CFP – Special Issue of Girlhood Studies: Locating Tween Girls

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Girlhood Studies
Locating Tween Girls
http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/_uploads/ghs/ghs_cfp_tween.pdf

Since more than a decade spans early tween studies in the culture of girlhood from Mitchell and Reid-Walsh (2005) to the contemporary work in this area of Natalie Coulter (2014) and Melanie Kennedy (forthcoming), we invite articles that explore the spaces and places of tween girls.

Positioned in the liminal spaces between childhood and adolescence, the tween girl, aged roughly between 7 and 12, is a discursively constructed consumer subject with her own distinct cultures and experiences. She is a marketized subjectivity of pre-adolescence. While the tween has been recognized as a significant figure since the early twenty-first century most of the research on girls in the field of girlhood studies assumes that the girl is the teenage one and this means that work on the younger, pre-adolescent girl has been minimal and/or marginalized. Part of this may be the result of methodological issues related to the difficulty of accessing young girls, as well as the tendency to treat the cultures of younger girls as frivolous since the rebellion and resistance of the (usually older) can-do girl that is the focus of so much work in girls’ studies appears less overtly at the tween stage. A further reason may be that tween media culture is perceived, largely, as being corporate media culture.

The primary goal of this Special Issue of Girlhood Studies is to address these oversights by focusing specifically on the cultures, politics, and experiences of pre-adolescent girls in their own right, rather than as an extension to or subcategory of children or teenage girls. It will provide a timely opportunity to explore the significance to girlhood studies of the development of tweenhood and to question the continued usefulness of the definitions of tweens offered in academic writing and popular discourses at the turn of the twenty-first century.

This issue will raise critical questions on the tween girl and her position in the field of girlhood studies.

  • How do we define the pre-adolescent girl and the tween in this field?
  • Do studies on the tween girl push a reframing of the field of girlhood studies?
  • What methodologies are required in the study of tweens and preadolescent girls?
  • How do we work with the discursive framings of the tween girl who has been a predominantly western, white, middle-class, heteronormative, and able-bodied subject?

These questions leads to broader questions on the lived experiences of actual girls.

  • How do girls engage with, negotiate or resist the framing of tween as, largely, a western, white, middle-class, heteronormative able-bodied subject?
  • What do girls do with the tween cultures that are produced for them but rarely by them? Where are the spaces in which pre-adolescent girls produce their own cultures?
  • How do girls weave tweenness—as a potential resource of subjectivity—into and out of their experiences of everyday life?

We are particularly interested in work that incorporates the voices of girls themselves.

Potential topics for this issue include, but are not limited to:

  • the question of girls as a category
  • the pre-adolescent girl within and beyond commodification
  • the language and methods specific to tween research
  • theorizing the tween and tweening theory
  • the potential of a pretween subjectivity
  • tweenhood as a site of subjectivity
  • the liminality of tweenhood
  • the tween as a potentially neoliberal subject
  • the tween in postfeminist spaces
  • global or local tweenhoods and tween cultures
  • tween resistances and rebellions
  • the materialities of tweenhood
  • media for, about, or by tweens
  • tween media cultures, and the cultural industries of the tween girl (advertising, retail, marketing, media, digital media, gaming and so on)
  • the intersectionality of tweenhood with race, class, sexuality, disability and such like
  • the history of tweens and preadolescence

Article Submission
Please direct inquiries to Guest Editors, Natalie Coulter (ncoulter@yorku.ca) or Melanie Kennedy (mjk29@leicester.ac.uk) and send expressions of interest and/or abstracts to either of them by 1 November 2016. Full manuscripts are due by 01 May 2017.

Authors should provide a cover page giving brief biographical details (up to 100 words), institutional affiliation(s) and full contact information, including an email address.

Articles may be no longer than 6,500 words including the abstract (up to 150 words), keywords (6 to 8 in alphabetical order), notes, captions and tables, acknowledgements (if any), biographical details (taken from the cover page), and references. Images in a text count for 200 words each. Girlhood Studies, following Berghahn’s preferred house style, uses a modified Chicago Style. Please refer to the Style Guide on the website.

