CRYTC

News Flashes - Listing All News Items

"Migrating Multiculturalism: Representing Canadian Multiculturalism to International Audiences" by Mavis Reimer and Doris Wolf

April 8, 2013

Mavis Reimer and Doris Wolf will be giving a presentation entitled "Migrating Multiculturalism: Representing Canadian Multiculturalism to International Audiences" to the UW Youth and Culture Research Cluster on Thursday, April 11 from 12:00 to 1:30 in 1L06.

Countries around the globe often hold up Canadian multiculturalism as an achievement to be emulated. Within the Canadian academy, however, multiculturalism has been subjected to thoroughgoing critiques and we tend to be highly skeptical about the successes of multiculturalism. What happens when we are invited to participate as scholars in discussions of multiculturalism in international contexts because of Canada’s reputation in this area? Please join us in a conversation about presenting and representing Canadian multicultural young people’s texts in contexts beyond Canada.

See poster here: http://crytc.uwinnipeg.ca/pdf/Migrating_Multiculturalism_Flyer.pdf

All are welcome to attend.

CFP - Special Issue of Jeunesse: Consumption

April 4, 2013

Jeunesse Special Issue CFP Consumption

Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures invites essay submissions for a special issue addressing the many interpretations of consumption and their meanings in relation to youth texts and culture(s). We welcome essays that consider registers of race, class, gender, and disability. Essays should be between 6,000 and 9,000 words in length and prepared for blind peer-review.

Consumption is a vehicle through which we come to understand proprietary relationships with people, places, bodies, and identities. If food is the primary signifier when we think of consumption, how might we read metaphoric consumption (of capital, culture, and place, for instance) in light of notions of necessity and survival?

Submissions are requested by: 15 December 2013.

Topics may include:

representations of food or the ingestion of food and drink
eating disorders, the stigma of obesity, and fatphobia
pedagogy of health
consumption as disease (ie. tuberculosis)
obsession or fixation
symbolic acts of devouring/being devoured
cannibalism or consuming the self (eg. vampires, fairy tales)
consumption, purchasing, ownership, and material culture
discourses of consumption (good/bad consumers)
young people as consumers, advertising for or about young people
cultural consumerism/tourism

Inquiries may be directed to Larissa Wodtke, Managing Editor: l.wodtke@uwinnipeg.ca

Further information about submission guidelines is available at: http://jeunessejournal.ca.

Download a PDF of the CFP.

2013 David Almond Fellows

March 15, 2013

ANNOUNCEMENT: 2013 David Almond Fellows

Seven Stories, National Centre for Children’s Books and the Children’s Literature Unit (CLU) in Newcastle University’s School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics are pleased to announce details of the three 2013 Fellows. Normally only two Fellowships are awarded each year but the field was so strong extraordinary measures were taken to enable three scholars to visit Newcastle and work in the Seven Stories collections. During their time in Newcastle David Almond Fellows also have the opportunity to discuss their work with staff and students in the Children’s Literature Unit (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/about/childrensliterature/) and to meet David Almond.

A key aim of the Fellowships is to focus attention on the breadth and quality of the Seven Stories collections; applications are judged both on the merit of projects and their ability to make full use of the Seven Stories collections (http://collection.sevenstories.org.uk/home/). This year’s applicants proposed a number of exciting projects, some based around individual archives - such as those of the dramatist David Wood – and others tracing developments across multiple collections. The three successful applicants were:

Gili Bar-Hillel, an Israeli critic, editor, translator, journalist and postgraduate student at the University of Tel Aviv, who will be working on a biography of the late Diana Wynne Jones. Wynne Jones deposited her archives at Seven Stories shortly before her death and these will also be at the centre of a conference, jointly organised by Seven Stories and the CLU in 2014.

Dr. Naomi Hamer, University of Winnipeg, will be using Seven Stories’ extensive picturebook collections to look at transmedia storytelling. The project will map the creative and collaborative processes of writers and illustrators, looking at the paratextual dimension of the finished books. There is also an applied dimension to this project which considers the relationship between transmedia texts, picturebooks, new literacies and pedagogy.

