CFP Extended: International #YouthMediaLife 2021 Conference

March 29 – April 1, 2021
University of Vienna
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Susanne Baumgartner, Amsterdam University, The Netherlands
Rodney Jones, University of Reading, UK
Axel Krommer, University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Dafna Lemish, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA

In mediatised cultures, people are engaged in increasingly complex networks of digital and ana­logue media practices through which they construct, experience, and share their lifeworlds. In the interdisciplinary research platform #YouthMediaLife at the University of Vienna, scholars have been engaged with such mediatised lifeworlds, specifically of young people, since May 2018. #YouthMediaLife 2021 invites international experts from various fields to share their research and perspectives on young people’s mediatised lifeworlds.

The three-day conference at the University of Vienna has at its heart questions about young peo­ple’s communicative and media practices in a variety of contexts. This brings questions such as the following to the fore: What are the roles which mediated narratives play in establishing and managing young people’s social connections? How are identities (co-)constructed in and through social media? How can media practices contribute to the appropriation of knowledge and skills which are crucial for the formation of young people’s lifeworlds? How are mediality and specific media practices perceived and evaluated, and how do such media ideologies feed back on media practices? How are media and narratives connected to and determined by technological, discur­sive and psychological factors and how do these factors in turn shape young people’s lifeworlds? How do technology and technological change shape story-telling practices? What are the ethical challenges and the socio-political and power aspects in these contexts?

A better understanding of digital change in young people’s lifeworlds requires a productive com­bination of disciplinary and interdisciplinary work that helps us all make sense of some of the de­velopments we observe. We invite abstracts for papers on any of the following topics:

Communicative Action and Media Practices:

 

  • Communicative structures of media practices;
  • Analogue and digital co-dependencies;
  • Intergenerational issues in media use;
  • Economising our needs via the media;
  • Audience expectations towards (news) media;
  • (De-)mediatisation strategies;
  • Multilingualism and translanguaging;
  • English as a global media language.

Individual and Community:

  • Issues of identity formation;
  • Migrant communities and media practices;
  • Artificial intelligence and young people;
  • The digital and the body;
  • Media perception;
  • Perception of the body in space;
  • Forms of medial communitarisation.

Research Practices:

  • New Methods for researching media practices;
  • Field access and spatio-temporal structures of the field;
  • Practical and legal questions surrounding social media research.

Politics, Ideologies, and Ethics:

  • The ethics involved in media use;
  • Perception of, and discourses about, mediality and specific media practices;
  • Metrics and algorithms;
  • Ethical considerations of technology shaping identity;
  • Digital technologies and “the good life”;
  • The aesthetics of reception and production;
  • Cultural pessimism, digital determinism and other perspectives of technology and culture;
  • Power inequalities, hegemonies and democratisation processes.

Education and Personal Development:

  • Multilingualism, multiliteracies. and multmodalities;
  • “Englishisation” and (language) learning;
  • Learning through gamification;
  • Self-tracking and life-logging;
  • The implications of media change for education and personality development.

We invite abstracts for the following presentation formats:

  • Posters to be presented in dedicated poster sessions (200 words maximum);
  • Individual papers (20 minute speaking time + 10 minutes for discussion, 350 words maximum);
  • Organised panels/symposia of up to 90 minutes in total (350 words maximum for the frame abstract and 200 words maximum for each individual contribution; 3-5 contributions).

Deadline for abstracts: August 15, 2020
You will be notified of acceptance/rejection by October 30, 2020.

For submissions, please use this form. 

Position Posting: Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in Children’s Literature and Literacy Studies

College of Social Science

Institution: University of Glasgow, School of Education
Position: Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in Children’s Literature and Literacy Studies
Contract type: Full Time Permanent
Salary: Grade, level 8/9, £44,045 – £51,034/£52,560 – £59,134 per annum

The School of Education invites applications for the position of Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in Children’s Literature and Literacy Studies on the Research and Teaching Track.

The School of Education is a large and dynamic unit which brings together researchers with expertise across all sectors of education: formal and non-formal, pre-school through to higher, adult and community education. It offers undergraduate, postgraduate and CPD courses and hosts the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change (ROC); the Centre for Research and Development in Adult and Lifelong Learning (CRADALL) and the St. Andrew’s Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education.