Guest Editors
Natalie Coulter is currently an Assistant Professor at York University in the department of Communication Studies. Her research interests are in girls’ studies, critical advertising studies, children’s media, and consumer culture. She has published in Canadian Journal of Communication, Journal of Children and Media, Popular Communication, and Jeunesse. She is a founding member of the Association for Research on the Cultures of Young People (ARCYP). Melanie Kennedy is currently a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. Her research is rooted in feminist media and cultural studies, and her interests include tweens and tween culture, postfeminist film and television, neoliberal reality television, and young female celebrity. She is the book reviews editor for the Routledge journal Celebrity Studies.

CFP – All about Cinderella: Retellings in the Cultural Imagination

All about Cinderella: Retellings in the Cultural Imagination
University of Bedfordshire
9–10 June 2017

Call for papers

Three-hundred and nineteen years since the publication of Charles Perrault’s famous Histories du Temps Passé, the myth of Cinderella remains integral to many current facets of our cultures. Inspired by the University of Bedfordshire’s collection of scripts, books, theatrical memorabilia, designs, ephemera on Cinderella and organised by the Research Institute for Media, Arts and Performance, this conference focuses on the role of performance and storytelling as a way to analyse moments of significant artistic, cultural and social change.

The interdisciplinary event will provide an open debate about this ever-present story from different cultural perspectives across the world and we invite abstracts of 300 words for 20 minute papers. Possible themes include:

  • Cinderella narratives and metaphors
  • Cinderella on screen and stage
  • Transnational Cinderella
  • The publishing of Cinderella
  • Victorian Cinderella
  • Cinderella and design
  • Adaptations of the Cinderella story
  • The psychology of Cinderella

Non-traditional proposals featuring collaborative papers, practice-led research, video-essays, elements of performance etc. where they increase our knowledge of the role of re-narration of fairy tales in artistic, cultural and social change are actively encouraged. RIMAP wishes to offer a prize for the best Postgraduate proposal.

Please include the following with your abstract:

  • Collaborators’ and presenters’ names, addresses, affiliations, contact details in a short biography, together with a URL to a sample of work (if appropriate). Please state if you are a postgraduate research student.
  • Description of the presentation/performance/screening 300 words max (if appropriate)
  • Technical or space requirements
  • Duration (the standard duration is 20 minutes but you may request multiples)

Please send your abstracts and support documentation to Cinderella@beds.ac.uk by 11.30pm on 9 December 2016. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 3 February 2017.

More information about the conference will be posted on the conference website: www.beds.ac.uk/cinderella and on Twitter @cinderellaconf

CFP – Children’s Media and Literature in a Mediatized World

Children’s Media and Literature in a Mediatized World
Conference at Aarhus University, Centre for Children’s Literature
30 May – 1 June 2017

Children and young people live in a mediatized world in which literature, other visual and verbal texts, media and platforms converge and coalesce. Established notions of producers and users, target groups, genres and literary forms and experiences are thereby challenged.

Users and readers are ascribed with new forms of agency, while at the same time children confront an increased commercialization and demands for standardized schooling and academic achievements.

At this conference we wish to examine these challenges, bringing together scholars from children’s literature studies, media studies and adjoining fields. For instance, children’s literature, in its many manifestations, must be seen as tightly interwoven with the broad-spectre media cultures in which children and young people engage.

Children’s literature and media must be understood in the light of contemporary developments, which enable new, cross-media publishing forms, as well as new modes of interaction and engagement between writers and readers, users and producers. Children and young people are in many cases producers and co-producers of media content themselves, and they often seem to cross traditional borders between digital and analogue media and texts in their everyday practices.

These developments bring about analytical, theoretical, methodological and empirical challenges which will be addressed at this conference.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Children’s and young people’s everyday life with (digital) media
  • Children’s literature in a new media landscape
  • Children and young people as consumers and producers of texts and media
  • Children’s media and texts in family life and schools

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Rebekah Willett, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ute Dettmar, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt
Björn Sjöblom, Stockholms Universitet
Philip Nel, Kansas State University

Please send abstracts of max 300 words and a 100-word biography to Sarah Mygind, sarah.mygind@cc.au.dk no later than 1 December 2017.

Notification of acceptance: 15 December

Conference organizers: Nina Christensen (nc@cc.au.dk) and Stine Liv Johansen (stineliv@cc.au.dk) and Sarah Mygind.

CFP – Evil Children: Children and Evil

Evil Children: Children and Evil
1st Global Conference
Call for Participation 2017
Friday, April 7 – Sunday, April 9 2017
Lisbon, Portugal

The idea of the child as innocent, as pure, the “little angel” in need of protection from the harsh realities of life and the corrupting influences of the world around us has come to dominate our thinking, language, values, social policies and educational philosophies in the past few decades. Children are seen as “little people,” “blank slates,” works in progress who are loved, nurtured and guided as they grow to become mature, rational and responsible adults.