Professor Michael Levy, University of Wisconsin, is working on a critical study of David Almond. Professor Levy is an Almond specialist who also has expertise in juvenile fantasy fiction. He will be looking at the extensive Almond holdings in Seven Stories which itself is set not just in the heart of "Almond country" but also has very close ties with his work. The archives are based in Felling, Gateshead where David Almond grew up, and the visitor centre is in the Ouseburn Valley, setting for Heaven Eyes.

The next round of David Almond Fellowships will be announced in November 2013.

Celebrating the work of Dr. Jack Thiessen: Dee Erläwnisse von Alice em Wundalaund

March 13, 2013

Celebrating the work of Dr. Jack Thiessen

Dee Erläwnisse von Alice em Wundalaund: A Low German Translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

April 4, 2013, 7:00PM
Room 2M70 (second floor Manitoba Hall)
University of Winnipeg

Program:

Welcome: Royden Loewen
Introductions: Mavis Reimer and A. Ross McCormack
A Reading and Comments by Dr. Thiessen
Response by Dr. Al Reimer, author of My Harp is Turned to Mourning
Reception in honour of Dr. Thiessen

Sponsored by the Chair in Mennonite Studies, the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures, and the D.F. Plett Historical Research Foundation

Call for Canada Research Chair in Children, Youth and Global Development

March 12, 2013

The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at Dalhousie University invites applications for a Tier I Canada Research Chair on "Children, Youth and Global Development." The appointment will be at the rank of Professor and will be conditional on the successful applicant being approved as a Tier 1 Research Chair by the CRC secretariat, with an anticipated start date of 1 July 2014. The position is open with regard to disciplinary specialization, with a primary appointment in one of the Faculty’s Departments (Classics, English, French, German, History, International Development Studies, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Russian Studies, Sociology and Social Anthropology, Spanish and Latin American Studies or Theatre). A research emphasis on the area of children, youth and conflict would be an asset. Dalhousie University has growing strength in the broad area of "Children and Youth in Challenging Contexts," including researchers in the School of Social Work and the Faculty of Medicine as well as FASS. This strength is reflected, for example, in a new Network Centres of Excellence Knowledge Mobilization grant on Children in Challenging Contexts and the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies Child Soldiers/Conflict Affected Youth initiatives. The successful candidate will be expected to sustain a strong research program of their own, and in so doing actively contribute to intra- and inter-faculty collaborations in this area of emphasis.

Candidates must have a PhD, an outstanding research profile, and an innovative and original research programme; a strong track-record of obtaining external funding; and the ability to work co-operatively, provide leadership in an interdisciplinary environment, develop multi-faceted research projects, and work with graduate students and/or post-doctoral fellows. Although this is primarily a research appointment, the appointee will be expected to teach at the graduate and undergraduate level.

The Canada Research Chairs (CRC) Programme has been established by the Government of Canada to enable Canadian universities to foster research excellence and enhance their role as world-class centres of research excellence. More information about the Canada Research Chairs Programme is available at: http://www.chairs.gc.ca. Please note that the CRC nominations are subject to review and final approval by the CRC Secretariat.

Dalhousie is the leading graduate and research university of Atlantic Canada, with more than 17,000 students from over 100 countries (more than 3500 in graduate programmes). It is located in Halifax – the major centre in the scenic Atlantic region and a city widely known for its high quality of life. Further information about the Faculty and the university can be obtained at http://www.dal.ca/fass. Dalhousie University is an Employment Equity/Affirmative Action employer. The University encourages applications from qualified Aboriginal people, persons with a disability, racially visible persons and women. Applications should include a detailed curriculum vitae, a two-page summary of the candidate’s proposed research programme, a statement of research and teaching interests and philosophies, and three confidential letters of reference forwarded by the referees. All application materials should be sent in hard copy.

