CFP – Children and Deaf Culture in Literature and Other Modes of Representation

Children and Deaf Culture in Literature and Other Modes of Representation

The aim of this collection is to explore literary and cultural representations of d/Deaf culture, and so we invite a wide variety of scholarly studies with specific attention to the cultures of the deaf, deafness and experiences of deafness. We welcome approaches that examine the subject from various perspectives – examination of different genres in writing and multimedia, situation of deaf characters in varying backgrounds, including able bodied, ethnic and racial cultures, strategic modes of representation of visual lives, the implications of specific genres (the Bildungsroman, for example), and so on. Historically, deafness has been regarded as a sub-category of disability and, in relation to children’s literature and culture, scholarly writing has mostly fallen under that umbrella, although the nexus is often challenged. The general field of disability studies scholarship has had a long history in the social sciences, entered the humanities around thirty years ago, but has had a shorter existence in children’s literature. Landmark twenty-first century events have been themed issues in Disability Studies Quarterly in 2004 (issue 24.1), in ChLAQ in 2013 (issue 38.3), and in interjuli in 2017, although only one article in these three volumes focused on deafness. While considerable interest has been shown in children and deafness and children in deaf culture in creative literature and film, scholarship has been somewhat sporadic. A common focus of attention has been the problem of representation: is there an emphasis on the “otherness” of deaf characters? Is representation from a hearing perspective? Do deaf characters occupy a central role and function, or are they subordinated to hearing characters? Are authors drawn to the motif of the “supercrip”? What kind of links are portrayed between deaf characters and animals? Does representation explain specific characteristics of a character’s deafness and is this grounded in an accurate understanding of deafness? How are characters positioned in relationship to “the sense of an ending”? Do texts assume a cultural divide between deaf and hearing people, and if so, what does this imply? What is the relationship of Deaf culture to other social cultures? Do texts acknowledge the complexity of d/Deaf cultures?

We are looking for contributions that focus on social and cultural representations of children and deafness, and the cultures of deafness, rather than studies in pathology or pedagogy. Contributions may not have been previously published. Some possible themes are set out below, but these are not exclusive and we are open to suggestions of other kinds:

  • Deafness in Children’s Literature: Historical Perspectives
  • Deaf Theory and Children’s Literature
  • Deaf culture in children’s books
  • Deafness, children and film
  • Film documentaries
  • The exploits of Superdeafy and other supercrips
  • Comparative studies: representation in various communities
  • Representations of cognitive processes in fiction and/or film
  • Representing identity development, and/or construction
  • Deafness and Bibliotherapy
  • Signed performance with children (poetry, drama, etc.)
  • Biography and Autobiography
  • Turning a Deaf Ear: Deafness as a Metaphor

This project was suggested by the University Press of Mississippi, with whom we have an agreement to publish the collection, subject to a satisfactory peer review.

Please send proposals of no longer than 300 words plus a short CV (up to 300 words) to: Vivian Yenika-Agbaw: vxy102@psu.edu
Deadline for proposals: 24 November 2017
The editors will respond to proposals by: 15 December 2017
Full submissions of no more than 6000 words and conforming to the Publishers’ house style will then be due with the Editors by April 1, 2018.

The editors are:

Dr. Vivian Yenika-Agbaw
Professor of Education (Literature & Literacy)
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
The Pennsylvania State University
vxy102@psu.edu

Prof John Stephens
Emeritus Professor in English
Macquarie University
john.stephens@mq.edu.au

Northern Bridge Partnership Award PhD Opportunity at Seven Stories

Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books are delighted to draw your attention to a fully-funded Northern Bridge Partnership Award PhD opportunity which can support outstanding children’s literature studies applicants.

Projects would normally be expected to make substantial use of one or more archival collections at Seven Stories. Seven Stories holds archival material from c.1930 to the present day by over 250 leading authors, illustrators and publishers, from Enid Blyton to Philip Pullman and from Kay Webb to Michael Morpurgo. Proposals on longue durée children’s literature, as well as work focussed on the 20th and 21st centuries are welcomed.

Please see attached for further information. Seven Stories would also welcome Partnership Award applicants with excellent academic credentials to study other aspects of our collection, providing appropriate supervision can be found within the three Northern Bridge universities: Newcastle University, Durham University and Queen’s University Belfast.

The Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership is funded by the AHRC and runs a competitive scheme for fully-funded PhD studentships, together with support for placements and training. Northern Bridge is open to UK and EU applicants and seeks to recruit postgraduate students with outstanding academic backgrounds. Successful applicants would start their studies in autumn 2018.

To express an interest in the Northern Bridge Partnership Award at Seven Stories, please send an completed expression of interest form outlining your proposed research project and a CV to Sarah Rylance, Northern Bridge DTP Administrator: northernbridge.admin@newcastle.ac.uk, by Friday, 20 October, 2017 at 17:00.

For more information, visit: http://www.northernbridge.ac.uk/studentships/pa/.

CFP – Special Issue of Libri & Liberi: WWI, New Historical Settings, and Children’s Literature

Call for papers
Libri & Liberi: Journal of Research on Children’s Literature and Culture invites proposals for papers to be considered for publication in a Special Issue to be published in 2018 on all aspects of research dedicated to
WWI, New Historical Settings, and Children’s Literature

We are interested in papers on publications for children on various aspects of WWI, those reflecting the new geopolitical situation in Europe and worldwide after WWI, new cultural, political and social realities reflected in children’s literature during and after the war, as well as research into all kinds of children’s publications during and immediately after WWI. We welcome contributions on trends and new practices in children’s literature, including different phenomena related to WWI. Papers should be no longer than 10,000 words.

Deadline: 15 April 2018

Libri & Liberi is published twice a year in printed and electronic form (http://www.librietliberi.org by the Croatian Association of Researchers in Children’s Literature (http://www.hidk.hr).

We will be pleased to consider for publication original manuscripts in English, German, and Croatian. We invite authors to send a manuscript or a short summary and the title of the paper they intend to submit for publication to librietliberi@gmail.com or editor@librietliberi.org.

CFP – Everyday Urban Subjectivities of Children and Youth in an Era of Trump

American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting
New Orleans, Louisiana, April 10-14, 2018

Everyday Urban Subjectivities of Children and Youth in an Era of Trump

The rise of right-wing populism in North America and Europe is reshaping the experience of children in a range of spaces, including children’s health services, juvenile justice systems, schools and public spaces. The global south is also experiencing changes, with consequences for child migrants, and refugees, among others, and reflective of a process of reciprocal interconnectivity between these two worlds. In many cases, despite formal commitment to children and youths’ human rights, governments fail to ensure access to basic services and to equality of opportunity.

Children and youth are both subject to discipline and also demonstrate competence and a degree of agency to reshape their experiences in public space (Kallio and Häkli, 2013). Wells (2017: 495) suggests that “children’s agency is becoming more and more constrained by the political and economic structures within which they live”. These events make us rethink how to place children and youth in local and global processes (Aitken, 2013) and within current geographical debates around everyday spaces and spatial discourses (Holloway and Valentine, 2000).

To this end, we seek papers that call into question how children and youth adapt to constraints (e.g. poverty, social exclusion, criminalization) and obstacles in urban public spaces. We are specifically interested in the creation, resistance and, socio-spatial dialectics of children and youth in their everyday struggles, and the ways in which these struggles may be connected in multiple places throughout the global north and south. We welcome papers regarding children and youth subjectivities and experiences with the aim of examining the interconnectedness of young people’s lives (Holloway and Valentine, 2000). We aim to investigate the multiple ways in which young people’s lives are structured by global and local processes, and young people’s roles as actors in such processes.

Papers may include but are not limited to:

  • Creation of safe spaces and discourses of solidarity
  • Criminalization of children/youth in public spaces
  • The role of law and rights in shaping ways in which children are governed in and through space
  • Living in precariousness and the strategies and tactics young people use in response to challenges
  • Construction of identities and perception of the otherness
  • Gendered subjectivities of children/youth in public spaces
  • Spatial discourses of everyday children subjectivities
  • Civic and social participation of children/youth in public spaces
  • Children’s geographies and current challenges in research
  • Critical methodologies with children and youth

Please submit abstracts (no more than 250 words) or inquiries of interest to Melisa Argañaraz (arganaraz@umbc.edu) and Dena Aufseeser (daufsee@umbc.edu) by Friday, 20 October 2017. Accepted submissions will be contacted by Monday, 23 October 2017. Potential papers should also submit their abstracts directly to AAG by Wednesday 25 October 2017.

