IRSCL

The IRSCL Board has decided that the 2013 IRSCL Congress will be held in Maastricht, our first Congress in the Netherlands. Look for further information on this site. The convenor of the Congress is Lies Wesseling, Maastricht University.

For the Paper Call and information about the 2011 IRSCL Congress in Brisbane, please go to the Congress website: http://irscl2011.com/

Our member Sonia Loidl has translated a selection of IRCL abstracts from English to German. These abstracts are available through the IRCL page of this website. Click on ‘Abstracts’ and you will find translations of abstracts from Volumes 1.1, 1.2  and 2.1.

Congratulations to Ukrainian scholars in children’s literature, who have established the Ukrainian Research Center for Children’s and Youth Literature, based in Lviv. This new organisation plans to support research in children’s literature through conferences, symposia and many other activities. The first President of the new Research Center is IRSCL member Ulyana Hnidets. Well done and best wishes for the future!

The Australian journal Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature has been in operation since 1990. It has now become an open-access, online journal, available through its own website. We intend to gradually upload past issues in the Archives section of the website. Papers is a peer-refereed journal which accepts scholarly submissions on any aspect of children’s literature. In the Australian ‘Excellence in Research’ (ERA) system it is classified as an A journal (that is, a journal of very high quality, with an editorial board consisting of well-known researchers).

Report on 19th IRSCL Congress, Frankfurt, Germany
Children’s Literature and Cultural Diversity in the Past and the Present
8 – 12 August 2009

The 19th IRSCL Congress was held, fittingly, in the city and the institution where the Frankfurt Colloquium was held forty years ago in 1969, when participants from five countries elected a committee charged with the founding of an association which was to advocate for children’s literature research and enable scholarly collaboration among its members. This event was the origin of IRSCL.

The Congress took place in the Goethe University, which houses the Institute for Children’s Literature, and was convened by Hans-Heino Ewers. Around 400 delegates from 50 countries registered for this Congress, comprising scholars from around the world.

Goethe University, Frankfurt

Delegates from Eastern Europe

The Congress began with greetings from the President of Goethe University, Professor Müller-Esterl and from the Hessian Minister for Science and Art, Eva Kühne-Hörnemann. After a brief speech by Hans-Heino Ewers, the IRSCL President gave a commemorative speech, highlighting the origins of the Society in the divided Europe of 1969, honouring its past presidents and looking to the future of IRSCL as children’s literature research develops into a prominent field of study at universities worldwide.

Professor Emeritus Klaus Doderer, one of the original participants in the Frankfurt Colloquium of 1969, posed the question whether the original objectives were still applicable in the present day. Finally, Sonja Müller, research associate of Goethe Universität spoke about the beginnings and the first projects of IRSCL.

The first keynote of the Congress was delivered by Professor Emeritus Heinz Rölleke, a renowned researcher of the Brothers Grimm. His topic was the cosmopolitan perspective of the Brothers Grimm as linguists and philologists and the global importance of their “Kinder- und Hausmärchen”. The first Congress day closed with a reception on the terrace of the Casino building.

Delegates at opening ceremony

Opening reception

Keynote lectures were delivered at the beginning of each of the Congress days: Zohar Shavit (Israel), ‘In the Backyard or the Foreground? Transfer Processes and the Creation of Child Culture’; John Stephens (Australia), ‘ ‘Representing Cultural Diversity in the Post-multicultural Era’; Anna Maria Machado (Brazil), ‘El mundo es plural’; and Maria Tatar (USA), ‘Cinematic Style and Empathetic Imagination in Anglo-American Children’s Literature.

John Stephens

Anna Maria Machado

Maria Tatar

Following the keynotes, delegates attended their choice of 14 concurrent sessions. Altogether, around 280 papers were presented, on topics covering many aspects of children’s literature and cultural diversity: migration, race, national literatures, multiculturalism, cultural difference in fantasy, film, comics, manga and multimedia, questions of translation, and many others. In addition, there were 10 panel sessions on various topics. Ten posters were presented on Monday and Tuesday of the Congress. The Congress languages were English, German, French and Spanish.

