CFP from Ithaca College & The Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature Conference

Pippi to Ripley 4: Sex and Gender in Children’s Literature, Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Comics

Deadline: January 15, 2017

Location: Ithaca College, NY

Dates: April 21–22, 2017

Description: Pippi to Ripley 4 is an interdisciplinary conference with a focus on women and gender in imaginative fiction. We invite papers devoted to fictional characters in all media, including: comics, films, television, and video games as well as in folklore, mythology, and children's and young adult literature. This year’s conference includes a special focus on:

Fan Intersectionality: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Fan Communities

Keynote Speaker: SAMMUS performs her acclaimed nerdcore hip-hop and talks about race, geekdom, and feminism.

Special guest: Breakout YA author LJ Alonge, author of the graphic novel series Blacktop.

How to apply: Please send a 300–500-word abstract to Katharine Kettridge, Ithaca College, Department of English at kkittredge@ithaca.edu.

For more information: PDF

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CFP—Betwixt and Between: Boundaries and Peripheries in Children’s Culture

Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature Conference 2017

Deadline: January 16, 2017

Location: Dublin City University, All Hallows Campus

Dates: April 28–29 2017

Description: Boundaries, both physical and abstract, abound in children’s literature, as factors including age, gender and class have infuenced, and continue to limit, texts provided for children, and how and where those texts are consumed. Critical debate about the content and purpose of books, films and other media productions for young readers is ongoing, as long-established links between socialisation and children’s literature are interrogated and re-imagined to reflect changing social conditions and moral codes. Although children’s literature has moved from the margins and is now an established field of academic study, peripheries, too, persist and proliferate. Translated texts, which cross linguistic boundaries, and those produced in minority languages, such as Irish, seldom receive extensive exposure or critical attention. With the advent of digital media, the printed book is itself becoming increasingly marginalised.

Proposals are invited on the overall theme and associated topics in the context of both Irish and international literature for children, and also in relation to print and other media.

Keynote Speaker: Emerita Professor Máire Messenger Davies

How to apply: Proposals of 300 words maximum should be sent to the conference co-organiser, Caoimhe Nic Lochlainn at caoimhe.niclochlainn@dcu.ie and be CC-ed to committee@gmail.com.

Subject line should read “ISSCL Proposal.”

For more information: http://crytc.uwinnipeg.ca/portal/node/1419

Website: https://issclblog.wordpress.com

Lack of Science Fiction for Children: Failing to Imagine a Better Future

In a recent panel at the New York Public Library, an important question was asked: Where’s the science fiction for young readers?

Even today when one hears the term “science fiction,” the immediate titles that come to mind most often belong to the oeuvre of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells—the founding fathers of the science fiction genre. Many of the older SF writers are now celebrated for having the foresight of envisioning many of the technological advancements that now are a part of our daily lives. We belong to a time when the brightest minds of our time were able to create Siri, a “personal assistant” and “knowledge navigator,” who functions as a “human consciousness inhabiting [an] electronic [space], blurring the boundary between human and machine” (Cadora); but has our imagination and ability to envision the future stunted in comparison to the past?

In the wake of the moon landing and the Star Wars saga, there was an explosion of interest in the SF genre—as seen by the popularity of books like A Wrinkle in Time, Ender’s Game, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and The Giver—but the emergence of the Harry Potter series in the late 90’s changed the children’s publishing world forever. Following on its coattail came the Percy Jackson series and the Twilight saga. Fantasy suddenly became the most desired sub genre for young readers. 

Even the popular dystopian novels of today, which fall under combined category of science fiction/fantasy, have a distinct lack of science in them. Despite our futuristic world where we are slaves to our phones, people are turning away from the imagining and exploration of a future defined by “exploitive technologies” and “obeisance to authority” (Cadora). With constant criticism that social media and texting are taking away our ability to connect with each other on a personal level, one would think the fear of “social breakdowns caused by the alienation” of communicating with each other through machines would be a more enticing issue to readers (Crandall). Yet, readers are much more interested in patriarchal oppressed dystopian societies, and the popularity of the Hunger Games and Divergent series can attest to that.

Most books that are solely identified as SF are generally marketed towards adults. Even so, some YA novels, such as Cinder by Marissa Meyer and The Maze Runner by James Dashner, do try to incorporate the SF characteristics of technologically and scientifically advanced future societies into their stories for interested readers, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the difference between fantasy and science fiction for YA.

As far as science fiction books for children, you can find pictures books like Doug Unplugged by Dan Yaccarino and Oh No!: Or How MyScience Project Destroyed the Whole World by Mac Barnett and Dan Santat. Then in middle grade you find select books such as When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead and The Accelerati Triology by Neal Shusterman and Eric Elfman. But the issue remains they are few and far in between. So it begs the question: Is science fiction in children’s literature out of place because there are not enough interested readers? Or is it that publishers are choosing to place their focus elsewhere? I believe it is a disservice to young readers to not let them explore the fun side of science fiction. The writing of both Stead and Shusterman/Elfman are filled with so much heart and humor:

"...it's like they say, 'Keep your friend's clothes... in your enemy's closet.'" 

