CALL FOR PAPERS

War, Militarization, & Childhood

A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE

AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
FREDERICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK

MAY 28-31, 2011

DEADLINE: November 15, 2010

The ideologically-loaded Western concept of “the child,” and of childhood as a time of innocence and play, seems to make the idea of a child soldier oxymoronic. Yet, according to UNICEF, “an estimated 300,000 child soldiers—boys and girls under the age of eighteen—are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide” despite the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits child soldiers. What activist groups like War Child, with their vision to create a world in which no child knows war, make perspicuous is that there is not an incontrovertible separation between children’s spaces and the theatre of war. This panel invites papers that deal with, and complicate, the intersection of the ideological ideal of “the child,” war, and militarization.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: functions of child soldiers in the war on terror; histories and stories of child soldiers; artistic, digital, and literary representations of child soldiers; self-representations through memoirs by former child soldiers; the intersection(s) of the concepts of the child soldier, religion, and international law; the voices and perspectives of male and female child soldiers.

Following the instructions under Option # 1 at www.accute.ca/generalcall.html, send three documents in separate electronic files directly to admin@arcyp.ca by November 15, 2010: (1) a 700-word proposal or 8- to 10-page double-spaced paper, without identifying marks; (2) a 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical statement; and (3) a Proposal Submissions Information Sheet.

NOTES: You must be a current member of ARCYP or ACCUTE to submit to this session.  Rejected submissions will not be moved into the general “pool” of ACCUTE submissions.

Please feel free to print and share the attached PDF file of this Call for Papers: cfp ARCYP ACCUTE Congress 2011 War, Militarization, and Ch… .

CALL FOR PAPERS

Young People’s Cultures & Games, Gaming, and Play

A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE

AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
FREDERICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK

MAY 28-31, 2011

DEADLINE: November 15, 2010

Gaming and play culture have long been central components of childhood taking many forms across the Global North and South. The digital format dominates playtime today, but play is, and has been, a more complex set of practices in the everyday lives of young people. This session aims to explore how games, gaming, and play are tied to contemporary forms of social interaction and alternative ways of thinking and learning in the context of a dynamic media ecology that is participatory even while being shaped by an unparalleled moment of media concentration.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to): forms of participation games and gaming engender for children and youth; forms of learning present, missing or reinforced through gaming; gaming literacies and specific forms of knowledge produced by games; barriers to entry in gaming/game communities; the role of race, gender, and sexuality in gaming cultures; post-coloniality and gaming cultures; identity, performance, and game play; the “burden” of play on children and youth; the expectations that children will learn and be socialized through play; the “right” of children and youth to play.

Following the instructions under Option # 1 at www.accute.ca/generalcall.html, send three documents in separate electronic files directly to admin@arcyp.ca by November 15, 2010: (1) a 700-word proposal or 8- to 10-page double-spaced paper, without identifying marks; (2) a 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical statement; and (3) a Proposal Submissions Information Sheet.

NOTES: You must be a current member of ARCYP or ACCUTE to submit to this session. Rejected submissions will not be moved into the general “pool” of ACCUTE submissions.

Please feel free to print or forward the attached PDF of this Call for Papers: cfp ARCYP ACCUTE Congress 2011 Games, Gaming, and Play.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Commotions:

Geographies of Migration & Young People’s Cultures

A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE

AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
FREDERICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK

MAY 28-31, 2011

DEADLINE: November 15, 2010

The world today is commonly placed as one in motion where ideologies, bodies, objects, and capital travel, both literally and metaphorically, across borders as well as across social and communication networks and technologies.  Yet, as Buckingham and de Block argue, the perspectives and experiences of young people “on the move” are largely absent “except where they are portrayed as passive victims or (increasingly) as a threat.”  We invite papers addressing how various forms of mobility available in young people’s cultures disrupt or support political/cultural /economic circuits of inclusion and exclusion, access and denial, belonging and alienation, incarceration and exile.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to): travel, im/migration, displacement, relocation, asylum, citizenship; conflict and (in)security; counter-geographies: Indigenous, Non-Western, etc.; the spatial politics of gender and sexuality, disability, race, class, etc.; (re)formations of racial, national, gendered, diasporic identities, politics, subjectivities; mobile communications, social networks, new media; virtual geographies; digital hybridity, remixes, mash-ups; transportation and movement in daily life; place management, place redefinitions; work, “youth-magnets,” upward mobility; “invisible” youth on the move; youth activism and globalization.

Following the instructions under Option # 1 at www.accute.ca/generalcall.html, send three documents in separate electronic files directly to admin@arcyp.ca by November 15, 2010: (1) a 700-word proposal or 8- to 10-page double-spaced paper, without identifying marks; (2) a 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical statement; and (3) a Proposal Submissions Information Sheet.

