en es en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en fr et en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en it en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en es en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en
Paper Call for a Special Issue of International Research in Children’ Literature: Curating National Histories
Papers will normally be 5000-7000 words in length; we may consider shorter submissions where these represent scholarship in emerging areas.
Abstracts due: 1 March 2018; completed papers 1 September 2018, publication July 2019.
Abstracts (300 words) and a short bio (150 words) should be submitted to IRCL.National.Literatures@gmail.com.
4 – 5 June 2018
Professor Pamela Robertson Wojcik, University of Notre Dame
Dr. Timothy Shary, Southern New Hampshire University
Professor Karen Lury, University of Glasgow
The flow of media, goods and people across national borders and the formation of online communities have seen youth culture embedded within both national and global trends and happenings. Yet, As Stephen Castles, Hein de Haas, and Mark Miller note, “the growth of transnational society has given rise to novel challenges” (17). The strain of these challenges has been seen in both the Brexit and Trump campaigns and surprised victories, with immigration and tighter border control serving as a central issue in both campaigns. While in the British referendum and the American presidential election young people more commonly voted to remain in the European Union and against Trump and his values, this generation now faces tightening borders and heightened nationalism. In this conference, we aim to explore how contemporary youth culture has been shaped by these and other earlier developments such as, the global financial crisis, the increased visibility of terrorism in the West, and the intersecting ways in which industrial, economic, social, cultural and political factors have affected the representation of young people’s stasis and mobility on screen. Papers, panels and workshops are invited on but not limited to:
Youth Culture and (Trans)National Identity
Beyond Borders: Youth Culture and Online Communities
Travel in Contemporary Youth Film and Television
Youth Culture and the Media
Group Commitment and Boundaries among Young People
The Changing Landscape of Borders and Youth Culture
Youth Culture in the European Union
CFP – Edited Collection: Essays on John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
Posted on February 12, 2018 by admin
Edited Collection: Essays on John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
Deadline: 500-1,000 word abstracts due by July 1, 2018
Abstracts are solicited for an edited collection on the collaborations of John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert, philologists, medievalists and early modernists, and cryptologists who worked as a duo on a number of groundbreaking projects from the eight volume Text of the Canterbury Tales to the Waberski Cipher. The goal of this volume is to survey the diverse body of work the two scholars created together across their careers, giving equal attention to their literary and cryptology expertise as well as their contributions to early composition and writing studies, linguistics, archival studies and bibliography, and educational theory. We are also interested in essays that analytically discuss the scholars’ personal lives and both private and professional relationships, for example with William and Elizebeth Friedman, George Fabyan, Elizabeth Wells Gallup, John Dewey, etc. As Chair of the University of Chicago English department, editor of Modern Philology, President of the Modern Language Association, and second-in-command of the Military Intelligence Division, section 8 (MI-8) during WWI, Manly’s institutional influences were wide, and Rickert led alongside him, often without deserved acknowledgement. This volume will bring together multiple perspectives on their careers and contributions to a wide range of fields, acknowledging a century of evolving scholarly reception of and speculations about their projects and collaborations.
We seek essays on all of the following topics, as well as intersections and influences not here identified:
the history of the highly reputable journal, Modern Philology, which Manly edited from 1908-1930;
Manly and Rickert’s training of students in paleography and influences on the future of that study;
the 8-volume Text of the Canterbury Tales and work in Chaucer studies;
contributions to scholarship on Shakespeare, including but not limited to their work toward debunking the Shakespeare-Bacon theory;
pedagogical materials in teaching beginning researchers and students archival and bibliographical methods;
pedagogical materials concerning composition and writing studies, including but not limited to The Writing of English (1919) and The Writer’s Index (1923);
pedagogical materials in the teaching and anthologizing of literature, such as Contemporary British Literature (1921), Contemporary American Literature (1922), and New Methods for the Study of Literature (1927), and the influences of their methods on the future of literary theory, particularly formalism, theories of authorship, and canonization and classification;
cryptology work on particular ciphers and development of methodologies;
general impact on early twentieth-century intelligence and military strategy;
creative writing projects, like Rickert’s The Reaper (1904), The Folly (1906), The Golden Hawk (1907), numerous short stories, and influences on fields like children’s literature;
institutional reform efforts for changing public and higher education; for example, ensuring equity in education, strengthening the interaction of the sciences and the humanities, or developing the English Studies model, which integrates rhetoric, writing, linguistics, literary studies, and the other disciplines of language;
the contexts of Manly and Rickert’s work within Midwestern Social Darwinist, Progressive, and agrarian Populist politics;
reformation of the functions of the Modern Language Association;
influences on models of collaborative scholarship and authorship;
Manly and Rickert’s actual teaching of and interactions with students; for example, Rickert was well known for her experimental teaching of contemporary literature, which she published in 1927 as New Methods for the Study of Literature.
