CFPs

Sexualities and Children’s Cultures:
A special Issue of Children’s Literature Association Quarterly

Deadline: November 1, 2001

To both extend and challenge contemporary discourses regarding sexualities and children’s cultures, this special issue of ChLAQ is devoted to considerations of queerness and sexualities in children’s and young adult literature, media, and culture. Co-editors Thomas Crisp and Lance Weldy invite papers that address any aspect of these ongoing conversations, including (but not limited to):

• The sexual(ized) and/or queer child in literature, media (i.e., film, television, technology), and toy culture
• Borders and boundaries: the adult and the [sexualized] child (i.e., point-of-view and implied readership/viewership; constructing childhood/adulthood; adult portrayals of [sexualized] children; adult media about children; voyeurism and adult creation/consumption of media depicting underage sexuality; depicting adults as children or children as adults; pedophilia/hebephilia; child-loving/child-hating)
• Constructions and representations of gender, sexualities, and/or identities (i.e., essentialism/fluidity of identity categories; coming-of-age and rites of passage; [hetero]normativity and deviancy)
• Morality, politics, and the policing of sexuality (i.e., the age of consent, pre-marital sex, teen pregnancy)

Papers should conform to the usual style of ChLAQ and be between 5000-7000 words in length. Please submit completed essays to Thomas Crisp (tcrisp@sar.usf.edu) by 1 November 2011. The selected articles will appear in ChLAQ 37.3, Fall 2012.

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Our Chums Have Fun in the Family of Nations:
Internationalism in Children’s Series Books

Deadline: November 1, 2011

Editors: Marietta Frank (University of Pittsburgh at Bradford) and Karen Sands-O’Connor (Buffalo State College)

The editors are currently seeking proposals for a collection of essays investigating internationalism in children’s series books. With the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center bombings, the “Arab Spring,” and the increasing demands of non-Western countries for a voice in global politics, this is a particularly pertinent moment to examine how literature for children faces the challenges and possibilities of global interaction. Series books, with their reliance on the comfort of the familiar blended with the lure of adventure, frequently use the foreign and/or international setting as moral proving ground for the characters. We are especially interested in the attitudes taken by authors of and characters in series books toward other nations and people throughout time, and the ways in which series books have acted as explicator or advocate for a nation’s foreign policies, or as dissenting voice to either official policies or socio-cultural attitudes of the time. We welcome essays on series books for children from any perspective, but possible topics might include:

--Colonialism and imperialism and international perspectives in series books

--Comic book heroes and international “bad guys”

--Cold War politics in series books

--Science fiction and internationalism

--Gender and gender differences in series books set in foreign countries

--Environmental or other global concerns in series fiction

--Nonfiction series about global issues

--Non-Western perspectives on internationalism

Please send 500-word titled abstracts, with a brief (no more than 150 words) author biography, by November 1st, 2011, to both editors (sandsk@buffalostate.edu and marietta@pitt.edu ). Authors whose abstracts are accepted will be expected to produce completed (5000-7,500 words) chapters by June 1st, 2012.

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Networking Knowledge: Girlhood in Popular Culture

Deadline: November 4, 2011


Since the mid-1990s there has been an increased visibility of girls within popular culture, alongside contradictory socio-cultural attitudes regarding girlhood. Within this intensely mediated environment “Girl Power” is celebrated whilst girls are seen to be in need of protection and to be “saved”; constructions of femininity present and perpetuate the “good girl” versus the “bad girl”, or the Madonna/whore dichotomy; and whilst girls have a history of social marginalisation, they have been recognised as a central mass media consumer demographic.

Within this contradictory yet abundant context of girlhood in popular culture, rather than dismissing the mainstream media texts for and about girls, what do they tell us about the current state of Western girlhood? How do they construct notions of girlhood? How do they negotiate the contradictions outlined above? How do they address the figure of the girl, what do they teach her in terms of girlhood and growing up female?

Papers of between 6,000 and 8,000 words are invited from postgraduate students and early career researchers across the humanities and social sciences for this special edition of Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN. Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Representations of girls and girlhood(s) in popular media texts
• Feminism(s) and girlhood in mainstream media
• Sexuality/sexualisation and girlhood in mainstream media
• Girlhood and stardom and celebrity
• Age demographics within girlhood (e.g. the tween, extended adolescence)
• Genre and girlhood
• Girl-centred cross-media adaptations (e.g. from novel to film, from film
to television)
• Girl-centred media franchises
• Girlhood and branding


Completed articles should be directed to the issue’s guest editor Melanie Kennedy at melanie.kennedy@uea.ac.uk by 4th November 2011. For any further information, please contact Melanie or NK general editor Tom Phillips at knowledge.networking257@gmail.com.

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New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship
Deadline: December 2, 2011



Editor: Dr Sally Maynard, Lecturer, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University The editor is currently seeking articles for the next edition of the New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship. This is an international journal designed to explore the range of issues of current concern to those working in the field of children's literature and librarianship around the world, including:


• critical assessments of children's and adolescent literature
• the management of library services to children and adolescents
• education issues affecting library services
• Information Technology
• user education and the promotion of services
• staff education and training
• collection development and management
• book and media selection
• research in literature and library services for children and adolescents



The editor will be pleased to consider for publication original manuscripts which deal with any of this broad range of themes. Papers should not have been published previously, or been submitted elsewhere simultaneously. Papers presented at conferences may be considered if they are unlikely to be published in a conference proceedings volume. Further details of the journal and instructions for authors can be found at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13614541.asp The journal is refereed by members of the editorial board - a group of internationally distinguished academics and professionals working in the areas of children's literature and children's and schools librarianship.


The deadline for papers is Friday 2nd December 2011 (this is negotiable, however). Manuscripts should be sent electronically to Sally Maynard at: s.e.maynard@lboro.ac.uk