Deadline: 1 April 2013

Chair, CRC Tier 1 Appointments Committee
Office of the Dean
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Dalhousie University
6135 University Avenue, Suite 3030
PO BOX 15000
Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2
Fassdean@dal.ca

ARCYP Program at 2013 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences

March 5, 2013

Assocation for Research in Cultures of Young People
CONGRESS PROGRAM
June 4, 2013
University of Victoria

9:00 – 10:15 a.m. - "Growing up Global": Childhoods in a Transnational Context

Chair: Natalie Coulter, (Department of Communication Studies, York University)

Chiu, Hsin-fu, (Department of Applied Linguistics, UCLA) "Language, Interaction, and Social Identity in the Chinese Diasporic Speech Community"
A. Clotilde Houchon, (Department of Educational and Environmental Psychology, University of Utah). "Disguised as Dick Tracy: Comics, Safe House, and Transmigrant Youth"
Rachel Winslow, (Department of Sociology and History, Westmont College). "’Citizens of the World’? Debates over Childhood and Citizenship in the Wake of Operation Babylift"

10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. - Genderqueer Children and Youth

Chair: Naomi Hamer, (Department of English, University of Winnipeg)

Rob Bittner, (Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, SFU). "’I Can See Me!’: Emerging Genders in Literature for Young People"
Natasha Hurley, (Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta). "The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Imagining GenderQueer Youth and Transgender History"
Derritt Mason, (Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta). "Adolescence is a Drag: Narrating the Teen Queen in Young Adult Fiction"

12:15 – 1:30 p.m. – ARCYP AGM and LUNCH

2:00 – 3:40 p.m. – Institutional Spaces, Geographies, and Environments of Young People

Chair: Peter Cumming, (Coordinator, Children’s Studies Program in the Department of Humanities, York University)

Katherine Fincham-Louis, (Department of Languages and Literature, University of Nicosia, Cyprus) "’Sometimes I don’t want to be English’: Greek English-Speaking Children in State Elementary Schools in the Republic of Cyprus Report on Issues of Identity"
Elizabeth J. Meyer, (Google-CSU Digital Ambassador and Assistant Professor, Shool of Education, California Polytechnic University), Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, (School of Social Work, Université de Montréal), Audrey-Anne Dumais-Michaud, (Université de Montréal), Marie-Joëlle, (Université de Montréal), Kimberley Manning, (Department of Political Science, Concordia University), and Jake Pyne, (Ryerson University). "Reframing the problem: Using Social Action Research to support gender creative and transgender youth"
Naomi Hamer, (Department of English, University of Winnipeg). "The Eric Carle Picture Book Museum (USA) and Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books (UK): Redesigning the interactive spaces of the children’s museum for the literacy education of young people"

4:00 – 5:30 p.m. – ROUNDTABLE (OPEN SESSION): Dis-Orders: Intersections between Critical Disability Studies and Youth Studies

Chair: Louise Saldanha (Department of Arts and Education, Grand Prairie Regional College)

A roundtable redressing a lack of sustained critical attention between critical disability and youth studies. Roundtable participants will include:

Brenda LeFrancois, School of Social Work and Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Laurence Parent, Department of the Humanities, Concordia University
Kim Sawchuck, Chair in Mobile Media Studies and Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University
Esther Ignagni, School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University

7:00 – 10:00 p.m. – ARCYP Annual Dinner and Drinks

All members, participants, and attendees are welcome!

Please visit our Facebook page, http://facebook.com/arcyp.ca for more information.

Children, Sport, and Film Screening and Panel Discussion

February 6, 2013

On Friday, February 8, CRYTC’s Naomi Hamer will be participating in a panel discussion about children, sport, and film following a free screening of Cristiano’s Shirt (2011), 41 Days (2012), and The Game Must Go On (2010). The screening will begin at 2:30PM in Room E3-262, Senate Chamber in the Engineering Building at the University of Manitoba.

See http://www.sportfilmfestival.ca/?p=830 for further details.

2013 David Almond Fellowships in Children‘s Literature

November 28, 2012

DAVID ALMOND FELLOWSHIPS FOR RESEARCH IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 2013

Newcastle University’s School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and Seven Stories, National Centre for Children’s Books are pleased to announce that the application process for 2013 David Almond Fellowships is now open.

