CFP Deadline for June ChLA Conference in Boston Fast Approaching

Sunday, January 15, 2012

ChLA 2012 Conference Abstracts due

Simmons College

Literary Slipstreams

39^th Annual Children’s Literature Association Conference

Simmons College

June 14–16, 2012

The 39th Annual Children‘s Literature Association Conference will consider a multiplicity of interpretations of “Literary Slipstreams,” a theme thriving in the present but involved with waking the past. As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, this theme invites participants to think about literature for children and young adults as a literature both of and in transition. Where has the field been? Where is it going? What are the patterns of critical inquiry in the field? How can Bruce Sterling‘s use of the term slipstream to mean a “fiction of strangeness” and “a parody of mainstream” be applied to our understanding of children‘s and young adult literature?

We suggest the topics below but, in the true spirit of slipstream, we welcome other paper and panel topics suggested by the conference theme.

Revisions, re-versions, and retellings

Adaptations

Prequels and sequels

Genre boundaries, genre bending, and genre crossings

Literary heirs and ancestors

Slipstreams of time and time travel

Scholarly authorship as slipstream

Fan fiction

Narrative playfulness

Changing the historical record

Literary conventions

Parodies

Hybridity (in all forms and contexts)

Irreverence in children‘s literature

Inscriptions and re-inscriptions

Machinima

Multimedia projects

Books as moving objects

Emerging scholars and scholarship

We also welcome papers on the work of Karen Hesse, winner of the 2012 Phoenix Award for Letters from Rifka.

A single submission (paper or panel) will be accepted between October 15, 2011 and January 15, 2012. Multiple submissions will not be considered.

Send submissions electronically to: childrensliterature@simmons.edu