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The aesthetic aspects of storytelling through word and image have been studied extensively in the past thirty-odd years. In 1982, the Swedish scholar Kristin Hallberg launched the concept of iconotext that has been widely employed in discussing the phenomenon. Perry Nodelman’s Words about Pictures (1988) was a landmark that placed the subject firmly within children’s literature research. The first international conference wholly devoted to the art form was held in Stockholm in 1998, featuring, among others, Jane Doonan and William Moebius. An international network was established in 2007, running biennial conferences and workshops. Dozens of monographs and edited volumes have been published, the most recent More Words about Pictures (2017), edited by Naomi Hamer, Perry Nodelman, and Mavis Reimer, and The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (2017), edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer.
Looking at words, seeing pictures (e.g. implications of fonts, intraiconic texts, etc)
We will not consider proposals on content-focused topics.
Confirmed jousters are Perry Nodelman and Maria Nikolajeva.
Deadline: January 8, 2018. 300-word (or any size image) proposals for a 20-minute paper should be sent, together with a 100-word bio, to mn351@cam.ac.uk. We also encourage panel and round-table proposals. Early indication of interest would be helpful in arranging affordable accommodation. Further inquiries to mn315@cam.ac.uk.
Please note that this conference is not a part of the Picturebook Network series.
Recent Publications by IRSCL Members
The following books by IRSCL members have been recently published or are forthcoming:
The Courage to Imagine: The Child Hero in Children’s Literature by Roni Natov (Bloomsbury, November 2017)
The act of imagining lies at the very heart of children’s engagements with literature and with the plots and characters they encounter in their favorite stories. The Courage to Imagine is a landmark new study of that fundamental act of imagining. Roni Natov focuses on the ways in which children’s imaginative engagement with the child hero figure can open them up to other people’s experiences, developing empathy across lines of race, gender and sexuality, as well as helping them to confront and handle traumatic experience safely. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches from the psychological to the cultural and reading a multicultural spectrum of authors, including works by Maya Angelou, Louise Erdrich, Neil Gaiman and Brian Selznick, this is a groundbreaking examination of the nature of imagining for children and re-imagining for the adult writer and illustrator.
Imagining Sameness and Difference in Children’s Literature From the Enlightenment to the Present Day edited by Emer O’Sullivan and Andrea Immel (Palgrave, 2017)
This book investigates how cultural sameness and difference has been presented in a variety of forms and genres of children’s literature from Denmark, Germany, France, Russia, Britain, and the United States; ranging from English caricatures of the 1780s to dynamic representations of contemporary cosmopolitan childhood. The chapters address different models of presenting foreigners using examples from children’s educational prints, dramatic performances, travel narratives, comics, and picture books. Contributors illuminate the ways in which the texts negotiate the tensions between the Enlightenment ideal of internationalism and discrete national or ethnic identities cultivated since the Romantic era, providing examples of ethnocentric cultural perspectives and of cultural relativism, as well as instances where discussions of child reader agency indicate how they might participate eventually in a tolerant transnational community.
Figuring Korean Futures: Children’s Literature in Modern Korea by Dafna Zur (Stanford UP, 2017)
This book is the story of the emergence and development of writing for children in modern Korea. Starting in the 1920s, a narrator-adult voice began to speak directly to a child-reader. This child audience was perceived as unique because of a new concept: the child-heart, the perception that the child’s body and mind were transparent and knowable, and that they rested on the threshold of culture. This privileged location enabled writers and illustrators, educators and psychologists, intellectual elite and laypersons to envision the child as a powerful antidote to the present and as an uplifting metaphor of colonial Korea’s future. Reading children’s periodicals against the political, educational, and psychological discourses of their time, Dafna Zur argues that the figure of the child was particularly favorable to the project of modernity and nation-building, as well as to the colonial and postcolonial projects of socialization and nationalization.
CFP – Journal of Juvenilia Studies: Microcosms
Journal of Juvenilia Studies: Call for Papers (due date 15 November 2017)
The Journal of Juvenilia Studies (JJS) is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, published by the International Society for Literary Juvenilia (ISLJ) and hosted by the University of Alberta Libraries through their web hosting service. The JJS’s first issue will be launched at the ISLJ’s Sixth International Conference and AGM, 5-8 July 2018, which will be held at the University of Durham.
