ALA Children's Lit Conference, deadline for papers for May in San Francisco

CALL FOR PAPERS/TWO PANELS - Submission Deadline Approaching - January 15, 2012
AMERICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION
MAY 24-27, 2012
San Francisco, CA

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE SOCIETY
The Children’s Literature Society of the ALA seeks abstracts for two panels on children’s literature for the American Literature Association Conference to be held May 24-27, 2012, at Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, California

Panel 1:
Immigration, Refuge, and Exile in American Children’s Literature
This panel explores how experiences of immigration, refuge or exile have been told through American children’s literature. How have these experiences been passed on through storytelling, folklore, folktales, poetry, picture books or other forms of children’s literature, such as video games and other forms of digital media? How has global cultural awareness influenced identity understanding in children’s and young adult literature? What questions do these topics lead us to ask about authenticity, relevance, and specificity in story depiction in literature? What other questions are raised?

Panel 2:
Secrets of American Children’s Literature: Cryptic Nonsense, Symbols, Allegories, and Cipher.

Many obscure, enigmatic and buried symbols enrich children’s picture books, poetry, and fiction. Secrets, nonsense, allegory, symbols, ciphers, dreams, or “things buried” may be central to a story’s theme or may be hidden in the text or the book design itself, discovered not only by doing multiple readings, but also by upside down and forwards and backwards readings. Is there a special relationship, for instance, between such concepts as “secrets” and “dream” and children’s literature? Does children’s and/or young adult literature conceal “secret” knowledge? This panel invites papers that explore these topics through a variety of critical theoretical lenses as well as formalistic readings.

Please send all panel proposals or paper abstracts (250-500 words) by January 15, 2012 to Dorothy G. Clark Dorothy.g.clark@csun.edu and Linda Salem lsalem@mail.sdsu.edu

Please include academic rank and affiliation and AV requests