Abstracts of 500-1000 words, with citations in Chicago style, should be sent via email to Prof. Katherine Ellison, Department of English, Illinois State University, at keellis@ilstu.edu by July 1, 2018. Please send original proposals not under consideration in other venues.
Posted in calls for papers
Lecturer in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Manchester Metropolitan University
Posted on February 12, 2018 by admin
Lecturer (Writing for Children and Young Adults)
The Faculty of Arts and Humanities is a unique environment where Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences sit alongside the Manchester School of Art and the Manchester Fashion Institute. Student experience is at the heart of everything we do. We’re proud to offer state-of-the-art facilities, including digital and technical workshops, studios and gallery spaces designed to enhance learning and collaboration.
The Department of English seeks to appoint a lecturer in writing for children and young adults. The post is suitable for you if you write creatively for young people in any medium, produce scholarly research on writing for children and young adults or do both. We welcome applications from candidates with experience of or a demonstrable interest in collaborative Youth Studies research which links English with disciplines such as Education, Sociology or Linguistics. We would also welcome your application if you have experience of or a demonstrable interest in working with children and young people as part of their creative and/or scholarly research.
This post will align closely with the work of the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies (MCYS), a cross-disciplinary research centre which aims to be a centre of expertise for the use of participatory research with children and young people. Established in 2014, MCYS is located in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and has, over the last three years, generated over £800,000 of external income developing research and knowledge exchange projects that mobilise participatory methodologies. This income has come from a range of prestigious and ground-breaking research projects funded by the ESRC, AHRC, Leverhulme and government bodies (http://www2.mmu.ac.uk/mcys/).
The Department of English fosters a rich and diverse research culture in both critical scholarship and creative writing. It hosts a large undergraduate single honours English programme, and smaller joint honours programmes in English and American Literature, English and Creative Writing and English and Film, whose core units are taught by specialists in each area. The Department runs highly successful MA programmes in Creative Writing and English Studies and has the largest community of taught postgraduate English and Creative Writing students in the UK. The department is home to the Manchester Writing School, run under the creative direction of UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
You will to have a doctoral level qualification in a relevant area OR an established professional reputation as a writer of children’s and/or young adult literature, as evidenced in national broadcast media appearances, national broadsheet and literary press reviews, or major literary prize success. You will also need to have a track record of publishing high quality creative or critical research outputs which meet or exceed the 3* quality standard set by the Research Excellence Framework. The anticipated start date for the successful applicant is July 2018.
For an informal discussion regarding the requirements of the role please contact, Dr Jess Edwards, Head of the Department of English (J.Edwards@mmu.ac.uk) and, Prof. Hannah Smithson (h.l.smithson@mmu.ac.uk) Head of the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies.
If you would like to join our people and share our ambition, we would love to hear from you.
For more information about the position: https://manmetjobs.mmu.ac.uk/jobs/vacancy/lecturer-writing-for-children-and-young-adults-0333-mmu-all-saints-campus/350/description/ajaxaction/downloadfile/?id=6876&pagestamp=006721be-faaf-4db7-ae30-73d58c6cb3a8
Posted in positions and postings
CFP – Ancient Literature, Shahnameh “Epic of Kings,” and the Child
Posted on February 8, 2018 by admin
Ancient Literature, Shahnameh “Epic of Kings” and the Child
The First International Conference
10 May 2018, Mashhad, Iran
Organized by Dr. Khaleghi Mutlagh, world-renowned scholar and researcher of Shahnameh, professor at University of Hamburg, and managing director of Ferdowsi Foundation, and Professor Kanani, researcher and director of Ferdowsi Foundation
The Shahnameh, also transliterated as Shahnama, is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran.
