartford, CT, March 17-20, 2016.

The numerous accolades received by Thomas Cailley’s film Les Combattants/Love at First Sight at the 2015 César Awards Ceremony (it garnered the awards for Best First Film, Best Actress and Most Promising Actor) is the most recent example of French cinema’s long-standing fascination with youth. As noted by Dominique Thévenin in his foreword to Karin M. Egloff’s book Les Adolescents dans le cinéma français: entre deux mondes: “[t]he adolescent dilemma, its multitude of external determinants and its internal psychological changes have been a topic of predilection among contemporary French filmmakers” (i). Ever since François Truffaut’s Les 400 coups, filmmakers have investigated the complexity of youth, while offering an honest and often uncompromising vision of society at a given time in its history. In recent years, the works of emerging film directors such as Isild Le Besco, Mia Hansen-Løve or Céline Sciamma have displayed a common desire to avoid oversimplification in order to reveal youth in all its ambiguities.

Despite its undeniable impact in French cinema, little has been done to analyze and discuss the thematic and aesthetic significance of this trend. By understanding youth in a broad sense (childhood, adolescence and young adults), this session intends to showcase the various ways in which contemporary French cinema (from the 1990’s to the present) has been challenging preconceived ideas about this age group, presenting us with alternative interpretations of youth.

We particularly welcome presentations that focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • Youth and sexuality
  • Youth and the banlieue
  • Coming-of-age narratives
  • Youth and the concept of film genre
  • The significance and treatment of the body in the representation of youth

For all the information regarding the 2016 NeMLA conference and the format to submit abstracts, click on the following link: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

To submit abstracts, please click on the following link: http://www.cfplist.com//nemla/Home/S/15594

The deadline to submit abstracts is September 30, 2015.

CFP – Metafiction, Metalepsis, and the Postmodern Language Game in Children’s Literature

CFP: Metafiction, Metalepsis, and the Postmodern Language Game in Children’s Literature
Panel for ACLA, Harvard 2016

While there is a plethora of critical readings on the intertextuality of fairytales, there is significantly less attention drawn to the metaleptic and metafictional attributes embedded in the rest of the children’s literature canon. Picturebooks, to give but one specific example, utilize metaleptic devices profusely, either as a means to highlight the potentiality of language games (for example to teach the alphabet, rules of punctuation, etc) or as a writerly activity that anticipates an active reader. Mike Cadden’s edited collection of essays Telling Children’s Stories: Narrative Theory and Children’s Literature as well as Sylvia Joyce Pantaleo and Lawrence R. Sipe’s edited volume Postmodern Picturebooks: Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality mark the beginning of an intriguing connection between the breaking of illusion and children’s literature. This panel would like to solicit presentations that could expand on the limited discourse on the uses, intentions, and implications of metaleptic and metafictional devices in children’s literature. Readings of children’s literature that foreground their fictionality to the young reader and/or flaunt fiction’s fictional make-up are particularly welcomed. Papers may address but are not limited to the following topics:

  • Picturebooks and frame-breaking
  • Novel-within-the-novel in children’s fiction
  • Paratexts, intertexts, and metatexts in children’s literature
  • Intermediality in children’s literature: the superimposing of mediums
  • Online children’s books: the meta-reader of online children’s fiction
  • Metalepsis or metafiction in animated children’s films and TV shows
  • Kaleidoscope and hypertext novels/picturebooks
  • Meta-poetry in children’s literature
  • Worldless picture books
  • Metalepsis and illustrations
  • Young-reader as author
  • Case studies/children’s accounts on metafictional children’s literature

Please send abstracts to lathanas@nyit.edu for provisional acceptance or rejection before Sep. 23, or submit abstracts through the ACLA website by September 23.

