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Many recent young adult novels probe the workings of the mind, at the same time inviting a sceptical and questioning reading stance. These texts draw attention to complex functions of memory, emotion and consciousness that are central to being and growing, often seeking to engage their adolescent readers through narrative games or formal experiment. These developments have been matched by the emergence of new forms of critical investigation, and an increase in the attention paid to relationships between readers and texts.
We invite papers exploring connections between contemporary YA and theory of mind, through thematic, narratological, or response-based enquiries. Possible topics might include: modes of empathy; nonhuman protagonists; remembering and forgetting; cognitive development; narrative and neurolinguistics; reading and feeling. Papers examining works from different English-speaking cultures, or offering comparative analysis with children’s or adult fiction are welcomed.
Please send your abstracts to the panel conveners:
Lydia Kokkola, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden (lydia.kokkola@ltu.se)
Alison Waller, University of Roehampton, UK (a.waller@roehampton.ac.uk)
Panel format: short papers (15-20 minutes) followed by a panel discussion responding to predetermined questions. Open floor discussion. All presenters will have the opportunity to discuss their presentation prior to the conference.
Deadline for Abstract: 26 February 2016
Conference dates: 22-26 August 2016 (Galway, Ireland)
International Exhibit of Wordless Children’s Picture Books Tours Canada
Edmonton (Aug 28 to Sept 18), Vancouver (Oct 1 to 22), Toronto (Nov 2 to Dec 11)
People around the world are deeply touched by the desperately dangerous circumstances for boatloads of refugees from Africa and the Middle East, with many arriving on the small island of Lampedusa, Italy. In response to the waves of refugees, IBBY Italia is working to establish the first children’s library in Lampedusa for the young migrants that arrive there every year, as well as for the local children and teens.
With such a diversity of cultures, it made sense to begin the Lampedusa library’s collection with wordless picture books—“silent books” that tell a story with pictures but no text. IBBY Italia gathered a selection of outstanding books from 23 countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Korea, the UK, the US, and Canada. These wordless picture books begin at the beginning, with the universal language of images and art, bypassing age, culture and language barriers, to offer readers a unique but shared reading experience.
In the true spirit of Jella Lepman who founded IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People), the library in Lampedusa is conceived to provide a place of peace, reflection, pause and hours of reading enjoyment. It is like a seed library that has been planted and that will grow into a complete collection of books for the use and pleasure of the children who live or pass by there.
To showcase the library, “Silent Books: Final Destination Lampedusa,” a travelling exhibit of more than 100 renowned wordless picture books, has been touring around the world. Following stops in cities in Italy, Mexico City and Graz, Austria, the exhibit is now in Canada, travelling to Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto.
Canadian children and adults will delight in reading these books, experiencing our uniqueness while celebrating our differences. Activities and events to promote and highlight the Silent Books exhibit will include a postcard that Canadian children can fill with a drawing or a message to send back to the children of Lampedusa. Sharing these books may bring us closer to the children who live in Lampedusa and to other children who travel until they find a safe place to call home.
Canadian tour dates for Silent Books: Final Destination Lampedusa travelling exhibit:
Aug. 28 to Sept. 18 – Stanley A. Milner Library, 7 Winston Churchill Square
Oct. 1 to 23 – Irving Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, 1961 East Mall
Oct. 8 to 18 – Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, 350 West Georgia St.
Oct. 10 to 22 – Italian Cultural Centre, 3075 Slocan St.
Nov. 2 to Dec. 11 – Toronto Public Library, North York Central Library, 5120 Yonge St.
IBBY Italia and IBBY Canada thank the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto for its generous support, as well as IBBY Italia, IBBY International, the Consulate General of Italy in Vancouver, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Edmonton Public Library, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Public Library, and Toronto Public Library. Special thanks to Merle Harris of Edmonton and Dr. Kathryn Shoemaker of Vancouver.
IBBY (www.ibby.org) is committed to bringing books and children together. IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People) was founded in 1953 by Jella Lepman, and is an international network represented in over 70 countries. IBBY Canada (www.ibby-canada) was formed in 1980 to promote Canadian children’s literature; members include authors, illustrators, librarians, booksellers, educators, and publishers.
For more information, please contact promotions@ibby-canada.org.
Assistant Professor in Childhood Studies at Rutgers University
Posted on September 2, 2015 by admin
The Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University—Camden, New Jersey, invites applications for an Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) to commence on September 1, 2016.
