Reminder: PAMLA Forum on Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture

First day of PAMLA, everyone! 
 
Just a reminder that the special event sponsored by the NCSCL will take place tomorrow! 

As part of PAMLA, the forum discussing "Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture" will be held on Saturday, November 2 at the Bahia Hotel. This forum should be of aprticular interest and appeal to anyone who researches or just dabbles in the study of childhood, children's literature, and cultural studies more broadly.

When: Saturday, November 2, 2013 - 5:00pm - 6:40pm (Mission Bay Ballroom C) 
Chair: Cheryl Edelson, Chaminade University of Honolulu
Three fabulous talks, including:

• The Age of Beginners, by Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida
• Aging Badly: The Exemplary Case of Marlon Brando, by Katherine Kinney, University of California, Riverside
• The American Renaissance Enters the Iron Decade: Melville and Company on the Voyage of Life, by Martin Kevorkian, University of Texas, Austin

Once again, the forum is open SDSU students and faculty, with no expense. More details about the event can be found here.

And all the conference information can be read at: http://www.pamla.org/2013/

PAMLA Forum Sponsored by NCSCL - Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture

The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference (PAMLA) is less than a week away! This week we'll be highlighting some of our own that will be presenting and featured in the conference, but for now I wanted to share a special event sponsored by the National Center for the Study of Children's Literature.

In conjunction with PAMLA and Executive Director Craig Svonkin, the NCSCL is excited to sponsor a forum which should greatly appeal to anyone involved in or fascinated by the study of childhood, children's literature, and cultural studies more broadly. It's a free and open to the public too, so join us for this insightful off-campus event!

PAMLA Forum: Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture 

When: Saturday, November 2, 2013 - 5:00pm - 6:40pm (Mission Bay Ballroom C) 
Chair: Cheryl Edelson, Chaminade University of Honolulu

The Age of Beginners
Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida
The beginner has long been a dominant trope in education, literature, and popular culture, associated with the idiot/dummy, the student, and the child. The beginner may or may not be a child or child-like, thereby bringing to mind Robin Bernstein's proposed term "agequeer," used to refer to temporally non-conforming subjects. Drawing on children's literature, the children's philosophy movement, and select theory, this paper explores the "age of the beginner"—both an era and a developmental conceit.

Aging Badly: The Exemplary Case of Marlon Brando
Katherine Kinney, University of California, Riverside
Marlon Brando presaged the youthful rebellion that came to exemplify the culture of the baby-boomers. As his icon thrived in the 1960s, Brando began to age badly. His successes and failures over the next three decades tell us much about post-WWII narratives of masculine identity, maturity, success, and the richer pathos of failure.

The American Renaissance Enters the Iron Decade: Melville and Company on the Voyage of Life
Martin Kevorkian, University of Texas, Austin
As the major authors of the American Renaissance embarked upon their sixth decades, their writing took a turn away from the prophetic confidence that characterized their greatest hits. Focusing upon Melville, along with Stowe, Longfellow, Emerson, and Hawthorne, this presentation explores these authors's late fascination with both preaching and silence.

Once again, the forum is open to everyone, including SDSU students and faculty, with no expense. In fact, all the conference sessions are free for those interested in visiting and listening. So, come! Drop by! Attend! Keep in mind that presenters and chairs still have to pay the registration fees.

All the conference information is here: http://www.pamla.org/2013/

CFP: SWPACA Children's/YA Lit and Culture Area -- "The Monstrous"

SWPACA Children’s/Young Adult Literature and Culture Area

35th Annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference

February 19-22, 2014

Albuquerque, NM

http://southwestpca.org/

Submission deadline: November 1, 2013

Submit proposals to: http://conference2014.southwestpca.org

Conference hotel:

Hyatt Regency Albuquerque

300 Tijeras Avenue NW

Albuquerque, NM 87102

This year, as we celebrate our 35th anniversary, we also introduce our new organizational name: Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA).  Please join us in Albuquerque to celebrate with us the start of a new chapter in our organization.

The Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture area has taken as its theme “The Monstrous in Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture,” and solicits proposals dealing with the concept of monsters and the monstrous from literal, physical, metaphorical, psychological, spiritual, or ideological perspectives.  In keeping with the conference’s overall theme of “Popular Culture and American Studies: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” papers including some aspect of looking at “the monstrous” across time will be read with special interest.  We highly encourage “thinking outside the box” with this theme.  While papers addressing the conference or area theme will be given preference, papers addressing other aspects in children’s and young adult literature and culture will also be read with interest.

Scholars, researchers, professionals, teachers, graduate students and others interested in this area are encouraged to submit an abstract. Graduate students are especially encouraged and will be assisted in accessing any and all award opportunities the conference and/or associations provide.  Award categories can be found here: http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/.  Upon acceptance of a proposal, I will send out information on which awards would be most suited to the subject matter of the presentation.

We would like to encourage scholars and students outside of the United States to submit proposals.  However, all potential presenters need to be aware that our conference rules state that participants must present their papers in person at the conference.  Given the more complex nature of international travel these days, we encourage international proposals be submitted as early as possible so as to provide enough time to make those travel arrangements.

All proposals need to be submitted using our conference submission database at http://conference2014.southwestpca.org. This database is used to send out acceptance notifications, organize panels, and put the conference program together.  It is important for all submitters to enter their contact information and presentation proposal information into the database to avoid confusion.

This area covers a wide variety of possible mediums: traditional book/literature culture, but also comics, graphic novels, film, television, music, video games, toys, internet environment, fan fiction, advertising, marketing tie-ins to books and films, just to name a few.  Proposals on fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or cross-genre topics are welcome.  Interdisciplinary approaches are especially welcome, as are presentations that go beyond the traditional scholarly paper format.

In addition, please check out the organization’s new peer-reviewed, quarterly journal: Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, which will debut its inaugural issue at the 2014 conference.  (Find more information at http://journaldialogue.org.)

Please submit proposals of 250 words and a brief bio (100 words) for individual presentations, or a proposal for a full panel (3-4 papers on a panel – please submit contact information, abstract, and brief bio for each person on the panel) to our conference database at http://conference2014.southwestpca.org.  

Proposal submission deadline: November 1, 2013

For questions or if you encounter problems with submitting proposals to the database, please contact Diana Dominguez, Area Chair.  Please put SWPACA in the subject line so I can filter the messages effectively.  

Contact info:

Diana Dominguez

Area Chair: Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture

gypsyscholar@rgv.rr.com

The University of Texas at Brownsville