NOTES: You must be a current member of ARCYP or ACCUTE to submit to this session.  Rejected submissions will not be moved into the general “pool” of ACCUTE submissions.

Please feel free to print and share the attached PDF file of this Call for Papers: cfp ARCYP ACCUTE Congress 2011 Geographies of Migration.

CAL11: Learning Futures, Education, Technology and Sustainability

CAL (Computer Assisted Learning) is one of the leading international conferences in the field of education and technology. It brings together researchers across all education sectors and across a range of disciplines from psychology to computer science, media and cultural studies.

In 2011, the conference will lead a challenging international debate about the future of research and practice in educational technology. CAL 11 aims to:

Explore the role of educational technology research in addressing questions of global and social justice, widening participation and digital democracy

Assess what role educational technology might play in the context oflow carbon, energy constrained futures

Explore how emerging technologies from diverse fields (e.g. gaming,AI, biotech, ubiquitous computing) might offer new environments forlearning

Examine the informal learning practices emerging in children, youth and adults’ digital cultures and their implications for education

Reflect on what lessons have been learned over the last thirty yearsof education technology research, and what these might mean for the future of research in the field.

The 2011 Conference will be held April 13-15 in Manchester. Further details can be found at: http://www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/

The call for papers closes September 24th.

Keri Facer
Professor of Education
Institute of Education
Manchester Metropolitan University
799 Wilmslow Road
Manchester M20 2RR
Tel: 44 (0)161 247 2412
Fax: 44 (0)161 247 6353
K.Facer@mmu.ac.uk

http://www.mmu.ac.uk/emaildisclaimer

CFP: Evil Children in Film and Literature

LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory solicits papers that examine the role of evil children in film and literature. From the possibly wicked Miles and Flora in The Turn of the Screw to the feral children in Lord of the Flies to the demonic Damien in The Omen, evil children take on various forms. Some are corrupted or possessed by external influences—violent media, abuse, or Satan himself. Others, as William March’s novel and film suggest, are simply “bad seeds,” inheritors of morally deficient genes and rotten to the core from birth. What function do depictions of wicked offspring serve in texts and on screen? Are they repositories for particular cultural anxieties? Emblems of historical changes to the family unit? Responses to juvenile crimes? Markers of developments in scientific and psychological theories of selfhood? How do evil children demonstrate shifting views of innocence and depravity, redemption and sin? Are they a contemporary phenomenon, a product, perhaps, of Freudian thought? If not, do pre-Freudian evil children differ from their post-Freudian counterparts?

LIT welcomes essays that consider the role of evil children in film and literature and that are theoretically grounded but also engaging and accessible. Contributions should be from 5,000-10,000 words in length.

LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory publishes critical essays that employ engaging, coherent theoretical perspectives and provide original, close readings of texts. Because LIT addresses a general literate audience, we encourage essays unburdened by excessive theoretical jargon. We do not restrict the journal’s scope to specific periods, genres, or critical paradigms. Submissions must use MLA citation style.

Please send one hard copy of your essay, along with a 100 word abstract, to Regina Barreca, Editor, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, University of Connecticut, Department of English, 215 Glenbrook Rd., Box 4025, Storrs, CT 06269-4025, USA.

Please also email an electronic version of your essay to litjourn@yahoo.com.Guest Editor: Karen Renner

Deadline for submissions: October 1, 2010

CFP – Cuteness:

Yale CompLit Graduate Conference

Deadline date: 3 Oct 2010

Cuteness, or the Pragmatics of Diminution

Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference

Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University

Keynote address by Paul Fry

Smallness, childishness, cuteness often have an unpredictable effect on the reader or viewer of literature or art that plays with the multiform potential of diminution. This conference attempts to initiate a conversation about some of the most ubiquitous elements of artistic communication: cuteness and diminution. Adorable animals, objects intentionally made small, thoughts and feelings intentionally made twee pervade art, literature, music, advertisement, cinema, interpersonal relationships, and everyday speech. In a way, diminution defines and channels our understanding of the world around us. Our aim is to assemble a cluster of presentations that explore the appeal and the potency of this phenomenon from a variety of angles and disciplines.

Papers may focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Childishness — Diminution as strategy — Diminutives as a grammatical and descriptive category — Diminution and rhetoric — Theories of diminution — Metaphors of diminution or Diminution as metaphor — Pets — Smallness — Cuteness and advertisement — Diminution and genre — Disneyfication in architecture, literature and visual arts — Shirley Temple and her disciples — Cognitive aspects of diminution — Poetic diminution — Diminution and descriptive strategies — Cuteness and/or diminution as narrative device.