Possible topics for this conference include:
Familiarity of children with the literature of their homeland
Familiarity of migrant children with literature of their parents’ homeland
Rewriting of ancient literature for children
Abstracts and articles plus a biography of max. 100 words should be sent to: bonyadeferdowsi@gmail.com.
Abstracts are due on 28 February 2018, and articles are due on 30 March 2018.
Those being selected will be guests of Ferdowsi Foundation for two days, and the selected articles will be translated for publication in international magazines and presented to related academic centres.
For more information, please visit the Ferdowsi Foundation website: http://bonyadferdowsitous.ir/.
Inquiries can be sent to Masoumeh Mousavian: masoomemoosavian12@gmail.com.
Posted in calls for papers
CFP – Special Issue of Belas Infieis: Translation Studies and Children’s Literature
Posted on February 5, 2018 by admin
Translation Studies And Children’s Literature
The consolidation of Translation Studies as a field of scholarly research, in the 1980s, is contemporary to the publishing of two pioneering works regarding children’s literature and translation: Gita Klingberg’s Children’s Fiction in the Hands of the Translators and Zohar Shavit’s Poetics of Children’s Literature, both from 1986. From then on, in Brazil and abroad, important events have taken place and numerous works have been dedicated to this subject, including monographs, theses, dissertations, articles, and books. Some of the themes that have arisen in the most recent events and publications are: (1) history of translation for children; (2) translating picture books and multimodality; (3) adaptations for children; (4) problems in translating cultural elements; (5) translation and morals; (6) the translator’s voice; (7) the child reader’s image; (8) the double addressee in translation of children’s literature, among others. Following up these advances, and aiming at cooperating with the consolidation of this field in Brazil, we invite researchers to present contributions in the form of articles, reviews, translations and interviews that discuss some of the above-mentioned topics, or others regarding translation and children’s literature.
Professor Álvaro Faleiros, Ph.D – University of São Paulo, Brazil
Professor Germana Henriques Pereira, Ph.D – University of Brasília, Brazil
Lia Araujo Miranda de Lima – Ph.D student; University of Brasília, Brazil
Deadline: FEBRUARY 20, 2019
All contributions must be sent only through the system of Revista Belas Infiéis: http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/belasinfieis
For further information, please check the “Author Guidelines”: http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/belasinfieis/about/submissions#authorGuidelines
Posted in calls for papers
CFP – Selling Childhood (MLA 2019)
Posted on February 5, 2018 by admin
Modern Language Association Convention
January 3 – 6, 2019
Arguably, Western culture has been selling the concept of childhood from its inception. In the eighteenth century, figures like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau persuaded their peers to buy the new idea that childhood constituted a distinct phase of human development.
Selling childhood quickly expanded from the realm of ideological persuasion to the one of consumer capitalism. After all, if childhood constituted its own unique period in the human life cycle, then it had unique material needs. During the nineteenth century, a large and lucrative industry of books, clothes, toys, and household items emerged to cater to the new specialty market of children.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, childhood was being sold in a myriad of ways: as nostalgia, as political rhetoric, and—amidst the rise of postwar youth culture—as coolness.
In the new millennium, the selling of childhood has reached a scale that is unprecedented in human history. Throughout Western culture, young people occupy the vanguards of material, popular, and consumer culture. Furthermore, after centuries of childhood commonly being sold as innocence, it has increasingly been marketed as sexiness.
Of course, during all of these eras, childhood has been sold not simply figuratively, but literally: via child labor, child trafficking, and child exploitation.
This guaranteed panel session examines the long, rich, and complicated history of selling childhood in the West. In so doing, it brings together past and present notions of this concept as an ideological, cultural, and, of course, capitalist commodity. How have Western concepts of childhood been regarded as transactional, from an intellectual, economic, historic, and/or socio-political standpoint? How has childhood been packaged, marketed, and sold over the centuries? Just as importantly, who has been buying it? Finally, how have technological developments—from photography and television to computers and smart phones—both helped to facilitate and provided sites of resistance to this phenomenon?