Further particulars

The awards recognise both David Almond’s contribution to children’s literature and his connections with these partner institutions: he is a patron of Seven Stories and an honorary graduate of Newcastle University.

The Fellowships aim to promote high-quality research in the Seven Stories collections that will call attention to their breadth and scholarly potential. The two awards of £300 each are to facilitate a research visit to the Seven Stories collections in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK of at least three days by a bona fide researcher working on a relevant project. Applications will be considered from candidates in any academic discipline. The successful applicants will have a clearly defined project that will benefit from having access to the Seven Stories collections. All applicants should consult the Seven Stories catalogue as part of preparing their applications: http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/collection/. A well-developed dissemination strategy will be an advantage. Priority will be given to the importance of the project and best use of the Seven Stories collections as judged by a senior member of the Children’s Literature Unit in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University and a senior member of the Collections team at Seven Stories.

Eligibility and applications

Applications are being accepted until 1 February, 2013. For more details on eligibility and how to apply, please see the attached, or go to http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/about/childrensliterature/dafellowships.htm.

Call for Papers - The Film Cultures of Young People: Producers / Consumers / Representations

November 27, 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS
The Film Cultures of Young People: Producers / Consumers / Representations
ASSOCIATION FOR RESEARCH IN CULTURES OF YOUNG PEOPLE (ARCYP): RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
JANUARY 25, 2013

CALL FOR BRIEF PAPER PROPOSALS

The Association for Research in Cultures of Young People (ARCYP) and the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University will co-present a symposium on new research on the film cultures of young people.

The symposium will consist of two panels/roundtables and open discussion on new and emerging research on the film cultures of young people. ARCYP Members and other faculty or students are invited to send a TITLE and a 250-word statement describing their proposed 15-20-minute presentation to the symposium organizer in an e-mail message to admin@arcyp.ca no later than December 20, 2012. Questions or concerns may be directed to Dr. Naomi Hamer (Symposium Coordinator – n.hamer@uwinnipeg.ca) or Dr. Stuart Poyntz (President, ARCYP – spoyntz@sfu.ca).

Description

This symposium seeks to present new and emerging research that addresses the cultures of production, consumption, and representation related to films produced explicitly for young people; films produced by (or in collaboration with) young people themselves; and the representations of young people in films intended for adult audiences. These interrelated film cultures are significant to the cultivation and articulation of cultural discourse, and continue to play an important but changing role in the context of interactive, digital, and mobile technologies. Presenters may apply a range of critical and interdisciplinary approaches from the areas of film studies, children’s film criticism, film history, semiotics, visual culture, media and literacy education, audience studies, among other cross-disciplinary frames and approaches.

More generally, we are interested in:

Critical approaches to films/vidoes for, about and by young people from interdisciplinary and/or cross-disciplinary theoretical and methodological perspectives and frameworks
Research and analyses from both theoretical and practitioner-oriented perspectives
Research that examines film/video cultures of young people from various sites of cultural production and consumption

Topics for the symposium may include (but are not limited to) the following:

Global circulation, adaptation, translation (linguistic, national, cultural) and distribution of films for/about/by young people
Research that critically examines issues of gender, race, sexuality, and socio-economic class, disability, and discourses of identity in relation to film cultures
The political and cultural economies of film for young people including examinations of film industry and film policy (e.g. rating systems in North America and internationally)
Cross-media adaptations, translations and other revisions or transformations of popular children’s books, fairytales and folktales in film cultures of young people
The role of merchandise, product placement, commercial culture in film cultures
Audience reception and ethnographic studies of young people as film audiences
The role of young people as film/video producers and collaborative producers
Film, video and machinima production in primary/secondary/undergraduate education; extracurricular media literacy education in non-school settings; the pedagogic role of film, video and machinima as part of media, literature, and cross-curricular education
The role of digital, interactive and mobile technologies in the film/video cultures of young people
Research on fandom (fanvids/fanfic/cosplay etc.) around films/videos for young people

Call for Nominations for the 14th Annual International Brothers Grimm Award

November 12, 2012

NOMINATION DEADLINE: November 15, 2012

The International Brothers Grimm Award for researchers of children’s literature was established in 1986 under the auspices of the International Institute for Children’s Literature, Osaka and the Kinran-kai Foundation, in order to promote steady and sound research into children’s literature. To encourage people who engage in the study of children’s literature, the award is given to those who have performed outstanding work in research into children’s literature and or picture books, or those who have contributed remarkably to the promotion of such research.