We invite papers on the 2017 conference’s theme of “Microcosms” or on any aspect of the theory and practice of juvenile artistic production, including literary juvenilia and juvenile work in other forms. Papers should be approximately 6000 words in length.
Scholars interested in considering the theme of “Microcosms” may wish to consider the following list of topics. However, this is intended to be generative, not restrictive.
School magazines (e.g. Microcosm, published by students at Eton) and family magazines
Schoolroom as microcosm of the larger world
Family as microcosm of the larger world
This little globe: family theatricals
Small spaces, small bodies, big ideas
Fragments, outlines, unfinished texts
Literary juvenilia as containing the adult oeuvre in embryo (or not)
Matters of scale and size as literary subject
Matters of scale and size of the material object produced by the young writer
Models, miniatures, maps and alternative worlds
Literary Juvenilia as prolepsis: feeling “the future in the instant”
The appeal of the small: stories about animals or “the little people”
Manuscripts submitted for publication should not have been previously published elsewhere (except as lectures, conference presentations, or theses/dissertations) and should not be submitted simultaneously for publication in another journal or medium.
Manuscripts should use British spelling (following the OED) and should follow the style guidelines contained in the MLA Handbook, 8th edition, except as noted.
Manuscripts should not contain the author’s name or any identifying information.
Manuscripts should be in 12-point Times New Roman, with audio-visual materials, charts, and tables placed in the text at the appropriate point and not at the end.
The author is responsible for obtaining permission to publish all copyright materials included in the manuscript.
Images should be submitted as .jpg files.
Manuscripts should be submitted in .doc, .docx, or .rtf files to the Editor, Lesley Peterson, at Peterson.lesley@gmail.com
We also encourage inquiries from scholars interested in submitting book reviews.
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Senior Lecturer or Principal Lecturer in Children’s Book Illustration at Anglia Ruskin University
Posted on September 15, 2017 by admin
Senior Lecturer or Principal Lecturer in Children’s Book Illustration
Anglia Ruskin University – Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences
Salary: £38,833 to £56,950 per annum.
Placed on: 6 September 2017
Closes: 26 September 2017
About Anglia Ruskin University:
Anglia Ruskin is a vibrant workplace and our University is gaining prominence both nationally and internationally. We have ambitious plans for the future and we are determined that our students and staff will realise their full potential. Our main campuses in the cities of Cambridge, Chelmsford and Peterborough have been transformed with major capital investment. With an annual turnover of over £200m, we are a major force for higher education and one of the largest universities in the East of England.
The Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences is home to first class teaching and research across a wide range of both traditional and contemporary disciplines. All of our courses are committed to the mutual reinforcement of theory and practice, and are grounded in our academics’ innovative and internationally recognised research.
We are now seeking to appoint a committed and dedicated academic to lead and teach on our internationally renowned MA course in Children’s Book Illustration, with the opportunity to further develop it in terms of both curriculum and related research. The course, established in 2001, based in the Cambridge School of Art, now recruits students from all over the world, and has strong links to the Children’s Publishing industry. Many of its graduates have gone on to become major names in Children’s Book Illustration.
We welcome applications from a range of different backgrounds for this important post. You may be a research active academic in Illustration (preferably with a PhD or Professional Doctorate). Alternatively, you may be a professional Children’s Book Illustrator with some teaching experience at HE level. Most importantly, with a professional and/or research profile commensurate with the stage of your career, you’ll also have the organisational skills and the vision required to co-ordinate this exceptional course and lead it into the future. A fractional 0.8 FTE appointment may be considered, for a practising illustrator who wishes to remain professionally active in their field.
For an informal discussion, please contact Chris Owen, Head of Cambridge School of Art, at chris.owen@anglia.ac.uk.
Interviews are expected to take place on Monday 9 October.
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CFP – New Directions in Children’s Film: Theory and Practice
Posted on September 15, 2017 by admin
Chapter proposals are requested for a proposed handbook, New Directions in Children’s Film: Theory and Practice, edited by Casie Hermansson and Janet Zepernick and under consideration with Palgrave Macmillan. While children’s film is as old as film itself, film scholarship is only recently beginning to catch up to the numerous innovations of this thriving genre. This collection aims to chart the new directions in 21st century children’s film (broadly defined), and in its study.