-Tesla's Attic (Accelerati, #1) 

This shift away from science fiction has me wondering: At what point did children turn away from imagining and exploring the possibilities of a technologically advanced future to yearning for a life of magic and monsters (of the mythical and human variety, but not machine)?

Scholarly Sources:

Cadora, Karen. "Feminist cyberpunk." Science fiction studies (1995): 357-372.

Crandall, Nadia. "Cyberfiction and the Gothic Novel." The Gothic in Children’s Literature: Haunting the Borders (2008): 39-56.

CFP: Engaging the Woman Fantastic in Contemporary American Media Culture

The past thirty years have offered a growing and changing body of scholarship on images of fantastic women in American popular culture.  Collections from Marleen Barr’s Future Females (1981) and Future Females: The Next Generation (2000) to Elyce Rae Helford’s Fantasy Girls: Gender and the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television (2000) and Sherrie Inness’s Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture (2004) have offered multifaceted commentary on ways in which contemporary media culture posits and positions “empowered” women in speculative fictions.

Engaging the Woman Fantastic in Contemporary Media Culture takes part in this tradition and brings it to the present day with emphasis on texts from the 1990s to the present and media from young adult fiction to social networks.  In particular, this edited scholarly collection, to be published in 2014 by Cambridge Scholars Press, engages with female protagonists, antagonists, and characters that challenge such simple binaries in popular literature, television, comics, video games, and other new media.  As a whole, the volume will examine how images of fantastic women address prevailing ideas of gender, race, sexuality, class, nation, and other facets of identity in contemporary American culture.

We welcome proposals on all aspects of the “Woman Fantastic” within an imaginative fictional context and originating or retaining special media resonance from the mid-1990s to the present. Submissions should be grounded in a particular critical or theoretical perspective and center on a single text and/or character. We especially seek manuscripts engaging with:

1. social networks and internet culture
2. utilizing postcolonial, queer, disability, or fandom studies approaches
3. or, focusing on images of women of color and/or queer women in any medium other than film

Note:  We do not seek submissions on film, non-American texts, or DC comics.  Also, because we are most interested in publishing studies of texts that have not been written about extensively elsewhere (e.g. the Harry Potter novels), be sure to offer a unique focus or new angle if you write on academically popular texts.
To submit, send a two-page proposal with working bibliography and brief vita (as a single .doc or .rtf attachment) to ewfcollection@gmail.com by November 1, 2013.  Complete, polished manuscripts are due by January 30, 2014.  Queries are welcome.  Acceptance will be handled on a rolling basis.

Brave New Girls: What it means to be a heroine in dystopian YA literature

If I were in New York City, I would definitely be going to this talk on May 10. The editors of the forthcoming book Contemporary Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers will discuss the intersections between dystopias and pop culture, examining the hows and whys of the dystopian trend in contemporary young adult literature.

This relates to Alya's post from yesterday, where she mused over the popularity of certain kinds of young adult books. In fact, just the other day, Alya and I were chatting and marveling about how the dystopian trend hasn't yet hit a saturation point in the YA market. Why is this, do you think? Is it because audiences were so captivated by the thrilling Hunger Games that they just want more reading experiences like that? Is it because teenagers now live in a post-9/11 America, where a palpable awareness of terrorism gives rise to fear, and teens need to read comforting tales of heroes trumping totalitarian societies? Or is it simply because this is our culture's version of the mythic hero tale? Instead of knights questing to eradicate a monster and bring back some sort of treasure to the ruling party, we now have teenage protagonists (usually female) questing to overthrow a frightening dictatorship and return life to a semblance of "normal."

So the next question is why the teenage girl protagonist? Obviously there is science fiction and dystopian literature that features adult protagonists, but it is the work that follows the teenager's journey that has so populated the market. I might suggest that the fight against authority and the ultimate triumph of the teenage hero is a [wishful] metaphor for the move from adolescence to adulthood, a fantastical one where the adolescent successfully finds her place after the trials and tribulations of "figuring it all out."

Of course, we know that life is never that easy -- the time period between adolescence and adulthood is increasingly murky, and even if one "grows up" successfully (e.g. has a job they don't hate and enough money to live on their own), the story doesn't end there.

But frequently in dystopian literature, the story does end with the ultimate triumph of the female protagonist. She has suffered loss, yes, and she must cope with the drastic changes that her decisions have led to, but she is also wiser, and she has a place of relative power in this new society. Her journey has led her from being acted upon to being the actor.