The award will be given to an individual, not to an organization. The recipient will be decided by the selection committee from among candidates nominated by specialists all over the world.

The award recipient will receive a commemorative trophy and ¥1,000,000. He/she will also be invited to the Award Presentation Ceremony, which will be held at IICLO in the autumn of 2013. Traveling expenses will be paid for by the host organization.

To nominate someone, please send the following information to info@iiclo.or.jp:

Nominee’s name
Nominee’s email and mailing addresses (if known)
Nominee’s organization
Reasons for recommending this candidate
Your name
Your address
Your email address

Or, you could send your nomination by surface mail:
International Institute for Children’s Literature, Osaka
Osaka Prefectural Central Library, 1-2-1, Aramoto-kita,
Higashi Osaka-shi,br /> 577-0011, Japan

Or, you could send it by FAX: +81-6-6744-0582

American Alliance for Theatre and Education Research Award

November 5, 2012

THE AMERICAN ALLIANCE FOR THEATRE AND EDUCATION invites submissions for the 2013 AATE RESEARCH AWARDS:

THE RESEARCH AWARD
THE DISTINGUISHED DISSERTATION AWARD
THE DISTINGUISHED THESIS AWARD

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 30, 2012

AATE’s research awards are offered annually to scholars whose research contributes significantly to the field of drama/theatre with or for young people. We welcome submissions from a wide variety of research traditions that explore any topic related to drama / theatre education or theatre for young audiences.

Eligibility

Any AATE member may submit their work for review. Non-members may submit if sponsored by a member, but must become members if their work is advanced to the final round of review.
Theses and dissertations may be entered up to four years from their date of completion (This year, studies completed between November 2008-November 2012 are eligible for submission).

Submission

Authors should submit the following materials to the Research Awards Chair by e-mail:

A cover page indicating the author’s name, affiliation, address, phone number, e-mail address, study title and (for theses/dissertation) the name and contact information of the committee chairperson
A 1,200-1,500 word abstract of the master’s thesis, doctoral dissertation, or research report, accompanied by a 2-page representative bibliography. The abstract must NOT include any identifying information related to the author or her/his university affiliation.
For theses and dissertations: a letter from the chairperson of the student’s committee recommending the study for consideration.

Each of the above should be attached as separate files to a single message and e-mailed to matt.omasta@usu.edu

Only electronic submissions in MS Word (.doc or .docx) or PDF format will be accepted.

Review Timeline

All submissions must be received by 11:59pm PST on November 30, 2012.
Authors be notified by January 22, 2013 as to if their submission will be advanced to Round II of the review process. Authors whose work is advanced will be asked to submit an electronic copy of their entire completed thesis / dissertation / research report by 11:59pm PST on January 29, 2013.
Finalists will be notified of award decisions by May 15, 2013. Award winners and authors receiving honorable mentions will be invited to share and celebrate their research at the annual AATE conference in Washington, DC July 25-28, 2013, and will be invited to submit an article based on their research to the Youth Theatre Journal for potential publication.

Send all electronic submissions and requests for further information to:

Matt Omasta, PhD
AATE Research Awards Chair
matt.omasta@usu.edu

Panel Discussion to Honour Elisabeth Young-Bruehl in Toronto

November 2, 2012

The sudden death of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl on December 1, 2011 at age 65 near her home in Toronto has saddened us all immensely. Young-Bruehl wrote fifteen books, and her work as a biographer and psychoanalyst has been enormously influential, touching many lives and shaping the disciplines she worked in. In January 2012 her long-awaited book Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children was published.

This December 1, we will honour this great work while remembering Elisabeth with the help of four accomplished panelists: Alison Bechdel, Raffi Cavoukian, Donna Orange, and Dr. Heather Weir.

