CFP: The E-Future: MLA Convention (Seattle Jan 2012)

“E-ARMING THE FUTURE?”: CONSIDERING THE EXPANDING INFLUENCE OF TECHNOLOGY ON LITERATURE IN FORM AND/OR READERSHIP

The rapid development of technological capabilities in society, alongside the integral role these technologies play in the lives of young people, has begun to transform the novel. During the past fifteen years, and particularly since the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been an explosion of new literature for children and young adults that embraces the Information Age: “e-pistolary” novels advance their plots entirely through e-mails, Instant Messages, web sites, or blogs, while other texts utilize the Web and other forms of media in increasingly innovative and integral ways. The growth in completely online texts (beyond digital versions of print text) and the use of audio books and e- readers expands the definition of reading. The papers in this panel will address how [adult] authors work to engage readers through their references to and employment of or rejection of modern technology in both content and form, and may consider the ramifications of the use of these technologies in terms of economic class status.
Possible Topics Include:
History and development of technology in the children’s/adolescent novel
Innovative uses of technology in children’s/adolescent literature
Comparisons between “traditional” children’s/adolescent literature and literature utilizing technology
Comparisons between the use of technology in “adult” literature and children’s/adolescent literature
Technology and the implied reader or “hidden adult” (Nodelman, 2008)
Modes of representation and the influence of media
Issues of Access, the “e-arming” of the masses/denial of the economically underprivileged/disadvantaged

Send abstracts of 300-500 words to Thomas Crisp (tcrisp@sar.usf.edu) and Tammy Mielke (tmielke@uncc.edu). The deadline for submissions is 22 March 2011. Submitters will receive notification of results by April 1.

Please note that this CFP is for a proposed, not a guaranteed, session at MLA 2012, and is contingent on approval by the MLA Program Committee.