CFP: I Will Be Myself: Identity in Children's and Young Adult Literature, Media and Culture

Featuring Keynote Speaker: Our very own Dr. Phillip Serrato!

Where: University of British Columbia

When: Saturday, May 3rd, 2014

Proposal Deadline: January 15th, 2014

Website: http://blogs.ubc.ca/iwillbemyself/

"I Will Be Myself": Identity in Children's and Young Adult Literature, Media and Culture is a one-day conference showcasing graduate student research that explores, questions, and analyzes the issues surrounding identity in various elements of children's and young adult literature. You are invited to submit an academic paper proposal or a creative writing submission that contributes to the existing body of literature and research in the area of children's and young adult literature studies, which includes novels, films, apps, and picturebooks, as well as other culturally produced modes of children's literature. We are particularly interested in research and creative pieces that draw upon broadly interpreted themes of identity, which can include liminality, hybridity, Otherness or Othering, gender, and transformation.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Identity as a critical lens for reading children's and young adult
• literature
• The child or young adult choosing or combining identities
• Issues of hybridity: hybridity of genre, multimodality, cultural
• identity, racial identity, sexual identity
• How 'otherness' shapes identity in materials for children and youth
• Negotiation of self and Other as represented in cultural texts
• Liminality and other states of 'being in between'
• Indigenous identities
• National identities
• Boundaries, their creation and transgression
• Multiple, cross-cultural, and/or transnational identities
• The role of identity in constructing literature and literacies
• Reconstructive identity and multiple selves
• Imagined identities: dreams, fantasy and desire
• The cultural markers of childhood and adolescence
• Identity and performativity: a gendered discourse
• Fluid subjectivities; multiplicity of selves
• The pedagogical implications of identity in various stages of
• literacy
• Virtual selves in virtual worlds
• The 'coming of age' trope in 21st century literature
• Neoliberal capitalism and the individualistic 'I'
• Identity embodied: mixed abilities represented in YA and children's
• literature
• Marginalised identities represented in works of fiction for youth
• Eco-critical understandings of subjectivity
• Interwoven subjectivities and the individualistic 'I'

Papers on any children's or young adult genres are welcome, as are papers that discuss other children's texts such as film, virtual texts, or graphic novels. The topics above are a guideline for the proposals we would like to see, but we are eager to receive and review paper proposals on any topic related to children's and young adult texts.

Please send a 250 word abstract that includes the title of your paper, a list of references in MLA format, a 50-word biography, your name, your university affiliation, email address, and phone number to the review committee at submit.ubc.gradcon@gmail.com. Please include "Conference

Proposal" in the subject line of your email.

The conference fee of $18 CAD for students and presenters, and $35 CAD for faculty and professionals, includes morning and afternoon refreshments and a catered lunch. Please visit our website for more information: http://blogs.ubc.ca/iwillbemyself/

The Multicultural and Murderous in New Children's Lit Scholarship

Here are a few new reads to add to your research and collection. 

The first, Reading Diversity through Canadian Picture Books: Preservice Teachers Explore Issues of Identity, Ideology, and Pedagogy, edited by Ingrid Johnston and Joyce Bainbridge, may appeal to those interested in picture book study, multicultural studies (through a Canadian lens) and pedagogical practices. The description from the UTP site explains:

What is the value of picture books in educating a diverse society? This collection of original essays explores how preservice teachers from faculties of education across Canada engage with issues of diversity and national identity as represented in children’s picture books. Based on research drawn from education courses and student teaching experiences, the book illustrates new and culturally relevant approaches to curricula that meet the needs of increasingly diverse student bodies.

In the second book, Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children’s Literature, Michelle Ann Abate discusses the long history of violence that prevails in children's books -- not merely an indicator of American obsession with the grim, but also a sign of the complications, severity, and seriousness that children witness and face in reality. You must read Abate's insightful and excellent interview with the Boston Globe as well. Bloody good stuff.