Home and Lived Spaces in Picturebooks from the 1950s to the Present
International Conference – September 28-29-30, 2017
University of Padua – Italy
Sala delle Edicole – Piazza Capitaniato, 3 – Padova

At an early age, home and lived spaces are much more than a simple body-space correspondence (Reimer, 2008; Perrot, 2011; Covato, 2014; Cantatore, 2015; Sachiko Cecire, et al., 2015). Lived spaces are constructed of sensory recalls, which, day after day, shape our idea of “home”, the espace vécu par excellence. Our sense of identity and belonging is influenced by various factors: personal experiences and relationships, the impact of the environment and sensory perceptions. Lived space is a point of reference for children; their body, which is a container, occupies an area inside another container, the house. Thus, the task to finding one’s own identity and a sense of belonging can also originate in one’s relationship with lived spaces. In literature, houses, habitations, walls and objects are imbued with an extraordinary narrative power, which is capable of penetrating the unexplored privacy of the family; and the most significant representations of the domestic environment can provide new insights into childhood (Beseghi, 1995).

In addition to substantially contributing to narrative plots, home environments also imply strong symbolic references. They provide a variety of narrative settings that can shift from sites of protection, love and care; to disquieting places of observation, deprivation, exclusion, deceptiveness and extreme rebellion. Like the houses themselves, their interiors (bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, attics, cellars, gardens, etc.) and the objects they contain (doors, windows, tables, chairs, cupboards, book shelves, beds, wardrobes, toys, etc.) can acquire narrative force and offer various interpretation keys. Objects and furniture are not just decoration; they play a vital role because they have a profound influence on the characters’ as well the readers’ sense of identity and belonging, and shape their idea of justice, goodness and beauty. The goal of the conference is to investigate and compare the development of the representation of home and lived spaces in picturebooks from the 1950s to the present.

We invite papers related to the overall theme of the conference, and to the following areas of interest:

• historical developments and changes in the representation of home and lived spaces
• social and cultural changes in children’s public spaces such as kindergarten, school, library, museums, shops, etc.
• domestic environment and interior geography
• depiction of lived spaces in nature (caves, islands, etc.)
• the invention of fictional lived spaces and their influence on the child’s concept of home
• interiors and their symbolic implications
• objects and furniture that shape family relationships and self-identity
• home and the child’s body
• home and the child’s imagination

SUBMISSION
Please send an abstract of 300 words maximum and a short biography of 60 words as two attached Word documents to: Marnie Campagnaro: marnie.campagnaro@unipd.it. E-mails should be entitled: Conference Home and Lived Spaces in Picturebooks Abstract Submission.

Abstracts may be in Word with the following information:
a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in the programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) text of proposal, f) areas of interest, g) six keywords.

All abstracts and papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be written in English. Papers will be 30 minutes maximum, followed by a 15 minute discussion.

Deadline for abstract submission: January 10, 2017
Notification of acceptance: March 31, 2017

All submissions are reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by the members of the Advisory Board and Reading Committee.

Romanticism and the Cultures of Infancy
edited by Martina Domines Veliki and Cian Duffy

Call for chapters

Wordsworth’s assertion that “the child is father of the man” is one of the most familiar statements of the Romantic interest in the relationship between childhood experience and adult identity. Indeed, it has become something of a commonplace now to assert that the Romantics invented childhood as we understand it. This volume will investigate the extent to which the wider concept of “infancy” became a key trope of European thought across a range of different areas of enquiry, genres of cultural productivity, and national contexts, during the “long eighteenth century” (1700-1830), from speculation about the age of the cosmos to discussions of the history of civil society.

Potential topics for chapters include:

• Depictions of infancy in literature and the visual arts
• Speculation about the relationship between childhood experience and adult identity
• Descriptions of childhood in medical writing
• Romantic nationalisms and the infancy of nations
• The use of “infancy” as a trope in natural philosophy (geology, chemistry, botany, etc.)
• Infancy as a concept in writing about the history of poetry, painting, sculpture, etc.
• “Infancy” as a trope in histories of civil society, economics, etc.
• Eighteenth-century and Romantic-period writing for children (fiction, conduct, etc.)
• “Infancy” and/in education

Proposals of 300-500 words for chapters of 8000 words should be sent to the editors by 15 January 2017. Successful proposers will be notified by 15 February 2017, with finished chapters to be delivered by 15 July 2017. Publication is projected for late summer 2018.