So maybe what this boils down to (admittedly simplisticly) is that teenagers (and adults, too) are drawn to dystopian young adult literature for the hope they provide. Ultimately, don't we all want to believe that we would be actors and not acted-upon, come the revolution? Even if we know that the majority of people will let change happen TO them, we can read works that allow us to align with the people who CREATE that change.

We can pretend that we are brave new heroes.

Limitless YA Publishing and a Fix of Fantasy

When I was young--or specifically, a young adult (whatever that actually means)--I spent most of my time reading 19th and 20th century classics, some fantasy, the occasional mystery thriller and, when no one was looking, current children's books that my younger brother was assigned from school. Even in my teenage years, I had developed a sense of nostalgia for the books I had read five, six, eight years prior, so it was with that memory that I'd check out the brother's newest assigned reading, curious about the goings on of the children's literary world.

But I was certainly not reading anything printed for me and my age group. Not regularly at least. That is why the Young Adult category intrigues me, as it may most of you. It has catapulted in the past ten years, generating some of the most memorable, and loathed, books of our generation. Is it because they are "easier" to read, venture into more fantastical or currently dystopic areas, or people just can't get enough of the teenage psyche? It's certainly profitable, which is why so many publishers are adopting the genre and creating their own YA imprints. Even Penguin Books India is launching INKED, their own "hip new young adult imprint." A recent LA Times article points out why:

What's the reason? Readers, or more specifically, book-buying readers. It's been obvious since midway through the Harry Potter series that books for kids could sell big -- in part because adults are reading the books as well. The success of the "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games" series proved that what might have looked like a trend is more like a habit. There are young adult book buyers are to be had.

That's wonderful--the book buying industry is on the rise in the children's lit area--and yet there is room for worry, if they all aim to churn out what's "trending" instead of what is innovative, challenging, or just different. Sigh. I'm grumbling to myself, when I should be celebrating all the new and exciting things that have come to pass and do await. But can we just move past the dystopias and all the cavalcade of "mean-girl" high school dramas? Has our storytelling run dry? Not at all. I just hope that these imprints search out the best of the best.

On an entirely separate note, speaking of what awaits us, if you're a fantasy/sci-fi aficionado, this Ultimate Guide to Fantasy and SciFi in May should help you get your fix in May.

The Future is Now

On a flight to the east coast a few months ago, I became the person I hate: I talked nonstop to the stranger in the seat next to me. I was on my way to a conference and typing away at the paper I was finishing at the last minute, and the man next to me asked me about my topic. And, well, if you're anything like me, you know how easy it is to start talking about your work with the exuberant enthusiasm of the Comic Book Guy at a Star Trek convention. I was writing about postmodernism and dystopian young adult fiction, and my description of dystopias led to a long conversation about science fiction in general. My seat neighbor, Frank, eloquently explained his own fascination with sci-fi:
"Our technology has grown exponentially since the Industrial Revolution, making strides faster than any other era in history. If we can go from giant computers to handheld computers in just 50 years, imagine what will happen in the next 50. Doesn't that intrigue you?"

Yes, Frank. Yes, it does.

And while we all know that innovators are frequently churning out new ways to use technology, there are a few inventions that stand out for their, well, creepy sci-fi factor. And when I read about one of these things on the internet, inevitably someone in the comments section remarks that "this is like something out of a dystopian novel!"

Here are four of the weirdest and most dystopian-esque inventions/scenarios I've come across and the YA books that, in my mind, correspond with them. Care to add to the list?

1. Internet glasses: The prototype for Google's "Smart Glasses" was unveiled last year, but the Economist recently highlighted them as something that could become more mainstream in 2013. And yeah! They're going to look as good on you as they do on the model. Promise.

YA Correlation: In Veronica Rossi's Under the Never Sky, characters live in domes, protected from the noxious environment outside. They spend their days hanging out in the "realms," a virtual reality universe that they access through their SmartEye -- a flexible and fleshly spectacle permanently attached to one eye.

2. The anti-feeding tube: Jezebel.com called this a "terrifying bulimia machine," and tongue-in-cheek epithet aside, this invention is indeed quite unsettling. Called the AspireAssist Aspiration Therapy System (that name alone -- come on! Euphemism, much?), this contraption is essentially a reverse-feeding tube, as it is inserted into one's stomach via a "skin flap," wherein it sucks out undigested food. Eat what you want and slim down! Just remember that you'll have a permanent skin flap, not unlike these poor cows.

YA Correlation: Not a direct correlation, but consider this scene in Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire: the rich residents of the luxurious and futuristic Capital attend parties where they gorge on delicious food, then drink a concoction that makes them throw up so they can continue to gorge.