When: December 1, 2012, Panel Discussion 1:30 - 5:30, followed by a reception.
Where: George Ignatieff Theatre, 15 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON
Cost: $75 (Taxes included)
Registration: Contact Caversham Booksellers at 416-944-0962/1-800-361-6120, or www.cavershambooksellers.com

Alison Bechdel is the author of the bestselling graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which won a 2007 Eisner Award, and Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, which came out in May to critical acclaim. From 1983 to 2008, she drew the comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For," which has been collected in several volumes, including The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For.

Raffi Cavoukian is known to millions simply as Raffi: a renowned Canadian songwriter and performer, author and entrepreneur, once called "the most popular children’s entertainer in the western world" (Washington Post). In 1997, Raffi was inspired to develop a holistic philosophy called Child Honouring. The philosophy is outlined in the book Child Honouring: How to Turn This World Around edited by Raffi Cavoukian and psychoanalyst Sharna Olfman, 2006 with a foreword by the Dalai Lama.

Donna Orange is educated in both philosophy and clinical psychology. She also teaches at ISIPSé (Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychology of the Self and Relational Psychoanalysis), Milano and Roma. In New York, she teaches and supervises at IPSS, the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity. She is author of Emotional Understanding: Studies in Psychoanalytic Psychology; Thinking for Clinicians: Philosophical Resources for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Humanistic Psychotherapies, and The Suffering Stranger: Hermeneutics for Everyday Clinical Practice as well as coauthoring numerous other books.

Heather Weir is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Toronto. She is on the faculty of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, the Advanced Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program and the Toronto Child Psychoanalytic Program. She is a Child and Adolescent psychiatrist on staff at the Hospital for Sick Children. She is also on staff at the University Health Network, (University of Toronto).

Please contact Vicki Fraser for more information: 416-944-0962; 1-800-361-6120; vicki@cavbk.ca.

Skywalk Panel Discussion - The Princess and the Goblin: The Unexpected Hero

October 16, 2012

On Wednesday, October 17, Dr. Pauline Greenhill, Dr. Mavis Reimer, and Dr. Catherine Tosenberger from the University of Winnipeg and Judy Slivinski from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet will participate in a panel discussion called The Princess and the Goblin: The Unexpected Hero. It will take place from 12:10PM to 12:50PM in the Carol Shields Auditorium (2nd floor, Millennium Library, 251 Donald Street). This discussion is part of the Skywalk Lecture Series, and it precedes the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s production of The Princess & The Goblin, choreographer Twyla Tharp’s adaptation of George MacDonald’s book, which will run from October 17 to 21 at the Centennial Concert Hall.

Topics to be discussed:

Inversion of fairy tale, including the lack of parenting by King Papa, and the presence of a female hero, who is also a child
The implications of George McDonald creating a female hero in the Victorian Era
The roles of the King (Parents), the Princess (Children) and the Goblins (Street People) and their parallels to current roles and/or perceptions in society
Twyla Tharp and Rachel Browne countering the male-dominated dance world

The Princess & The Goblin Pre-Show Chats

Mavis Reimer will also be doing pre-show chats thirty minutes prior to the ballet performances on Thursday, October 18 and Saturday, October 20. These presentations will take place in the Centennial Concert Hall South Wing, and admission is free.

Background information:

For information about Twyla Tharp’s take on the book and its adaptation to ballet, please see the latest Winnipeg Free Press article: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/arts/regrets-shes-had-but-one-173650531.html.

An electronic version of George MacDonald’s book, The Princess and the Goblin, is available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34339.

Every Teacher Project Launch

October 3, 2012

The Every Teacher project is set to launch at Convocation Hall (2nd floor of Wesley Hall), University of Winnipeg, on October 11 at 11:00AM.

The Every Teacher project is a national study designed to identify and make widely available the collective expertise that exists among Canadian teachers on inclusive education practices for sexual and gender minority students. This study will enable us to learn what educators think about the climate of Canada’s schools for LGBTQ students; which approaches to inclusion of these students seem to work, and in what contexts, and which don’t; what supports educators in doing this work, and what holds us back.