The School prides itself on the effective integration of teaching, research, theory, policy and practice. The key feature of its research is its commitment to placing educational research as part of an interdisciplinary agenda to support the development of more equitable societies in the spirit of social justice. The School aims to contribute to producing better places locally, nationally and globally, providing a major source of research-informed evidence that contributes to positive economic and societal impact.

The School is situated within the College of Social Sciences (CoSS) and we welcome applications from candidates keen to contribute to interdisciplinary research, scholarship and knowledge exchange, working collaboratively in taking forward the CoSS interdisciplinary research themes which are: Addressing Inequalities; Challenges in Changing Cities; Digital Society and Economy; Justice, Insecurity and Fair Decision Making; and Sustainable Development.

This post aligns with these themes in addressing inequalities by supporting and extending equitable literacy practices through local and global texts and also aligns with the theme of digital society and economy through including media and digital literacies.

The successful candidate will hold a PhD or equivalent in a related discipline with an extensive and established reputation in research and significant teaching experience in Children’s Literature and Literacy Studies.

This position is open ended and full time.

Informal Enquiries should be directed to Professor Evelyn Arizpe, Director of Culture, Literacies, Inclusion and Pedagogies RTG, email address: evelyn.arizpe@glasgow.ac.uk

Visit our website for further information on The University of Glasgow School of Education: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/education/

Click here for the full posting.

Closing date: 03 August 2020. 

It is the University of Glasgow’s mission to foster an inclusive climate, which ensures equality in our working, learning, research and teaching environment.

We strongly endorse the principles of Athena SWAN, including a supportive and flexible working environment, with commitment from all levels of the organisation in promoting gender equity.

The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401.

 

 

CFP: IRSCL 2021 Congress Aesthetics and Pedagogic Entanglements

Call for Papers

The pedagogical and aesthetic aspects of children’s and young adults’ literature have often been pitted against each other. Yet, if we think of children’s literature as a participatory and mediated practice, the aesthetical and the pedagogical dimensions are no longer opposed to each other. In the last two decades, we have witnessed an ‘educational turn’ in contemporary arts practices, where the emphasis is no longer on the finished aesthetic object, but on the processes and relationships established with the audiences and communities which become part of the art project, a process also facilitated by digital fora. Speaking of children’s literature as a mediated practice questions art’s autonomy and the limits of ‘non-art’; it brings the ‘death of the author’ not only to praise the ‘birth of the reader’ but also to foreground and question the conventions that sustain the artistic.

Since we cannot take children’s cognitive and literacy skills for granted, books tend to be recommended according to specific age ranges, while teachers and other adult figures involved (such as librarians, parents, and other caretakers, the so-called ‘gate-keepers’) try to facilitate an interpretation of the author’s intention. But what if we take the death of the author seriously? Will we still talk about the importance of understanding the text? What if we make children mediators and authors of children’s literature? Who is the ideal child that writes and reads? How is age produced and sustained in these relationships?

Thinking about possible synergies between the pedagogical and the aesthetic in children’s literature brings back questions on reception and (affective) engagement. It also provides us with insights into the entanglements of the publishing industry, the readers/viewers/consumers/users, the authors/artists, the practices of reading/sharing/discussing/reversioning and the new technologies, and at the same time, prompting reflections on our own (biased) academic work in this field.

Delegates will be invited to reflect on the implications of considering children not as ‘adults in the making’, but rather as readers and makers in their own right.

In this conference, we aim to strengthen the ties between children’s literature scholars, literacy and media experts and arts scholars to explore the possibilities of combining and rethinking the hermeneutical methods of the humanities, the experimental and empirical approaches of social sciences and arts-based research, as well as the contemporary anthropological and educational research that questions the essentialized positions of the adult and the child in educational contexts.