In considering responses to these and other questions, this panel invites examinations from a wide array of disciplines, including literature, popular culture, education, philosophy, childhood studies, economics, comics studies, media studies, age studies, sociology, cultural studies, political science, and history.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
the selling of childhood as a highly raced, classed, gendered, and sexualized construct
the commodification of children’s literature and childhood culture
the role that technology has played in the way that childhood has been marketed, commodified, and consumed: photography, film, radio, television, computers, the internet, smart phones, YouTube, etc.
the use of children and childhood to sell products, ideas, and political agendas
marketing, advertising, and packaging intended for children
the selling of childhood as nostalgia to adults
modes of resistance to selling childhood—how have individuals, groups, movements, cultures, and even young people themselves questioned, challenged, and even outright rejected this phenomenon
the hegemonic promotion of specific understandings of childhood in certain time periods, cultures, nations, regions, and communities
children and consumerism; the child consumer
the relationship between selling and exploiting childhood
the longstanding use of child characters in comics as a means to sell newspapers
the radically different ways that childhood has been intellectually, economically, and culturally sold over the centuries: as innocence, as coolness, as sexy, etc.
shifting ideological understandings of childhood and their battles for ascendency
Send 500-word paper proposals and a 2-page CV by March 1, 2018 to Michelle Ann Abate, abate.30@osu.edu. Accepted panelists must become members of MLA by April 1, 2018.
Posted in calls for papers
CFP – Sesame Street at 50 (MLA 2019)
Posted on February 1, 2018 by admin
Call for Papers: Sesame Street at 50 (MLA, 2019)
Deadline: March 15, 2018
In 1969, Sesame Street made its debut on PBS in the U.S. It has since become not just an American institution, but an international one — broadcast in 150 countries, and in over 30 languages. This show — as cross-media and transnational phenomenon — is thus an ideal subject for the Modern Language Association’s textual transactions theme, as it invites us to think transnationally about “intellectual, artistic, and pedagogical work.” This panel invites papers on Sesame Street as a site of transaction — creative, cultural, educational. Possible areas of inquiry include but are not limited to:
How the programme’s many international iterations interact with the original concepts and their particular audience.
The show’s many political initiatives, both within and beyond the U.S. Since the first international co-productions in 1972 (Brazil’s Vila Sesamo and Mexico’s Plaza Sesamo), co-productions throughout the show’s history have promoted many social justice initiatives through Sesame Workshop International, including the introduction of HIV positive muppet Kami in the South African version (Takalini Sesame), and the Kosovo co-production (Rruga Sesam/Ulica Sezam) that supported the peace process between Albanian and Serbian children.
How Sesame Street’s many changes in the past five decades respond to the media landscape it inhabits. Sesame Street now has a popular YouTube channel, and as of 2016 its first-run episodes air on HBO, not PBS.
How the Muppets’ comic mode of engagement often upends the concept of a distinct audience constituted solely of child viewers, and challenges protectionist discourses around what are considered “appropriate” media texts produced for young audiences. While the history of Sesame Street has situated the Muppets as part of a public mandate geared at preschool children (Davis; Reimer), the parodic, vaudevillian, and often subversive humor that characterizes the Muppets (Abate; Schildcrout) have been central features throughout the history of Sesame Street’s programming.
How Sesame Street inhabits a dynamic position within popular culture, particularly how characters have been remixed and/or deployed politically (for example, Bert and Ernie and marriage activism).
Sesame Street‘s role as a surrogate caregiver, especially via its recognition of the complex emotional lives of children. Beginning with the death of Will Lee (the actor who played Mr. Hooper) in 1983, Sesame Street has been a leader in children’s television for dealing with serious subjects: death, down syndrome, autism, loss and grief following 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, children with incarcerated parents, children in military families coping with a parent’s deployment.
If accepted by the MLA, the panel will convene at the Modern Language Association Convention in Chicago, which will be held from January 3 to 6, 2019.
Send 1-page abstract and 2-page CV by March 15, 2018 to Philip Nel (philnel@ksu.edu) and Naomi Hamer ( Posted in calls for papers
IRSCL Book Award 2022- Applications open
Open Position: Assistant Professor in Global/Transnational Children’s Literature and Childhood Studies