Panel, Cultures of World Nonsense Literature

IRCL Editorial Team and Poster

Monday afternoon was reserved for excursions. One group went to Phantastische Bibliothek Wetzlar, the world’s largest library on the genre of fantastic literature, and afterwards to Marburg. Another group followed in the footsteps of the Brothers Grimm in Hanau and Steinau an der Strasse. A third group explored Rheingau and Rheintal, including a boat tour. The fourth group pursued the topic of Frankfurt and Goethe, concluding with a visit to Goethe-Haus. All congress delegates received a ticket, allowing them free entry to all Frankfurt museums.

Heinrich Hoffman Museum

On Tuesday 11 August 2009, Mayor Petra Roth invited all participants to the Römer (medieval city hall of Frankfurt) to take part in a reception. Standing in for the Mayor, the Director of the Municipal Department of Cultural Affairs, Professor Felix Semmelroth, and members of the town council welcomed the delegates and provided pretzels and wine.

Hans-Heino at the Romer

In the Romer

Following the reception, more than 200 delegates joined the Congress Banquet which was organised on a boat on the river Main. At the Banquet the Society honoured Hans-Heino Ewers, Congress Chair, and Kimberley Reynolds, who leaves the Board after 10 years of service to IRSCL. The Vice-President, Mavis Reimer, announced that two members of IRSCL had been given Honor Book Awards for their monographs: Jean Perrot for Mondialisation et Littérature de Jeunesse [Globalization and Youth Literature], and Perry Nodelman for The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Two longstanding members of IRSCL were named IRSCL Fellows in recognition of their work for IRSCL and for children’s literature research. They are Riitta Kuivasmaki (Finland), and Sonja Svensson (Sweden). At the end of the evening, the Australian delegates, led by Kerry Mallan, put on a performance based (very loosely) on The Wizard of Oz, to welcome delegates to the 20th IRSCL Congress in Brisbane, Australia, 2011.

Congress Team at the Banquet

Two Marias and Jean at the banquet

Delegates watching Australian presentation

Under the directorship of Alida Allison, the Book Review Service of the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature (San Diego State University) reviews current children’s books and maintains an archive of past review. Some 90 new reviews by faculty and students have just been posted.

Researchers in children’s literature are welcome to apply for a Research Grant of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation at the Berlin State Library, Unter den Linden, Berlin. The book collection of the Children’s and Young People’s Book Department at Berlin State Library is one of the largest and best in Europe, with particular strengths in old and rare German children’s books. It holds 200,000 volumes including 65,000 in languages other than German. In addition, researchers can borrow secondary texts from other Berlin State Library collections, which hold a wealth of critical material. Having spent a happy week prior to the IRSCL Congress working in the reading room of the collection, I can vouch for the expertise of its staff and the easy accessibility of books. And its location on Unter den Linden could not be more central, close to museums, restaurants, shops and markets. Research Grants of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation are for one to three months and fund researchers’ expenses and some travel. For information, see the website of the SPK (Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz), or email Carola Pohlmann, the helpful and knowledgeable Director of the Children’s and Young People’s Book Department at Berlin State Library (Carola.Pohlmann@sbb.spk-berlin.de).

At the IRSCL General Membership meeting in Frankfurt, a new Board was voted in:

President

Clare Bradford, Australia

Board

Mavis Reimer, Canada: Vice-President and Treasurer
Hélène Ehriander, Sweden: Awards and Grants Coordinator
Hans-Heino Ewers, Germany: Liaison with children’s literature national/regional associations
Kerry Mallan, Australia: Convenor of the 2011 IRSCL Conference in Brisbane, Australia, 2011
Rose-May Pham Dinh, France:  Secretary

Congratulations to Kimberley Reynolds, who recently won the Children’s Literature Association Book Award for her 2007 book, Radical Children’s Literature:  Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction. Clare Bradford’s Unsettling Narratives:  Postcolonial Readings of Children’s Literature (2007) was named an Honor Book.