Cian Duffy is professor of English literature at Lund University, Sweden. He has published widely on various aspects of the intellectual life and cultural history of the late eighteenth century and romantic period. (cian.duffy@englund.lu.se)

Martina Domines Veliki is assistant professor of English Literature at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She has mostly published on Wordsworth and Rousseau and is the current president of HDAS – the Croatian Association for Anglophone Studies. (mdomines@ffzg.hr)

3rd Cambridge Symposium on Cognitive Approaches to Children’s Literature
March 17, 2017

Literary cognitive criticism (also known as cognitive poetics, cognitive narratology, literary affect theory, embodied cognition, along with a number of other labels) has become a noticeable direction of international children’s literature research, visible in recent publications and conference presentations. The first Cambridge symposium in 2014 mapped existing research through talks by international scholars and posters by doctoral students. The second symposium in 2016 featured Peter Stockwell, and focused on doctoral projects. While these events were by invitation, we are opening this symposium to broader participation.

We invite 200-word paper proposals for 20-minute papers on any aspect of cognitive approaches to children’s and young adult fiction, as well as fiction portraying children and young people. We particularly encourage papers focused on multimodal texts, including visual media, picturebooks, comics, and films. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• schemas and scripts
• theory of mind/mind-modelling
• empathy and emotions
• empathy and ethics
• memory and identity
• cognitive-affective engagement with place and space
• cognitive approaches to specific genres
• cognitive approaches to ideology, alterities and social justice
• cognitive approaches to reading, literacy and education
• empirical work on young people’s engagement with fiction

We will also consider proposals for panels (3-4 papers on a specific topic) and poster presentations of work-in-progress.

The registration fee will be in the region of £30 and will include lunches and refreshments.

Deadline for proposals: January 6, 2017. Early submissions or indications of interest will be highly appreciated. Please send your proposal, together with a 50-word bio, to Professor Maria Nikolajeva at mn351@cam.ac.uk.

Call for papers: The Children’s ’68
https://children68.hypotheses.org/

This call for papers invites proposals for contributions to a special issue of the online journal of children’s literature and culture Strenae entitled “The Children’s ’68,” on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of May ‘68. This special issue is part of the work of the international research network The children’s ‘68, led by Dr Sophie Heywood at the University of Tours InTRu Laboratory, and financed by the STUDIUM/Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellowship programme 2016/17.

The global upheaval caused by the protest movements around ‘68 revolutionised social structures, overturned cultural conventions, challenged political ideologies, and catalysed civil rights activism by women, gay people and ethnic minorities. Childhood historians stress the importance of this period in altering the authority structures that shaped children’s lives.

This special issue proposes to analyse ’68 as a watershed moment in children’s culture and its related disciplines, following Marwick’s (1998) now canonical definition of ’68 as the crystallisation of the cultural revolution of the “long sixties” (c.1958-c.1974).

We invite contributors to think about the ways in which children’s culture was a site for artistic and intellectual experimentation, and how new ways of thinking about childhood emerged in this period. We encourage contributors to work across disciplinary boundaries and national borders, in order to open up new ways of understanding the ‘68 liberation movements and their legacies. With the fiftieth anniversary of ‘68 approaching, this special issue aims to ensure the children’s perspective is finally brought to the fore of scholarly debate.

Suggested topics include:

• experimental ideas of children and childhood;
• how cultural products promoted children’s rights around ‘68;
• children’s counter-culture and anti-censorship;
• feminism and children’s culture around ‘68
• children’s participation in and access to culture around ‘68;
• the immediate precursors leading to the children’s ‘68;
• how the children’s ‘68 revisited avant-garde movements (eg. surrealism, pop art, Bauhaus, new realism);
• the aesthetics of counter-culture for and by children;
• the cross-fertilisations between counter-culture and children’s culture around ‘68.