Yet we are also aware of the mischievous “little monsters,” the “little devils” who run exasperated parents ragged. The toddlers who chase pigeons; kick cats; pull the wings off flies and the legs off spiders. Children of whom we become afraid; who abuse other children; who assault each other, strangers, parents, the elderly. Children who “roam” and “own” the streets, individually or “in packs”; who are put “into care”; who commit crimes; who smoke, drink, and take drugs. Feral children. Children who rape. Children who torture. Children who kill. Children who are “possessed”: demonic children, evil children who do evil things.

This research stream will juggle with two competing approaches to children and evil. The first concerns itself with how (certain) children have been presented as evil and considers the nature of evil children as a social and cultural construct. The second approach considers the question of whether children can be evil and involves wrestling with the nature of evil, what we mean by free will and responsibility and, if responsibility exists, at what point does one assume responsibility for one’s acts? What is the special status of “childhood” that makes it different?

The inaugural launch of this inclusive interdisciplinary conference will begin to examine, explore and undermine issues surrounding the general idea of the child as innocent and explore all aspects of evil children and the relationship between children and evil. It will probe the dichotomies and ambiguities of our understanding and constructs of children, childhood, the passage through childhood to adulthood and the relationship with personal and social values, morals and responsibilities. It will map the ways in which children could or should be held accountable for the things they do and the contexts in which they are subject to influencing factors and conditions. And it will assess the use of ‘evil‘ in relation to children and childhood in the historical and contemporary cultures.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Innocence and evil; innocent evil
  • Evil and age; does age matter?
  • Children: mad, bad or something else?
  • Children, evil and empathy
  • The child as perpetrator
  • Normal children; aberrant children
  • The vilification of children
  • Evil, children and/in Fairy Tales: Folk Lore and evil children
  • Evil, children and the supernatural
  • Evil and the end of childhood
  • Legal perspectives
  • Forensic and Clinical/Biological perspectives
  • Child murderers; children who kill
  • Evil, children and the military; Children and war; Child soldiers
  • Infanticide
  • Evil in the playground
  • Evil, children and/in literature (e.g., Jack Merridew, Lord of the Flies; Frank Cauldhame, The Wasp Factory)
  • Evil, children and/in films (e.g., “Chuckie,” “Ben,” Damien Torne, Henry Evans, Isaac Chroner, Regan MacNeill)
  • Evil, children and tv (e.g., Joffrey Baratheon, Kevin Katchadourian, Stewie Griffin)
  • Children in Horror Literature (“Carrie”)
  • “Protecting” children from evil (film ratings, etc.)
  • “Original Sin” and evil children
  • Children in Victorian drama or literature: victims and perpetrators
  • Children, disability and evil
  • Bastard children (e.g., Shakespeare)
  • The psychology and psychopathology of evil children
  • Economics of children and evil
  • Cross-cultural perspectives of children and evil
  • Children, evil and social policies
  • Children, education and evil
  • Inherited evils: the sins of the parents; children, evil and family
  • Children who become evil adults

We invite people from all disciplines, professions and vocations to come together in dialogue, to provide a space and a level of legitimacy for a subject, or subjects that is traditionally seen as unimaginable, a socially taboo and even associated with pathology, by providing a forum for ideas and arguments that might otherwise not receive adequate attention and discussion. The ultimate goal is in a sense to expose the current topic to the light of day for examination of the intellectual, the emotional and the personal.

Currently, the significant areas of interest include literature, sociology, communications, art, psychology, politics, philosophy, history, anthropology, and other social sciences and humanities. Yet the scope of the conference is not limited to these fields or studies as it does not strike to narrowly define, or define at all, what areas constitute the significant not to eliminate the spirit of interdisciplinary efforts. The meeting is also open to other fields such as biology, biochemistry, political sciences, economics, etc. This kind of interdisciplinary engagement is always enjoyable and fruitful and makes for good networking and collaborative possibilities. Activists, anthropologists, archaeologies, archivists, artists and other creative professionals, civil servants, members of the clergy, clinicians, correctional authorities, historians, journalists, jurists and other legal professionals, military personnel, researchers, writers and others with an interest in the project are encouraged to submit proposals.