Building on the strengths of its established, internationally recognized program, the Department seeks an outstanding scholar whose interests and projects address the lives or contexts of children and childhood using quantitative research methods. The disciplinary affiliation of an applicant is of less importance than the quality of his/her research and the demonstrated appreciation for multidisciplinary approaches to the study of children and childhood. We are particularly interested in receiving applications from those whose areas of interest may include but need not be limited to health, children’s or youth’s sexualities, media and communication, under-served populations and both national and international contexts. We seek applicants eager to supervise doctoral students and interested in contributing to service roles within the department.
Established in 2007 as the first doctoral program in childhood studies in the USA, the department graduated its first Ph.D. students in May 2013. Childhood Studies offers a robust, multidisciplinary curriculum for BA, MA, and Ph.D. degrees. The department has hosted several major international conferences, sponsors an array of lectures and symposia, and annually welcomes visiting scholars from around the world. It enjoys an active faculty and graduate student body whose work often integrates scholarship with social and community engagement.
Applicants must have earned their Ph.D. in Childhood Studies, Psychology, Sociology, Public Policy, Communications, Health Studies or related field before beginning employment at Rutgers University. The duties of the assistant professorship include engaging in an active research program, teaching two courses per semester (typically one graduate seminar and three undergraduate classes per academic year) in the area of Childhood Studies, specifically introductory quantitative methods and statistics, supervising MA and Ph.D. students, and participating fully in the life of the department.
Candidates may learn about the campus and the Department of Childhood Studies at http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu and by contacting Dr. Lynne Vallone, Department Chair. Application materials should be sent to cstudies@camden.rutgers.edu. Applications must include: a cover letter indicating the ways in which the applicant’s research adds to the department’s strengths and focusing on how his/her teaching and research may enhance a multidisciplinary program, current CV, three letters of recommendation and an example of published scholarship. Applications received by November 6, 2015 will receive full consideration.
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer. Qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, military service or any other category protected by law. As an institution, we value diversity of background and opinion, and prohibit discrimination or harassment on the basis of any legally protected class in the areas of hiring, recruitment, promotion, transfer, demotion, training, compensation, pay, fringe benefits, layoff, termination or any other terms and conditions of employment. Rutgers University—Camden, a beautiful, urban campus expanding to accommodate the growth of Southern New Jersey, is located just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.
Posted in positions and postings
CFP – Special Issue of Environmental Education Research: Urban / Childhood / Nature / Pedagogy
Posted on September 2, 2015 by admin
Special Issue of Environmental Education Research
Urban / childhood / nature / pedagogy
Guest editors: Iris Duhn (Monash University), Karen Malone (University of Western Sydney), Marek Tesar (University of Auckland)
This Special Issue of Environmental Education Research engages critically with the intersections of the urban, childhood and nature to create a space for contributions that trouble and re-think what constitutes childhood and childhood pedagogies in contemporary urban nature environments. As guest editors, and in full view of the aims and scope of the journal, we invite contributions from researchers and scholars that challenge the assumption that cities are places of human and technological dominance over nature, and that childhoods are increasingly lived in human-centered unnatured urban environments. We particularly invite research-based papers that engage with urban / child / nature / pedagogy intersections in unexpected ways, to critically explore the materiality and diversity of nature / urban / childhood / pedagogy. We also anticipate that the Special Issue will contain contributions that consider what new theoretical and methodological perspectives may be useful in explorations of human/nature and nature/culture urban entanglements and allow more inclusive means for critical engagement with the nature-human collective (Hinchliffe, Kearnes, Degen & Whatmore, 2005), therefore moving away from cultural universalisms about the natured child.
The notions of nature and urbanism, with respect to childhoods, are often disconnected parts of the educational discourse. The aim of the Special Issue is to generate new perspectives on how education contributes to knowledges about natured childhoods and their performances in the urban, where nature, childhood and cities are enlivened without becoming “conscripted or re-inscribed in the cultural” (Hird, 2010, p. 55). We ask potential contributors: how can we move outside and disrupt the familiar and expose the limitations of anthropocentric views that often inform educational debates? We invite prospective authors to also consider deeply the ways we construct children’s relations with the urban world and in particular the everydayness of living in a place. For instance, “green” and “play” areas are easily associated with “soft nature” and “innocence” as good and safe places for childhoods in the city. Equally, playgrounds often create illusions of child-friendly urban places and connectedness with nature and natural materials, whereas “hard” urban spaces are associated with control, danger, surveillance, and with being devoid of nature and thus non child-friendly (Barratt Hacking, Barratt & Scott, 2007). This Special Issue seeks to challenge these notions, with a particular interest in scholarship that troubles these intersections in post-anthropocentric ways.