We are particularly interested to receive proposals for articles relating to the former Eastern bloc countries, especially Czechoslovakia.

Proposals (500 words maximum), in English or French should be sent before 1 December 2016 to the journal Strenae: strenae@revues.org, along with a short biography and bibliography.

Proposals will be reviewed by the Children’s ’68 team, and the editorial board of the journal. Authors will be promptly notified of the acceptance or rejection of their proposal. Full articles (30,000 characters, including spaces, maximum) are to be submitted by 1 July 2017. Articles will be accepted in English or French.

Publication is scheduled for May 2018.

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Appel à contributions : le 68 des enfants
https://children68.hypotheses.org/

Appel à contributions pour un numéro thématique de la revue en ligne Strenæ. Recherches sur les livres et objets culturels de l’enfance (en ligne : http://strenae.revues.org/) intitulé « Le 68 des enfants », qui sera publié à l’occasion du 50e anniversaire des événements de mai 1968. Ce numéro sera l’une des réalisations du réseau de recherche The children’s ’68 dirigé par Sophie Heywood à l’université de Tours (laboratoire InTRu), dans le cadre d’un financement Studium/Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellowship programme 2016/17.

L’effervescence mondiale créée par les mouvements de protestation de 1968 a bouleversé les structures sociales, renversé les hiérarchies culturelles, défié les idéologies politiques, et stimulé l’activisme en faveur des droits des femmes, des homosexuels et des minorités ethniques. Les historiens de l’enfance ont souligné le rôle joué par ce moment dans la modification des rapports d’autorité qui régissent l’existence enfantine.

Le numéro thématique propose d’envisager 1968 comme un moment charnière pour la culture enfantine et les disciplines qui s’y intéressent, en référence à la définition désormais canonique donnée en 1998 par Arthur Marwick, qui considère 1968 comme le point de cristallisation de la révolution culturelle s’étendant sur la longue décennie 1960 (de 1958 à 1974 environ).

Nous invitons les contributeurs à considérer la manière dont la culture enfantine devint alors un lieu d’expérimentation artistique et intellectuelle, et comment de nouvelles façons d’envisager l’enfance émergèrent à l’époque. Nous incitons les contributeurs à transcender les frontières disciplinaires et nationales, de façon à ouvrir de nouvelles manières d’envisager les mouvements de libération de 68 et leur héritage. À l’approche du 50e anniversaire de 1968, il s’agit de porter la question de l’enfance sur le devant des préoccupations universitaires.

Les approches proposées pourront concerner :

• Les nouvelles conceptions des enfants et de l’enfance
• La manière dont les productions culturelles mirent en valeur les droits de l’enfant autour de 68
• La contre-culture enfantine et le mouvement anti-censure
• Le féminisme et la culture pour enfants autour de 68
• La participation enfantine à la vie culturelle, accès à la vie culturelle autour de 68
• Les précurseurs immédiats de ce 68 des enfants
• La manière dont ce 68 des enfants revisita les mouvements d’avant-garde (comme le surréalisme, le pop art, le Bauhaus, le nouveau réalisme…)
• L’esthétique de la contre-culture pour et par les enfants
• Les enrichissements mutuels de la contre-culture et de la culture enfantine autour de 68

Nous serons particulièrement attentifs aux propositions évoquant les pays de l’ex-bloc de l’Est, particulièrement la Tchécoslovaquie.

Les propositions (de 500 mots maximum), en François ou en Anglais, doivent être envoyées avant le 1er décembre 2016 à la revue Strenæ : strenae@revues.org, accompagnées d’une courte biographie et bibliographie.

Ces propositions seront examinées par l’équipe du Children’s ’68 et le comité éditorial de la revue. Les auteurs seront rapidement informés de l’acceptation ou du refus de leur proposition. Les articles complets (30000 signes espaces et notes inclus) seront remis avant le 1er juillet 2017. Les langues acceptées sont le Français ou l’Anglais.

Le numéro sera publié en mai 2018.