Please submit abstracts of approximately 300 words to yalecuteness@gmail.com

The deadline for abstract submissions is October 3, 2010.

CALL FOR  PAPERS

Creating the Child’s Voice

A workshop hosted by the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, on Friday, 28 January 2011.

Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2010

Following the success of the two Launch Events on ‘Writing Childhood’ (October 2009 and May 2010), the CCWW is organising a third event to further explore this topic from a narratological/discursive perspective.

This one-day workshop will look at works by contemporary women writers in Western Europe that represent the experience of childhood. Again concentrating on works in French, Germanic, Hispanic, Italian and Portuguese languages, it seeks to combine the broad comparative cross-cultural perspective of the previous events with a thematic investigation focusing on the narrative creation of the child’s voice.

In exemplary analyses and /or theoretical explorations, the papers will address questions such as the following:

* What narrative and stylistic techniques are at play in the creation of the child’s voice?

* To what extent can a child’s voice in a literary work by an adult author be considered ‘authentic’?

* How does the authorial perspective affect the child’s voice?

* In narratives that depict the development of a child into adulthood, what is the relationship between the child and the grown-up s/he turns into? How is this relationship conveyed through the handling of voice?

We welcome proposals that compare the construction of the child’s voice in texts written by adults (‘childhood autobiographies’) and books written by children.

300-word abstracts for papers of 30 mins. length should be sent by 30 September 2010 to Gill Rye.

It is envisaged that a selection of papers from this seminar and from the two previous events will be published in an issue of the Journal of Romance Studies.

Adaptation of Canonical Texts in Children’s Literature Call for Papers –

Symposium Ghent University, Belgium 20-21 January 2011

Adaptations have always played an important role in the field of children’s literature. During this symposium, we want to explore the relationship between the status of the source text and the act of adaptation, in general and more specifically in children’s literature.

We depart from a broad view on adaptation as the product of a transformation of a source text, thus including translations, retellings and remediations. Central to our approach is a view on the act of adaptation as a dynamic process with a strong ideological dimension.

As stories are reworked to function in a new literary and social context, intercultural, intertemporal or intermedial transformations may occur.

Within both adult and children’s literature, the canonical status and authority of the source text may be the reason why it is chosen for adaptation. Conversely, adaptations can enhance the status of the original work. Without these adaptations, the work might not be able to be reread and thus live on.

Focusing on the interplay between the status and adaptation of canonical texts in children’s literature, we pay special attention to two categories of adapted works: on the one hand, canonized literary works for adults that are reworked as children’s books, which may contribute to the preservation of the source text’s canon position within the adult literary system, and on the other hand, children’s books which have acquired a high status and are adapted to fit the needs of new readers in other contexts.

When it comes to studying the adaptation of literary classics, both source text and target culture approaches can be taken. Adopting the point of view of the target culture, one can note that the original text is transformed in the process of adaptation and that its ideological identity is diffused. A source text perspective allows the highlighting of adaptations’ and remediations’ possible contribution to the preservation of the original work’s status within the canon of children’s literature.

In short, our aim is to investigate this interaction between canonization, adaptation and ideology. We want to look into the nature of the process of adapting literature and the way in which it influences the status of literary works. We welcome contributions which either address this idea in general or deal with its application on children’s literature.

Possible topics include:

• Motivations for adapting works of adult literature for children, both explicit (e.g. paratext, literary criticism) and implicit.

• Intermedial transformations as a form of adaptation: the effects of the reworking of a certain work into picture books, comic series, games, cartoons, theatre plays, movies, musicals, merchandising.

• Other forms of adapting children’s literature (abbreviation, translation, editing).

• Ideological changes in adaptations of a particular work: an examination of the child reader implied in a particular adaptation (with respect to the child’s cognitive abilities, society’s pedagogical norms and concepts of children’s literature).

• Possibly ambivalent status of canonical texts: blurring of the boundaries between adult and children’s literature.

• Adaptations as a form of written folklore.

It is our pleasure to announce that the following leading scholars will be holding a key note lecture:

• Vanessa Joosen (Antwerp University, Belgium)

• Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (University of Tübingen, Germany; guest professor in memory of Astrid Lindgren at Växjö University, Sweden)

• Julie Sanders (University of Nottingham, United Kingdom)

• John Stephens (Macquarie University, Australia)

We welcome proposals for papers on any topic related to this matter. 300-word abstracts, along with biographical information, can be submitted to sara.vandenbossche@ugent.be and sylvie.geerts@ugent.be.

• Closing date for submission of abstracts: 30September 2010.

• Abstract acceptance notification: 15 October 2010.

A selection of contributions to the symposium will possibly be published during the fall of 2011. Authors of accepted proposals are expected to send in a manuscript version of their paper by 1 April 2011.