Further details and information can be found at the conference website: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/research-streams/evil-children/call-for-participation/

Details about our reviewing policy can be found here: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/research-streams/evil-children/call-for-participation/details-and-information/

What to Send

300-word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday, 28 October 2016.

All submissions be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed.

You will be notified of the panel’s decision by Friday, 11 November 2016. If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday, 3 March 2017.

Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: Evil Children Abstract Submission

Where to Send

Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs:

Organising Chairs:

Natalia Kaloh Vid: nkv@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: ec1@inter-disciplinary.net

This event is an inclusive interdisciplinary research and publishing project. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English. Selected papers will be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

CFP – Special Issue of Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia: Postcommunist Children’s Culture in Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe

We would like to invite you to submit articles to Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Post-totalitarian Studies of the Institute of Slavic Studies (University of Wrocław, Poland) and indexed in Czasopisma Naukowe w Sieci (CNS), The Central European Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (CEJSH), and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA, ProQuest). We would like to invite you to submit essays and reviews for an issue on Postcommunist Children’s Culture in Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, which will be devoted to mapping new phenomena in children’s literature and media culture that have emerged during the transition from late communism to late capitalism. As Anikó Imre argues in Globalization and the Transformation of Media Cultures in the New Europe (2009), children from Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe are post-communist subjects for whom communism is an inherited memory, whose perspectives, values and skills differ from those of older generations, and whose subjectivities are developing in the shadow of adults’ anxieties about this divide. As sources of knowledge and social capital, children’s cultural products both reflect and attempt to resolve tensions caused by the formation of new individual and collective subjectivities. Exploration of regional, European and global affiliations shaping contemporary children’s culture in post-communist Europe offers a vital contribution to a broader inquiry into processes of cultural change and their significance for the formation of national identity in post-totalitarian countries. Contributions are welcomed from a range of fields, such as popular culture, new media, games, literature, education, and childhood.

Possible areas of investigation:

  • reflective and restorative nostalgia for communist children’s entertainment vs. technoeuphoria, neoliberalism, and the celebration of transnational mobility
  • childhood heritage
  • globalization vs. localization
  • children’s culture and Eurocentric values (e.g. the “Catching up with Europe” project, a pan-European democracy, the EuropaGO project)
  • children’s relations with interactive media, peer-to-peer technologies and participatory culture
  • edutainment vs. centralized, nationalized and literature-based education
  • children’s culture and citizenship education
  • nationalisms, ethnocentrism, homophobia, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia in children’s culture
  • relations between children’s and adult media cultures
  • children’s books markets
  • promotion of children’s literature and culture

Essay should be sent to Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (justyna.deszcz-tryhubczak@uwr.edu.pl) and Mateusz Świetlicki (mateusz.swietlicki@uwr.edu.pl) by 10 April 2017. Submissions should be 5000-6000 words. We will aim to reply to authors by 20 April 2017, with the aim of arranging reviews and completing revisions for 15 June and publication by the end of 2017. Please keep in mind that the essays must satisfy the formal requirements provided.

CFP – Convergence Culture, Fandom, and the Expanded Harry Potter Universe

CONVERGENCE CULTURE, FANDOM, AND THE EXPANDED HARRY POTTER UNIVERSE
Amanda Firestone, Leisa A. Clark, editors
contact email: convergencepotter@gmail.com

In 2006’s Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins defines “convergence culture” as “the low of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want” (2). In contemporary culture, we are no longer merely passive consumers of media: we are participants in the narrative to the point where fans often actively influence outcomes and storylines well after a primary text has been released. J.K. Rowling’s tendency to continuously play with her Harry Potter characters and stories a decade after the “final” book of the 7-part series was published is indicative of a growing trend towards interactive, convergence storytelling as part of the fan experience. Rowling certainly has her supporters and critics, and arguably, no one embodies the art of transmedia storytelling quite like Rowling. Since the 1997 publication of the first Harry Potter novel, the “Potterverse” has seen the addition of eight feature films (with a ninth in production), the creation of the fan-interactive Pottermore© website, the release of myriad video games for multiple platforms, the construction of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, several companion books (such as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), critical essays and analyses, and the 2016 debut of the original stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

We invite essays for a collection that explores the topics/themes/ideas in the companion works outside of the 7-book original canon Harry Potter series. Specifically, we are looking for essays that explore the cultural implications of these narratives and the way fans (and critics) negotiate these narratives in a post-modern, convergence culture world.