CFP – Under Control: Childhood and 20th Century Dictatorships (1917-1991)

CALL FOR PAPERS
Under Control: Childhood and 20th Century Dictatorships (1917-1991)
University of Warwick, Thursday 19 May 2016
Deadline for submission: 30 November 2015

Confirmed Keynote speakers
Prof. Alison Ribeiro de Menezes (University of Warwick)
Dr. Nick Baron (University of Nottingham)

Since the early Nineteenth century, childhood has been viewed as both a privileged condition for creative inspiration (mostly in the arts) and a decisive phase in the development of adult subjectivity (usually in scientific fields). Such centrality of childhood acquired particular importance in the Twentieth century. At the time, in fact, political systems – and especially dictatorships – began to understand children as a crucial national resource and therefore tried to exercise influence on them through educational policies and a wide range of cultural means.

At the root of this phenomenon lies the awareness that children’s cognitive development is based on processes of assimilation and accommodation of external inputs. Consequently, future adults may have their thoughts and perceptions shaped by many tools, from toys to the language of education.

By encompassing in the notion of dictatorship both absolute forms of power, such as totalitarianisms, and military dictatorships, the aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to investigate how last century dictatorial regimes tried to control and mould children, focusing on the mechanisms and instruments devised for that purpose. Possible, but not exclusive, case studies will include: Russia (1917-1991), Italy (1922 – 1945), Portugal (1932 – 1974), Germany (1933-1945), Spain (1939-1975), Argentina (1976-1983) and Chile (1973-1990).

Scholars from several disciplines including literature, cultural studies, history, philosophy, psychology, media studies and pedagogy are invited to give their contribution. We will welcome proposals focusing on theoretical issues, transnational perspectives and specific case studies.

Possible themes may include (but are not limited to):

  • Instruments of control over children: To what extent did literature, textbooks, cinema, radio, TV broadcasting, the visual arts and education (embracing also youth organizations) attempt to shape children’s thinking and perception?
  • The mechanisms at the root of control: How do literary and cultural studies, psychology, philosophy and pedagogy approach issues surrounding the control and manipulation of children?
  • Historical perspectives: What are the continuities and discontinuities between Twentieth-century dictatorships in relation to their commitment to children’s education and leisure?

Please submit by 30 November 2015 a 300-word proposal for 20-minute papers and a short curriculum vitae (300 words) to Valentina Abbatelli (V.Abbatelli@warwick.ac.uk) and Paola Roccella (P.Roccella@warwick.ac.uk). Acceptance of proposals will be communicated by 7 December 2015.

For further info see http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/people/postgraduate/abbatelli/undercontrol/.

CFP – Special Issue of Children’s Literature in Education: Education Gone Bad

Call for Papers
Education Gone Bad
Special Issue of Children’s Literature in Education (Spring 2017)
Edited by Elizabeth Marshall and Lissa Paul

From Sarah Fielding’s The Governess, or The Little Female Academy, to television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer to bestsellers like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, school stories remain a staple genre in young people’s literature and culture.

The focus of this special issue of Children’s Literature in Education is on papers that tackle difficult or unsuccessful pedagogical relationships and on representations of schools that turn from the benign towards the dystopian, the violent, or the monstrous. Manuscripts that draw on a range of perspectives, including literary criticism, educational studies, cultural studies, and feminist theory are particularly welcome as are multidisciplinary approaches and work from international contexts. Specific topics might include:

  • Representations of teachers, students, and/or schools
  • Pitfalls and perils of teaching children’s and young adult literature
  • Schools as the site of monstrosity or horror
  • Acts of resistance
  • Forced schooling (residential schools) or exclusion from education
  • Historical studies of schooling

Please send proposals of 250 words by November 1, 2015 to the editors, Lissa Paul (lpaul@brocku.ca) and Elizabeth Marshall (beth_marshall@sfu.ca). Authors will receive a response to proposals by mid-November. Manuscripts (6,000-8,000 words) will be due May 2016.

Because CLE is a peer-reviewed journal, even after we’ve accepted proposals, manuscripts will be subject to double-blind external review. Publication is scheduled for the Spring 2017 issue of CLE. If you have questions or concerns please direct them to one of us.