2018 Children’s
Literature Association 45th Annual Conference hosted by Texas State
University
“Refreshing Waters/Turbulent Waters”
When: June 28th
- 30th 2018
Where: San
Antonio, Texas at the Sheraton Gunter Hotel
Deadline for
Abstracts: Sunday, October 15th, 2017
How to apply: The ChLa Website
Keynote Speaker: Dr.
Debbie Reese
Debbie Reese is a tribally enrolled member (citizen) of
Nambe Pueblo, a federally recognized tribal nation in northern New Mexico. She
holds a PhD in Education from the University of Illinois, and an MLIS from San
Jose State. A former school teacher and assistant professor in American Indian
Studies, she publishes American Indians in Children's Literature, a
resource and review site focused on depictions of Native peoples in children's
and young adult literature. Her articles and chapters in journals and books are
used in Education, Library Science, and English courses in the US and
Canada.
Description: Water
is central to children’s and young adult literature as motif and metaphor: In
Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Esperanza Rising, two characters are in a
relationship described as being separated by a wide, difficult-to-cross river;
in The Lorax Dr. Seuss warns us to protect our environment by
planting a truffula tree seed and enjoins us to “Give it clean water. And feed
it clean air”; and the poetry of Langston Hughes uses water in its various
forms to compare the complexities of race to a deep river, to characterize a
lost dream as a “barren field frozen with snow,” and to call on us all to
re-imagine and reclaim the American dream, saying that “We, the people, must
redeem/ The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.”
While proposals to present research on a wide variety of topics,
genres, and periods related to children’s and young adult literature, texts,
and culture are always welcome and encouraged at our annual conference, a
common theme can be a useful tool for thinking through texts and approaches in
innovative ways. Proposals to present your current, original scholarship can
include but are not limited to some of the meanings and forms water can take in
literature and culture for younger readers:
•
Water as symbol, allegory, setting, and metaphor
in works of children’s literature; Water as healing, flowing, still, eroding,
dividing, connecting, drowning, saving, violent, shallow, transparent, muddy,
calm, or turbulent
•
Rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, ponds, clouds,
rain, snow, mud, slush, fog, and ice in fiction and non-fiction, prose and
poetry, cartoons and comics, historical fiction and science fiction, plays and
films, toys and television programs, picture books and textbooks, etc.
•
The significance of water in specific cultures,
communities, families, traditions
•
Water and race; segregated drinking fountains
and swimming pools; rivers as sites of travel, settlement, or colonization, of
collaboration and contestation, of freedom and enslavement
•
Water in indigenous cultures and literatures
•
Oceans crossed, migrations, colonizations, the
Middle Passage
•
Access or lack of access to clean drinking
water, water shortages, contested waters, water rights, water protectors, water
and poverty, water as commodity, water as power
•
Water and the environment, water pollution,
environmental activism, climate change, rising waters, Standing Rock, Flint
•
Water, spirituality, and religion; sacraments,
blessings, and baptisms; water as sacred
•
Animated, illustrated, photographed, filmed, or
virtual waters
•
Regional literature, the San Antonio and San
Marcos Rivers, state and local cultures and histories, local indigenous
literatures, San Antonio’s contested histories, Texas and/in children’s
books
•
Water spaces and their social functions;
waterways as hubs, connectors, or dividers
•
Water symbols and metaphors in discussions about
identities, sexualities, genders, ethnicities, races, abilities, sizes, and
ages
•
Water as a life source and/or potential
destroyer
•
Water and play; water guns and water balloons;
water’s role in childhood or its construction; sprinklers, waterparks, fire
hydrants, and baths before bedtime
•
Water as a weapon, water cannons and fire hoses
•
Water creatures, real and/or mythic, animals
anthropomorphized, water personified
•
Water as poetic inspiration; books as oases for
readers; renewal and rebirth: personal, cultural, spiritual, and/or literary,
including reboots in media and literature
•
Water as social and political symbol, the tides
of change, the rising flood
•
Water and immigration, dislocation, refugees
•
Interpreting real and fictional waters through
various critical lenses: literary criticisms, queer theories, ecocritism,
critical race theories, materialism, feminist theories, disability studies,
etc.
• Given that Texas State is the home of the Tomás
Rivera Mexican-American Children’s Book Award, discussions of Tomás Rivera Book
Award winners and honor books would also be welcomed
(http://www.education.txstate.edu/ci/riverabookaward/); book awards generally;
monolingual and bilingual works for children; translation of children’s
literature
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