CFP – Organizing Childhood

Gender, Work and Organization
10th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference
13-16 June, 2018, Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia

GWO 2018 Call for Abstracts

Organizing Childhood

Convenors
Carolyn Hunter, University of York, York, UK
Nina Kivinen, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
Deborah Brewis, Kingston University, London, UK

While the study of “childhood” is a developed field in sociology, media studies, the humanities and even marketing, it is with, a few recent exceptions, relatively underexplored in organization studies (see exceptions: Russell and Tyler, 2002; Kavanagh, Keohane and Kuhling, 2011; Kavanagh, 2013; Griffin, Harding and Learmonth, 2016; Kenny, 2016; Hunter and Kivinen, 2016). While significant theoretical contributions have been made, more could be done to develop empirical studies where the complexities of childhood play out. Gender has been a central theme in the study of childhood in other fields, and we propose that it provides a key lens through which to expand discussions to how childhood is “organized” both as a set of discourses and the variety of occupations and industries associated with products and services for children. This call for abstracts aims to engage with thinking on the intersections between organizations, childhood and gender, through exploring the way in which childhood features:

a. in industries that centre around products and services for children,
b. in relations where childhood is produced, consumed and assembled
c. or as ideas, discourses and ideologies that relate to our adult selves.

The organizing of childhood may be considered in relation to gender, through the production and consumption of products and services aimed at the children, including pre-school, middle and young adult or “tweens” categories (Siegel, Coffey, and Livingston, 2004; Steinberg and Kincheloe, 1997). Russell and Tyler (2002) and Griffin, Harding and Learmonth (2016) explore dimensions of gendered children’s products, while Hunter and Kivinen (2016) note the link between these gendered products and services and the gendered identities of the workers involved in delivering them. Representing a wide array of products and services, the children’s industries are characterized by significant variety in types of labour and the quality of working lives. Some of these industries represent particularly precarious or low paid work, in which women are overrepresented. We already know that in industries like nurseries and childcare, women far outnumber male employees in the UK, with the number of men averaging only 2% of the workforce (Department for Education, 2013). Further research could explore whether gender segregation in the workforce is a symptom of, and/or reinforcement to, notions of women’s reproductive role in the economy, the marginalization of women’s labour, and whether this intersects with other social markers such as race, age and disability.

We might also consider how labour in these industries target children by engaging in aesthetic or emotional labour that may be characterized as “feminized” work. For example, Russell and Tyler (2002) explored how a teenage retail store became an aesthetic space, a “retail theatre,” of feminine “tweenie” dreams. Working on products or services for children may provide insights into the experiences of emotional and aesthetic labour, where nostalgia, development and fantasy come together (Langer, 2004). How are concepts of childhood entangled into expectations of emotional management by employees, as well as the organization of employees’ and children’s bodies within these space? Are assumptions made that working in these spaces is less skilled or meaningful than working for products for adults? We might consider, in turn, how such assumptions influence employees’ identities, motivations and sense of purpose. Equally, authors may consider whether work within the children’s industries offers insights into alternative ways of organizing, for example through collaboration and working in home environments. These industries frequently breakdown the divide between the public and the private, for example if the work is undertaken within the private space of the home alongside other (unpaid) work such as childcare and domestic activities. Similarly children may come into the public spaces of organizations, such workplace crèches and “babies at work” policies. In addition children can work legally (age restrictions varying by state in Australia and set at 13 in the UK for example), and younger in the industries of television, theatre, and modelling, providing an alternative “productive” narrative to childhood. The call aims to engage with these different dimensions of childhood, including the potential oppression and alienation in these experiences.

Finally, we invite explorations of how childhood becomes organized as a set of ideas (Cook, 2004). On one hand, one might consider the relations of production and consumption from the perspective of children themselves (Martens et al., 2004), through their experiences of the emotions and affect that become attached to the commodities of childhood; and through the framing of children’s desires, and responsibilities via traditional broadcast media and new social forms of media. Children also learn to consume management and business concepts early on (Rehn, 2009) although more could be done to assess if this learning is gendered. On the other hand, we might consider how adults, too, consume childhood, fables and fairy tales, developing narratives of self through their careers, authenticity, and identities; or through memory (Ingersoll and Adams, G. B, 1992). The worlds of management and childhood cross: for example management guru Marshall Goldsmith turned his bestseller business book into a comic book with the help of a children’s illustrator. Other management gurus have directly drawn on childhood to discuss creativity, innovation and “child-like” play.

This call asks for abstracts which explore either childhood as an organizational phenomena or as empirical setting, in particular making connections between childhood and gender including femininities and masculinities. We welcome papers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including feminist, postcolonial, and queer critiques of the gendered nature of work in relation to childhood.