Initial proposals of approximately 300 words should clearly address any aspect of current children’s film, including but not limited to children in/on film; evolving genre definitions and borders; censorship and gatekeeping; influence of technologies; adaptation issues; current thematic and other preoccupations; construction and constructedness of childhood representations; pedagogical issues; the child star system; money and the children’s markets. Please also include a professional biography written in 3rd person of 100-200 words, noting credentials in this research area as relevant. Deadline for proposals: November 30, 2017, by email to: chermansson@pittstate.edu. All submissions will be confirmed received by prompt email reply. Authors will be notified by December 15 about inclusion in the formal Prospectus and chapters of 6-8k words will be due in 2018. Please circulate and repost.
Dr. Casie Hermansson is a full professor of English at Pittsburg State University (KS), and a Fulbright Scholar. She is the author of Reading Feminist Intertextuality Through Bluebeard Stories (2002); Bluebeard: A Reader’s Guide to the English Tradition (2009); and A Study of Film Adaptation of James Barrie’s Story Peter Pan (2016). She is currently co-editing Where is Adaptation? (forthcoming in 2018), and completing a monograph on adaptations of children’s metafictions for Edinburgh University Press. For the K-12 education market, she is the author of How to Analyze the Films of Clint Eastwood (2012) and Parental Guidance Ratings (2013), as well as more than 20 fiction readers for Heinemann.
Dr. Janet Zepernick is associate professor of English at Pittsburg State University (KS) and has a PhD in English with an emphasis in rhetoric from the Pennsylvania State University, where she studied classical rhetoric and contemporary public discourse. She is co-editor of the collection Women and Rhetoric between the Wars (2013), and Where is Adaptation? (forthcoming in 2018). Her current work on the discursive creation and recreation of South Korea in the US public imaginary uses the idea of national “brand image” to explore the impact and consequences of various fictional adaptations of the historical and present-day realities of South Korea.
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CFP – Childhood and Materiality
Posted on September 15, 2017 by admin
VIII Conference on Childhood Studies
May 7- 9, 2018 at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Confirmed keynote speakers: – Leena Alanen (University of Jyväskylä), Ivar Frønes (University of Oslo), Nick Lee (Warwick University), Ida Wentzel Winther (University of Aarhus)
The theme of the 2018 conference, Childhood and Materiality, is deliberately wide-ranging and designed to invite scholars to explore materiality and childhood across a broad spectrum. We hope to inspire lively debates from different disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives about many aspects of childhood and materiality. For a more detailed CFP, see https://www.jyu.fi/en/congress/childhood2018/cfp.
Topics include but are not limited to:
Materialist methodologies, ontologies, ethics
Historical perspectives on materiality and childhood
Sustainable development, mobility, migration
Economies, consumption, wealth, poverty
Policies and politics of materiality and childhood
Embodiment, expressive bodies, normativity, and child bodies
Material cultures in everyday life
Aesthetic matters, dis/orders of tastes and things
Materiality in play and imagination
Digital technologies and environments
Abstract submission opens on November 1, 2017 and closes on January 15, 2018. The conference is organized by the University of Jyväskylä, the Finnish Society for Childhood Studies, and the Nordic Child Culture Research network.
Follow us on @Childhood2018
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Assistant Professor in Children’s, Childhood and Youth Studies (Global Youth Cultures) at York University
Posted on September 15, 2017 by admin
Position Rank: Full Time Tenure Stream – Assistant Professor
Discipline/Field: Children’s, Childhood and Youth Studies (Global Youth Cultures)
Home Faculty: Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
Position Start Date: July 1, 2018
The Department of Humanities, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, invites applications for a tenure-stream position at the rank of Assistant Professor in Children’s, Childhood and Youth Studies (Global Youth Cultures) to commence July 1, 2018. Applicants must have a PhD in the humanities or a relevant discipline. The program seeks outstanding scholars whose research interests and projects address the lived experiences and cultures of children and/or youth from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective. Preference will be given to applicants whose work addresses child and/or youth cultures in a global context. While the candidate’s own research can vary in content, we are seeking scholars whose research and teaching can highlight youth social justice advocacy and community engagement practices. Applicants must demonstrate excellence or the promise of excellence in teaching and scholarly research. Demonstrated expertise in research with children and/or relevant work experience with children and/or youth is a requirement. The successful candidate will be suitable for prompt appointment to the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Pedagogical innovation in high priority areas such as experiential education and technology enhanced learning is an asset.