We anticipate that this collection will include 16-20 essays, and as a working guide, the essays should be 4000-4500 words. Essays must adhere to the most current MLA format.

Submission Guidelines: Please send a 500-word proposal in Word, followed by a short bibliography showing the paper’s scholarly and theoretical context. Please also include a short professional description of yourself.

In addition to submissions from academics taking a scholarly approach to the subject, we are also particularly interested in essays that include analyses of The Cursed Child from someone who has seen a live performance in London, any individuals who currently work or have worked at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and individuals associated with cosplay or active fandom (fan groups, organizations, etc.)

Submission deadline: 12/1/16
Direct inquires and proposals to:
Editors: Amanda Firestone, Leisa A. Clark
convergencepotter@gmail.com

Call for Chapters – Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling

CALL FOR CHAPTERS:
Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling
Edited by Sean A. Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest

We seek chapter proposals for a volume titled Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, which aims to provide an account of the history of the franchise, its transmedia storytelling and world-building strategies, and the consumer practices that have engaged with, contributed to, and sometimes also challenged the development of the Star Wars franchise. We aim to have the collection in print by 2017, the year that marks the 40th anniversary of the first Star Wars film’s release. In those forty years, its narrative, its characters, and its fictional universe have gone far beyond the original film and have spread rapidly across multiple media—including television, books, games, comics, toys, fashion, and theme parks—to become the most lucrative franchise in the current media landscape, recently valued by Forbes at roughly $10 billion.

A key goal of this project is to highlight the role and influence of Star Wars in pushing the boundaries of transmedia storytelling by making world-building a cornerstone of media franchises since the late 1970s. The chapters in this collection will ultimately demonstrate that Star Wars laid the foundations for the forms of convergence culture that rule the media industries today. As a commercial entertainment property and meaningful platform for audience participation, Star Wars created lifelong fans (and consumers) by continuing to develop characters and plots beyond the original text and by spreading that storyworld across as many media platforms as possible.

While there is much to be said about recent installments in the franchise, we discourage submissions that focus exclusively on Star Wars texts produced since the sale to Disney in 2012. Priority will be given to those submissions that demonstrate an ability to engage with the breadth of Star Wars media and fan activity, including (but not limited to) digital and analog games, novels, comics, televisions shows, tie-in merchandise, fanfic, and Star Wars events, places, and gatherings (conventions, exhibitions, shows, theme parks, performances, etc.); or that bring new approaches from transmedia and franchise studies to old topics. Chapters solicited from invited authors, for example, already propose a broad range of topics, including transmedia worldbuilding in comics and novels surrounding the original trilogy; the limits and criteria that define the limits of “A Star Wars Story”; transmedia erasure and the Holiday Special; and the Star Wars collectible card game.

Submissions might consider, but are certainly not restricted to, some of the following topics:

  • Children’s media, kidification, and Star Wars
  • Star Wars and/on television
  • Star Wars video games
  • Transmedia “metaseries,” e.g. Dark Empire
  • Star Wars comics and graphic novels
  • (Un)Adaptation and Dark Horse’s The Star Wars (2013-2014)
  • Licensing, intellectual property, and canon
  • Star Wars “Legends” imprint of novels and comics
  • Children’s literature, YA literature, and Star Wars novels
  • Star Wars and fandom, cosplay, fanfic, consumption practices, collecting
  • Generational shifts in Star Wars fandom and creators as consumers
  • Gender, race, and sexuality in Star Wars (especially where readings of lesser known characters, novels, comics are forwarded)
  • Genre flexibility across Star Wars media
  • Star Wars action figures and world-building through play
  • Star Wars (tabletop) role-playing games
  • Star Wars merchandising, franchising, and branding
  • Mash-up/remix culture and Star Wars
  • Music in and across Star Wars media

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the editors about the suitability of your topic for the collection.

Submissions should include a provisional title, a 200-word abstract, and a 100-word biographical note. Abstract submissions are due by October 1, 2016.

Please send submissions simultaneously to both editors, Sean A. Guynes (guynesse@msu.edu) and Dan Hassler-Forest (d.a.hassler-forest@uu.nl), with the subject line “SURNAME Star Wars Transmedia Book.”

Drafts will be due February 5, 2017, with a quick turnaround for editing and revisions so as to publish by Autumn 2017 before the 40th anniversary year ends.

A shareable link to this CFP can be found here: https://seanguynes.com/2016/09/03/call-for-chapters-transmedia-star-wars/.