In sum, we invite theoretically informed and research rich explorations of nature / urban / childhood / pedagogy, and are particularly interested in developing scholarship that engages with the materialities of urban natures in relation to childhoods in cities, by exploring questions such as:
What counts as urban nature, and what is unaccounted for? What places for children emerge when urban nature is explored as unexpected, unknowable and as a site of interspecies encounters and cohabitation (Tsing, 2012)?
What pedagogies become possible when concepts are unsettled, and how do these pedagogies contribute to new conceptual spaces for natured childhoods in cities? What is urban nature (Davison & Ridder, 2006), and what may be the potential of “urban nature” as a pedagogical lens in education for sustainability with children?
What does “child friendly urban space” mean through a post-anthropocentric lens?
What kinds of theorisations of urbanism / education / childhood / nature might be useful in thinking about city spaces as lived in, and enacted as “places”?
What are the intersections of childhood / urban / nature and its tensions, possibilities and risks for educational thought and practice?
The journal welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers from contributors. The working language of the collection is English. Full details for submissions to Environmental Education Research are available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission
Please contact the Guest Editors for further information.
Deadline for paper proposals: 1 October, 2015
Content: 400-500 words proposal for the paper, with title, author’s name, a short bio with affiliation, and contact information.
Paper proposals should crystallise the key arguments of the proposed paper, and map out how this will be achieved, e.g. 300 words abstract, 200 word paper overview, including key sources of ideas/references/evidence/etc. Invitations to submit a full paper will be sent to selected authors by October 30, 2015.
As with the journal in general, accepted proposals will be those that are likely to:
make a useful and/or significant addition to the literature
have appropriate focus and contents
have coherent research method, arguments and conclusions
be understood by an international audience
Consult the following for guidelines for manuscript preparation. The reference style is Chicago. Manuscript templates will be available for accepted proposals and are highly recommended.
Deadline for Full Draft Submissions: March 1, 2016
Full papers should be between 5000-7000 words.
Final acceptance is conditional upon peer-review assessments.
For further information about the journal, visit http://www.tandfonline.com/EER.
Barratt Hacking, E., Barratt, R., & Scott, W. (2007). Engaging children: Research issues around participation and environmental learning. Environmental Education Research, 13(4), 529-544.
Davison, A., & Ridder, B. (2006). Turbulent times for urban nature: conserving and re-inventing nature in Australian cities. Australian Zoologist, 33(3), 306-314.
Hinchliffe, S., Kearnes, M. B., Degen, M., & Whatmore, S. (2005). Urban wild things: A cosmopolitical experiment. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23(5), 643-658.
Hird, M. J. (2010). Indifferent Globality Gaia, Symbiosis and ‘Other Worldliness.’ Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2-3), 54-72.
Tsing, A. (2012). Unruly edges: mushrooms as companion species. Environmental Humanities, 1, 141-154.
Posted in calls for papers
CFP – Children and War: Past and Present
Posted on September 2, 2015 by admin
Children and War: Past and Present
Third international multidisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Salzburg, Austria, on 13-15 July 2016
Organized by the University of Salzburg and the University of Wolverhampton, in association with the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict
This conference is planned as a follow-up to the two successful conferences, which took place at the University of Salzburg in 2010 and 2013. It will continue to build on areas previously investigated, and also open up new fields of academic enquiry.
All research proposals which focus on a topic and theme related to “Children and War” are welcome, ranging from the experience of war, flight, displacement and resettlement, to relief, rehabilitation and reintegration work, gender issues, persecution, trafficking, sexual violence, trauma and amnesia, the trans-generational impact of persecution, individual and collective memory, educational issues, films and documentaries, artistic and literary approaches, remembrance and memorials, and questions of theory and methodology. Specific conference themes anticipated are:
Children as victims, witnesses and participants in armed conflicts
Holocaust, genocide and forced labour
Deportation and displacement, refugees and asylum seekers
War crimes, trials and human rights
Reflexions on research in politically and culturally diverse contexts
Sources produced by NGOs and their public and academic use
Please send an abstract of 200-250 words, together with biographical background information of 50-100 words by 31 October 2015 to: J.D.Steinert@wlv.ac.uk. Panel proposals are welcome.
All proposals are subject to a review process. Successful candidates will be informed at the end of 2015 and will be asked to send in their papers by the end of May 2016 for distribution among conference participants on a CD. Further information will be made available in due time.
Posted in calls for papers
IRSCL Book Award 2022- Applications open
Open Position: Assistant Professor in Global/Transnational Children’s Literature and Childhood Studies