York University is an Affirmative Action (AA) employer and strongly values diversity, including gender and sexual diversity, within its community. The AA program, which applies to Aboriginal people, visible minorities, people with disabilities, and women, can be found at http://acadjobs.info.yorku.ca/ or by calling the AA office at 416-736-5713. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority.
Applicants should submit a signed letter of application, a curriculum vitae, a teaching dossier, and a sample of their written work (no longer than 20 pages) and arrange for three confidential letters of recommendation to be sent directly to: Professor Andrea Davis, Chair, Department of Humanities, 206 Vanier College, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3 or by e-mail to aadavis@yorku.ca (subject line: “Global Youth Cultures”).
Applicants wishing to self-identify can do so by downloading, completing and submitting the forms found at: http://acadjobs.info.yorku.ca/,/a>. Please select the “Affirmative Action” tab under which forms pertaining to Citizenship and AA can be found.
The deadline for applications is November 15, 2017. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. All York University positions are subject to budgetary approval.
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CFP – Growing Scientists! Children’s Literature and the Sciences
Posted on September 14, 2017 by admin
Growing Scientists! Children’s Literature and the Sciences
University of Antwerp, Belgium
Starting with Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658), children’s literature has shown a particular interest in the sciences: not only in non-fiction, but also in genres like science fiction and adventure stories, and in science-oriented characters and scripts – think of the mad scientist or the Frankenstein plot. Moreover, the study of children’s books also draws on the sciences. A growing body of cross-disciplinary research builds on findings from cognitive studies in particular to examine the narrative construction of storyworlds and the possible impact of children’s literature on young readers.
This one-day conference, hosted by the University of Antwerp, seeks to examine the representation of science in children’s literature, as well as innovative theoretical approaches that explore children’s literature from cross-disciplinary perspectives, such as cognitive studies, evolutionary criticism, geographies of children, and so forth. As such, it wants to contribute to the discussion about the “gap,” whether real or supposed, between the arts and the sciences, that has been on scholars’ agenda ever since C.P. Snow published Two Cultures in 1959.
Recent social developments make this reflection particularly urgent. The past decade has witnessed a rise in governmental and educational support for STEM literacy (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics), and some critics argue that this goes at the cost of the humanities. Some governmental agencies point out the difficulties in attracting a diverse group of students for STEM education, and develop campaigns to tackle the dominant image of the white, male, middle-class scientist that persists to date. Other political leaders have recently questioned the very role of science as the best way of understanding the world, and adapted their policies accordingly, provoking fear and outrage about the consequences for future generations.
Starting from the assumption that children’s literature contributes to the socialization of children, and reveals the values and attitudes adults want to pass on to the next generation, we explore how science is represented in children’s books. How are concepts of science constructed in children’s books? Do children’s books address science as fixed or dynamic? How are budding scientists characterised in terms of gender, race, class and age? How do scientists in children’s literature deal with risk and failure? What is the outcome of scientific activities in children’s literature? What ideas do children’s books offer to counter the idea that science and literature are mutually exclusive?
Confirmed keynote speakers are Maria Nikolajeva (University of Cambridge) and Daniel Feldman (Bar-Ilan University). Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers that explore aspects related to the conference theme. We particularly welcome submissions in the following areas:
Science in children’s literature
Scientific literature for children; children’s literature as science communication;
Agency and child characters as inventors or scientists;
Child geniuses and their scientific interests;
Science as related to citizenship in children’s books;
Scientist characters and diversity: gender, race, class, abilities;
Children’s fiction as a source of images of science
Science and children’s literature
Children’s literature and STE(A)M education;
The place of children’s literature/ childhood studies within history of science;
Sciences informing research in children’s literature
Abstracts (300 words) and short biographies (50 words) should be sent to childlit@uantwerpen.be by 21 October 2017.