CfP: Youth (Sub) cultures in Changing Societies

Tallinn University, Estonia, 2-4 February 2011

Rapid technological developments, structural changes in the society and economic uncertainty influence lifestyles of young people. One of the possibilities for identification and belonging is participation in different youth cultures. Youth (sub)cultures are oriented towards choices in music, style, sports or politics, but at the same time determined by structural circumstances. As the media tends to focus on their negative aspects, distinctive youth lifestyles have often been associated with deviance. The latter is especially the case in EasternEurope, where the society has for a long time been understood as homogeneous, and where a plurality of lifestyles has only recentlybegan to surface.

The conference investigates the impact of choices and structural restrictions on youth cultures in times of social change. The main focus is on the question whether youth cultures are deviant or only distinctive lifestyles. Other questions concern, e.g., the role of youth cultures in multicultural society; the status of different youth(sub)cultures; and the changes that international subcultures undergo when being diffused to new societies what do they tell about the host society?

Keynote speakers:

Ross Haenfler Deviance and Youth Subcultures

Paul Hodkinson New Media and Youth Cultures

Hilary Pilkington Youth Cultures in Eastern Europe

Mikko Salasuo New and Old Approaches to Youth Cultures: The Scandinavian Case

The subject of the conference can be approached from different perspectives. In the 21^st century, youth cultures are more diverse than ever, and all papers shedding new light on the topic are welcome. Selected papers of the conference will be published in the journal Studies of Transition States and Societies in a special issue on youth cultures.

Abstracts (max. 200 words), should be sent by e-mail to MaarjaKobin,maarja.kobin@gmail.com > *by30 September 2010 *at the latest. General inquiries regarding theevent should be addressed to Airi-Alina Allaste,airi-alina.allaste@tlu.ee *

*Please distribute this call for papers to anybody who might be interested. Thank you!*

– Jacqueline M. Olich, Ph.D.

Associate Director

Center for Slavic, Eurasian,& East European Studies

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

CB#5125, 3108

FedEx Global Education CenterChapel Hill, NC 27599-5125

Office: 919.962.0355

Mobile: 919.280.1054

global.unc.edu/slavic

http://www.unc.edu/depts/slavic/people/Olich/index.html

http://www.linkedin.com/in/olich

Reading Jacqueline Wilson

This one-day conference on 20th October 2011 celebrates the work of award-winning British children’s writer Jacqueline Wilson aspart of the Jacqueline Wilson Festival at the University of Central Lancashire. The conference will be preceded by a public event by Jacqueline Wilson on19th October and Jacqueline herself will be attending some of theconference.

Areas for consideration:

*     Autobiography and becoming a writer

*      Telling life stories

*      Bildungsroman and identity

*      Growing up with/through Jacqueline Wilson’s characters

*     Jacqueline Wilson’s books as crossover fiction(selected and read by adults for pleasure)

*      Jacqueline Wilson’s books as moral or didactic tales

*      Using the books as teaching material

*      Encouraging reading and literacy

*      Using the stories therapeutically

*      Jacqueline’s influence on the development of “issues”-basedrealism in children’s literature

*      Concerns parents have about the issues e.g. that they are too “adult” or too “real”

*      The representation of issues such as divorce,adoption, truancy,stealing, addiction etc.

*      Representations within the books e.g. of gender,age, parents,teachers, social workers

*      Creating television and/or stage adaptations

*      Tracy Beaker books and TV programme

*      Jacqueline Wilson magazine

*      Publishing history of Jacqueline Wilson’s books

*      Influence of Jacqueline Wilson’s books on children’swriting andpublishing

*      The Jacqueline Wilson brand

*      Working partnership between Jacqueline Wilson andNick Sharratt

*      Relationships between text and illustration

*      The pleasure of the texts

*      Jacqueline Wilson Fans

*      Interactive website

*      Creative writing based on or inspired by Jacqueline Wilson’s oeuvre

Proposals

We welcome proposals from a number of perspectives and disciplines,such as literature, creative writing, publishing, journalism,marketing,education, social work and so on. Individual papers, posters and workshops as well as panel discussions around specific topics (panel leader needs to organize the panel and submit an abstract) may be submitted. 300 word abstracts should be sent to Helen DayHFDay@uclan.ac.uk by November30th 2010. Decisions will be made byJanuary 31st 2011. We will be pursuing options for publication.

Dr Helen Day
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Employability through the Humanities[CETH]
Senior Research Fellow, Research-informed Teaching, Faculty of Arts,Humanities and Social Science
HFDay@uclan.ac.uk01772 892717 or ext 2717e-mail: HFDay@uclan.ac.uk