3. Flawless plastic surgery: Apparently in South Korea it is not unusual for young people to get plastic surgery to drastically alter their appearance. Surgical procedures include eyelid surgery and jaw chiseling. This American Life did a story on it, and this Tumblr features before and after pictures.

YA Correlation: Scott Westerfield's Uglies envisions a dystopian future in which everyone gets a surgery that makes them conventionally beautiful at age 16. The downside? They get lobotomized, too. Yikes.

4. Fake meat: Is there anyone who didn't say "Eeeewwwwww" when they first heard about petri-dish hamburger? Using stem cells to grow beef in a lab is just...well, it's straight out of a science fiction novel, is what it is.

YA Correlation: In M.T. Anderson's Feed, the main characters spend a day in "the country," which is a meat farm of genetically engineered beef. So romantic! 


Bonus: I would be remiss if I didn't mention cyborgs. This is good one, with an altruistic purpose, too. It is complex and intricate, and it's mind-blowing to consider the time, skill, and effort scientists and engineers put into creating it. But...watch it walk on the treadmill. And then imagine it chasing after you because in the future your currently unborn son will helm an uprising against its dominance. That's why it's on a treadmill, you know. To practice.

This is the Way the World Ends: Top Ten Post-Apocalyptic Young Adult Novels

In honor of the end of the Mayan calendar, I'd like to share my favorite post-apocalyptic books for teens. I'm using the term "post-apocalyptic" loosely, here. Some of these books are set in a distant future, when society has rebuilt itself (in an appropriately dystopic manner), and others focus on the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic event. But they all share the same idea: that nothing is the same as it used to be.

1. Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. When a meteor hits the moon and knocks it out of its standard orbit, the environmental effects are disastrous. Massive tidal waves wipe out all coastal cities, long-dormant volcanoes erupt and choke the sky with ash so that the sun can no longer warm the earth. If you want to be freaked out by the idea of being able to do absolutely nothing in the face of a natural disaster, go ahead and give this book a look-see.

2. Ashes, by Ilsa Bick. Part lost-in-the-woods survival story, part zombie apocalypse, part dystopia, Ashes is the kind of book you'll want to read with the lights on.

3. Blood Red Road, by Moira Young. Whether another world or a ravaged Earth, the setting for Blood Red Road is bleak and dusty. Think the salt flats in Utah, or a dessicated Salton Sea. The story, though brutal at times (particularly when the main character is forced into cage fighting), is ultimately uplifting.

4. Legend, by Marie Lu. I attended an author talk in which Marie Lu admitted that part of the inspiration for writing this book was this: she saw a map of the projected changes to North America with drastic global warming, and Southern California was all but wiped from the landscape. An Angeleno, Lu mused "What if my hometown was completely ravaged?" Legend features a Los Angeles like you've never imagined.

5. Empty, by Suzanne Weyn. What if we really do run out of fossil fuels? Empty imagines a not-so-far future in which that happens. Neighborhoods go dark, nobody can drive, and global warming sends massive storms across the continental U.S. This book is realistic enough to make you want to go out and buy an electric car to help assuage the need for fossil fuels and a crap-ton of matches and canned goods for when we run out of them anyway.

6. Gone, by Michael Grant. Not quite so much post-apocalyptic as teenager's fantasy. When all the adults suddenly poof! disappear, children and teenagers must form a new society on their own.

7. Partials, by Dan Wells. A virus has wiped out everyone in the world except for a small community of survivors in what used to be Long Island. The science-fiction element of a virus that kills newborn babies -- so that no life may ever thrive again -- is compelling, but what really stands out in this novel is a Manhattan that has been overtaken by nature in the wake of human disaster.

8. Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. Overpopulation has forced people into trailer parks that climb into the sky, and everyone now functions within a giant global internet that has usurped the need for any human interaction. While the outside world is disturbing, the universe inside the internet is amazing. Ernest Cline should win a prize for world-building. Read this book. You will be in awe. And if you're a child of the 70s or 80s, you'll enjoy the dozens of references to the pop culture of your childhood.

9. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. Do I really need to say anything about this one? It's chilling and thrilling, and if you haven't read it, what's it like under that rock?

10. Pure, by Julianna Baggott. This one earns the prize of best-book-I've-read-all-year. In a frightening future where nuclear detonations have changed the face of the planet and the faces of the people, main characters Pressia and Partridge must figure out what brought them together and what the real significance of the Dome is. The Dome -- a sheltered area around the erstwhile Washington D.C. -- is home to the "Pures," people who were untouched by the detonations. Those not so lucky to make it to the dome (basically everyone who wasn't rich or otherwise already privileged) fused to whatever was nearest at the time of the explosions, resulting in a new society of mutated humans. With themes of gender difference, familial obligation, disability, political unrest, science fiction, abjection, and class difference running through this book, it is ripe for analysis and discussion.