Conference location: University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium.
For more information, contact Vanessa Joosen and Frauke Pauwels at childlit@uantwerpen.be.
Posted in calls for papers
CFP – Friend or Fiend? The Frankenstein Story in Children’s and Young Adult Culture
Posted on September 14, 2017 by admin
Friend or Fiend? The Frankenstein Story in Children’s and Young Adult Culture
A Special Session of the Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association
Sponsored by Frankenstein and the Fantastic, an outreach effort of the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association
For the 2018 Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, from 28-31 March 2018
Proposals no later than 1 October 2017
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2018. It is a work that has permeated popular culture, appearing in versions found across the globe, in all known media, and for all age groups. However, many aspects of this tradition remain underexplored by scholars. One of these is how the story and its characters have manifested in children’s and young adult culture.
Like Frankensteiniana for older audiences, versions of the story for young audiences offer interesting and important approaches to the novel and its textual progeny, and they deserve to be better known and analyzed, especially since, for many, works designed for the young represent their first encounters with Frankenstein and its characters.
Criticism on these works remains limited; though a growing number of scholars (see the selected bibliography appended to this call) have begun to offer more in the way of critical analysis, as opposed to just seeing them as curiosities. It is our hope that this session will continue this trend and foster further discussion and debate on these texts.
In this session, we seek proposals that explore representations of Frankenstein, its story, and/or its characters in children’s and young adult culture. We are especially interested in how the Creature is received in these works, especially by children and young adult characters, but other approaches (and comments on other characters) are also valid.
Please submit paper proposals (100 to 200 words) and a short biographic statement into the PCA Database by 1 October 2017. The site is accessible at https://conference.pcaaca.org/. Do include your university affiliation if you have one, your email address, your telephone number, and your audio-visual needs.
Upon submission, be sure, also, to send your details to the organizers (Michael A. Torregrossa, Fantastic [Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction] Area Chair, and Amie Doughty, Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area Chair) at FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com, notifying them of your intentions to serve on the panel. Please use the subject “Frankenstein at PCA”.
Presentations at the conference will be limited to 15 to 20 minutes, depending on final panel size.
Do address any inquiries about the session to FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com.
Further details on the Frankenstein and the Fantastic project can be accessed at https://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/.
Further details on the Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area can be found at http://pcaaca.org/childrens-literature-culture/.
Posted in calls for papers
CFP – Special Issue of Canadian Journal of Children’s Rights: Children’s Rights and Environments
Posted on September 14, 2017 by admin
Canadian Journal of Children’s Rights 2018: Children’s Rights and Environments
Deadline for Submission: April 1, 2018
The Editors welcome manuscripts in English and French from academics, researchers, community partners and young people that address the broad theme of Children’s Rights and Environments. The issue approaches the theme of environments broadly to include manuscripts addressing issues ranging from climate change and children’s rights to children’s right to play in public outdoor spaces. The Editors encourage a variety of contributions including scholarly essays, original research articles, comparative analyses, critical reviews, advocacy and policy articles as well as personal narratives, interviews, oral histories and poetry to each of the sections of the Journal: academic, open, student, and youth submissions. New this year is a section devoted to supporting graduate student scholarship. Each manuscript submission will undergo a masked peer review process: double masked review of scholarly articles and single masked review for submissions to the open section. The editors will review youth submissions to verify their appropriateness to CJCR‘s focus and scope.
Submissions to the Canadian Journal of Children’s Rights will make a contribution to exploring the theme of children’s rights and environments from a variety of disciplinary locations and approaches.
The deadline for submission of manuscripts (up to 8,000 words plus references for scholarly articles) for the 2018 Issue is April 1, 2018.
For more information including guide to authors and to submit manuscripts, please go to the journal page at https://journals.carleton.ca/cjcr or follow the Canadian Journal of Children’s Rights link on the site at: landonpearson.ca.
Dr. Virginia Caputo, Managing editor
Posted in calls for papers
IRSCL Book Award 2022- Applications open
Open Position: Assistant Professor in Global/Transnational Children’s Literature and Childhood Studies