Themes:

  • Nostalgia and historical discussions of workers in the children’s industries
  • Emotions, affect and emotional labour related to childhood
  • Theorization of the production and consumption of childhood
  • Associations of childhood with femininities and masculinities, as well as other theorization of gender around queer theory, identity theory, critical race theory and post-colonialism
  • Feminist critiques of childhood
  • Gendering of products or services for children
  • Childhood in the narratives and metaphors of management and business
  • Childhood in concepts of career and authenticity
  • Children becoming part of organizational space

For stream enquiries please contact Nina Kivinen: nina.kivinen@abo.fi

Papers from the stream will be selected for a special issue proposal of the Gender, Work and Organization journal.

How to submit:

Abstracts of approximately 500 words (ONE page, Word document NOT PDF, single spaced, excluding references, no header, footers or track changes) are invited by 1 November 2017 with decisions on acceptance to be made by stream leaders within one month. All abstracts will be peer reviewed. New and young scholars with “work in progress” papers are welcomed. Papers can be theoretical or theoretically informed empirical work. In the case of co-authored papers, ONE person should be identified as the corresponding author. Due to restrictions of space on the conference schedule, multiple submissions by the same author will not be timetabled. Please submit abstracts through the conference abstract portal at https://www.mq.edu.au/events/gwosydney.

CFP – Toys and Material Culture: Hybridisation, Design and Consumption

8th International Toy Research Association World Conference
Paris, France
11-13 July 2018

The predominant theme for the 8th ITRA Conference is “Toys and Material Culture: Hybridisation, Design and Consumption.”

Beyond toys, the conference will explore the place of tangible objects and novel forms of material culture in play. What are the similarities and the differences, the relationships, between toys and other material devices, such as board games, cards, digital games and media-connected objects? Are there, in play, or in the trans-mediated toys themselves, new forms of materiality?

Three words can summarize this topic:

  • Hybridisation: the mix between toys and other playthings or supports; the trans-media franchising and circulation of characters, contents, fictions, and cross-connected toys; the mix between video games and toys; the relationships between toys and technology; and the question of virtual toys.
  • Design: the conception of toys and the relationship with other trans-mediated objects addressed to, or of interest to children. Since Experice, our research centre, operates in conjunction with a FabLab specialising in toys and games, known as Ludomaker, we are particularly interested in encouraging proposals from other FabLabs around the world that also specialise in toys and games.
  • Consumption: the marketing, distribution, and use of toys, and their relationship with different kinds of play objects, including the recycling and transformation of everyday objects into playthings.

In addition to the main theme of the conference, other topics relating to toys and material culture are welcome. This includes, but is not limited to the following topics:

  • Toy collecting and toy libraries
  • Toys, education, health and environment
  • Toys and gender influences
  • Toys and inter-cultural communication
  • Toys in history
  • Trans-generational toys
  • Toys, signs and meanings

We welcome abstracts of completed research, case studies and development projects, as well as incomplete or proposed research or ideas for future research in order to generate discussion and feedback.

To submit a paper, symposium or poster

If you would like to present a paper, organize a symposium or present a poster please submit the requested abstract or proposal, in English, before 8 January 2018. Submissions should be sent to Gilles Brougère at brougere@univ-paris13.fr.

Papers will be limited to 20 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for questions and comments. In addition to some basic background information, the abstract must include methodology, research data and results, discussion or conclusion. Authors are also asked to provide which category (from the above list) best fits the description of their paper. The title of the abstract, names, affiliations and email addresses of each contributor should be provided. An abstract should be one A4 page in portrait layout (around 2000 characters).

Symposia will be limited to 2 hours, with three or four presentations on a common theme. Each proposal should contain the title of the symposium, an overview of the symposium (around 2000 characters), and abstracts of each presentation should be presented in the same format as the papers.

Posters should be suitable for presentation. Poster sessions usually do not occupy conference time and take place during the coffee breaks. Their duration should be limited to 20 minutes. If you would like to present a poster, please submit a one-page abstract in the same format as the papers.

The scientific committee will review your abstract or proposal for its suitability to the conference. You will receive a reply by 15 March 2018. If you require a response before this date, please apply in writing to Gilles Brougère at brougere@univ-paris13.fr when you submit your paper, symposium or poster.

For more information, please see: http://www.itratoyresearch.org/2018_Paris.php.