Thursday, September 28, 2017

Upcoming CFPs for Children's Literature


Fairy Tales Area at Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association

When: March 28th-31st, 2018
Where: Indianapolis, IN
Deadline for Submissions: Sunday, October 1st, 2017


Summary: The Fairy Tales Area of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association seeks paper presentations on any topic involving fairy tales. While our interests are broad and inclusive, we invite papers that discuss fairy tales in contemporary popular culture (TV shows, movies, graphic novels, advertising, toys, video games, popular literature, etc), revisions and adaptations of fairy tales (including creative projects, such as poems, short fiction, TV shows), and approaches that consider the subversive nature of the fairy tale (such as subverted family values, queering the fairy tale, etc.). Still, we are interested in as wide an array of papers as possible, so please do not hesitate to send a submission on any fairy tale related subject.


The Frankenstein Story in Children’s and Young Adult Culture at Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association

When: March 28th-31st, 2018
Where: Indianapolis, IN
Deadline for Submissions: Sunday, October 1st, 2017
Summary: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2018. It is a work that has permeated popular culture, appearing in versions found across the globe, in all known media, and for all age groups. However, many aspects of this tradition remain underexplored by scholars. One of these is how the story and its characters have manifested in children’s and young adult culture.
Like Frankensteiniana for older audiences, versions of the story for young audiences offer interesting and important approaches to the novel and its textual progeny, and they deserve to be better known and analyzed, especially since, for many, works designed for the young represent their first encounters with Frankenstein and its characters.
Criticism on these works remains limited; though a growing number of scholars (see the selected bibliography appended to this call) have begun to offer more in the way of critical analysis, as opposed to just seeing them as curiosities. It is our hope that this session will continue this trend and foster further discussion and debate on these texts.

In this session, we seek proposals that explore representations of Frankenstein, its story, and/or its characters in children’s and young adult culture. We are especially interested in how the Creature is received in these works, especially by children and young adult characters, but other approaches (and comments on other characters) are also valid.


“A Sudden Swift Impression”: Re-Examining the Victorian Short Story
When: Saturday, January 27th, 2018
Where: Brighton University, Brighton, England
Deadline for Submissions: Monday, October 2nd, 2017
How to Apply: Send an email to shortstorynet@gmail.com


Keynote Speaker: Dr Emma Liggins (Manchester Metropolitan University) on Victorian Women’s Ghost Stories and the Haunted Space: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Margaret Oliphant’
Topics of Discussion: The Victorian Popular Fiction Association and the Short Story Network invite you to submit proposals for this Study Day on the short fiction of the long 19th century.
            Scholarship is increasingly recognising the short story as a form that, far from being the inferior relation of the novel, has its own distinctive aesthetic and discursive possibilities. This Study Day will explore the contention that precisely the qualities that led to the short story’s marginal status – its brevity, immediacy, and possible ephemerality – provided writers scope for formal narrative experimentation and for exploring different ways of representing social reality. The conference organisers welcome proposals for 20 minute papers. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
·         The ghost story and Gothic fiction
·         The short story, crime and detection
·         The short story and humour
·         The short story and romance
·         Imperial short stories
·         Short fiction and the periodicals market
·         The short story and women writers
·         The New Woman
·         Children’s literature / juvenile story papers
·         The short story and sensation
·         The serial short story
·         The short story and science fiction
          Medicine and the short story


  


·         Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives Symposium

When: Wednesday, December 13th, 2017
Where: The University of Northampton, Northampton, England
Deadline for Submissions: Sunday, October 8th, 2017
How to Apply: Send an email to either: sonya.andermahr@northampton.ac.uk or anthony.stepniak2@northampton.ac.uk

Summary: From JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Young Adult (YA) narratives have grown exponentially over the past twenty years. Adopting a range of genres and platforms including the Bildungsroman and the coming of age teen drama, YA narratives represent a significant cultural means to explore the formation of identity in all its varied aspects. This one day symposium at the University of Northampton will investigate the representation of identity constructions in relation to narrative form in YA narratives both past and present.
Suggested topics may include, but are no means limited to:
-          Representations of racial/ethnic identity in YA narratives
-          Representations of gender and/or sexual identity in YA narratives
-          The representation of identity in YA narratives in relation to the
 notion of class
-          Interrogations of YA narrative’s treatment of LGBTQIA+ identities
-          The effect of trauma on identity in YA narratives
-          YA narratives and the notion of the outsider or other
-          The relationship between genre and the notion of identity in YA narratives
-          The representation of non-binary identities in YA narratives
-          The transition from childhood to adulthood in classic (children’s) literature
-          The representation of disability in relation to the notion of identity in YA narratives
-          The use and function of supernatural identities in YA narratives
Being an interdisciplinary symposium focused on narrative, papers from across the subject areas of literature, screen studies, history, popular culture and education studies are invited. The symposium welcomes papers on both YA literature and screen adaptations, and from scholars working on earlier periods as well as contemporary culture.
The symposium invites papers from academics, early career researchers and postgraduate research students alike.