In this vein we suggest the following topics, but we also invite other paper and panel topics inspired by the congress’ theme:

Active readers:

  • Creative and collaborative writing by youth and children
  • Intergenerational collaborations
  • The child as ‘prosumer’ of children’s media
  • Reading and writing as playing
  • Children reversioning stories
  • Booktubers, fan-fiction and web-based communities inside and outside the classroom
  • Initiatives in marginalized communities (refugee centers, jails, hospitals)

Research and Practice:

  • Child-led participatory research
  • New materialism approaches to encounters with books
  • New approaches to reader-response
  • Cognitive approaches to aesthetics and pedagogy
  • Intersectional approaches
  • Arts-based methodologies
  • Historical approaches to tensions between te pedagogic and the aesthetic

Ethics and Aesthetics:

  • Ethical-political role of authors in children’s and YA literature
  • Gate-keepers and the “mediator circle” in children’s literature and media
  • The aesthetic and/or pedagogic role of paratexts
  • Representations of children as authors and artists in children’s fiction and media.

See full call for papers for further details.

More information on the Congress, its modality, dates and its main theme is available on our website (https://www.irscl2021.com/). We are looking forward to hosting you in Santiago!

CFP: Yearbook of the German Children’s Literature Society 2021

Children’s and young adult literature and media offer a symphony or polyphony of sounds. The word “sounds” evokes a whole concert of related associations. The term relates to a spectrum of auditory phenomena that encompasses the complex areas of tone/sound, word/language and music as well as noises of all kinds. It also leads to questions of sensory perception(s) as well as to sound art, be it in classical, experimental or popular culture forms. Literary sounds range from the multifarious aspects of the lyrical (poems, lyrics, etc.) to questions of intermedial references in texts; specific sounds and soundtracks are also audible in children’s and young adult media.

But it doesn’t just thrum and throb in young adult novels; sounds are also audible in picturebooks, for example, and political and ideological messages can be transmitted in all medial forms via sound. Narratological aspects are showcased when the voice of the narrator, the childlike tone or the fast beat of a novel are alluded to. Sounds can be interwoven with speech melodies, introduced with foreign-language quotations or underlaid with montaged and collaged noises. The chirping and rustling of nature is depicted via sounds, the (literary, composed) symphony of the big city sets a sound monument to metropolises.

In media contexts, too – both in the field of acoustics and in visual media – sounds are of central importance. Hence the relevance of probing the connections between sound and media development as mirrored in all media products and practices for children and young adults.

The open access, peer-reviewed Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung | GKJF (Yearbook of the German Children’s Literature Research Society) 2021 will focus on the theme of Sounds, examining the historical and contemporary dimensions of this complex subject. Contributions to this fifth volume of the Yearbook should address implications of the topic in its various medial forms (narratives, picturebooks, comics, graphic novels, films, television, computer games and apps) from both a theoretical and material perspective.

Contributions may be in German or English. While contributions on German children’s literature and media are particularly welcome, the editors also welcome proposals on other cultural and linguistic areas.

Possible themes and approaches with reference to children’s or young adult literature or media are:

  • Linguistic forms, narrative forms, narratives;
  • Intermediality and materiality;
  • Visual media (especially picturebooks, graphic novels);
  • Interdisciplinary aspects of the sound arts;
  • Acoustic media;
  • Audiovisual media: films, series;
  • Sensory perception, emotional research;
  • Music and singing;
  • Political aspects, ideological implications (e.g. “right-wing rock”);
  • Anthropological issues.

Beyond the focus theme, the Yearbook will publish up to three open contributions – in German or English – on questions of children’s literature and media from a historical or a theoretical perspective; proposals for these contributions are also welcome.

Formalities:

Please submit a proposal of no more than 300 words for a contribution on the focus theme or for an open contribution by 15 September 2020. The proposal should provide a short summary of the questions being addressed, establish theoretical positions and name the main literature to which the contribution will refer. The contribution itself should not exceed 40,000 characters (including spaces, footnotes and bibliography), and should be submitted to the editors as a Word document by 01 March 2021.

Please send your proposal to: jahrbuch@gkjf.de

We look forward to receiving your proposal. A style sheet will be sent once your proposal has been accepted. The Yearbook 2021 will be published online in December 2021.

 Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung | GKJF     
Editors

Prof. Gabriele von Glasenapp, Universität zu Köln
Prof. Emer O’Sullivan, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Prof. Caroline Roeder, PH Ludwigsburg
Prof. Ingrid Tomkowiak, Universität Zürich

http://www.gkjf.de/