Every teacher organization in English Canada has enthusiastically agreed to support this project. These include the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, Yukon Teachers’ Association, Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association, Nunavut Teachers’ Association, British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, Alberta Teachers’ Association, Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, Manitoba Teachers’ Society, Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, Ontario Teachers’ Federation, Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers, New Brunswick Teachers’ Association, Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union, Prince Edward Island Teachers’ Federation, and Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers’ Association. We are very excited to see this clear evidence of teachers across the country moving strongly to improve school climate for LGBTQ students.

The project is headed by Dr. Catherine Taylor at The University of Winnipeg in partnership with The Manitoba Teachers’ Society. Catherine also served as lead researcher in partnership with Egale Canada Human Rights Trust for the First National Climate Survey on Homophobia and Transphobia in Canadian Schools. The Every Teacher project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Perry Nodelman Lecture at Trinity College Dublin

October 1, 2012

On October 30, 2012, Dr. Perry Nodelman, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Winnipeg, will be doing a lecture entitled "‘Clever Enough to Do Variations’: Maurice Sendak as Visual Musician" at Trinity College Dublin. It will take place at 10:00AM in the Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Long Room Hub. The lecture will be chaired by Valerie Coghlan, President of Bookbird: an International Journal of Children’s Literature. All are welcome.

Perry Nodelman is the author of Words About Pictures: the Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books (which celebrates twenty-five years in print in 2013), The Pleasures of Children’s Literature (third edition in collaboration with Mavis Reimer), and The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature (Johns Hopkins UP, 2008). He has also published about 125 essays on various aspects of children’s literature in academic journals and books, the first published in 1977, the latest in 2012. As a writer for young people, he has published four novels on his own and seven in collaboration with Carol Matas.

Panel Discussion on Solidarity Rock

September 28, 2012

UWinnipeg’s Oral History Centre in the Faculty of Arts invites all to attend a panel discussion (with videos) on the history of the DIY punk-rock movement in Cuba and the story of Solidarity Rock, its cultural and unifying impact and message. The panel discussion will be led by members of Trinidad, Cuba punk band Arrabio and Solidarity Rock representatives William Garcia and Drew McIntosh.

The event will take place on Thursday, October 25 from 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. in Room 2B23, Bryce Hall on the UWinnipeg campus. Coffee and light refreshments will be provided.

Since 2008, Solidarity Rock — an artist-run organization working with musicians, artists and creative people in Cuba, Canada and beyond — has been working to collect instruments and musical equipment to help the Cuban rock bands find their own way through music. This cross cultural group has managed to overcome social, political and economic barriers in order to build a unifying musical movement across the globe.

Special issue of Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature on Children’s Literature Collections and Archives

September 27, 2012

A special issue of Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature on Children’s Literature Collections and Archives is out now.

This issue is available (free open access) at: http://www.paperschildlit.com/index.php/papers.

Table of Contents

The Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books: Toronto Public Library’s Research Collection of Juvenile Material Leslie Anne McGrath
Twentieth century literary and publishing archives: UK research perspectives on children’s literature Charlotte Berry
Colonial Girls’ Literature and the Politics of Archives in the Digital Age Michelle J. Smith and Kristine Moruzi
Anthony Arrowroot and Nutty Nutella: Advertising in Children’s Literature Afsana Khan
The Historical-Cultural Value of the Juvenile Collection: The McLaren Collection at the University of Melbourne and its Girls’ Books Margaret Lowe
John Mystery and the Australian Book Trade Juliet O’Conor
Astrid Lindgren and the Archives Helene Ehriander
A Token to the Future: A Digital "Archive" of Early Australian Children’s Literature Kerry Mallan, Amy Cross, and Cherie Allan
Digital Archives and Cultural Memory: Discovering Lost Histories in Digitised Australian Children’s Literature 1851-1945 Michelle Dicinoski
The Lu Rees Archives of Australian Children’s Literature Belle Alderman
Collections of the Swiss Institute for Children’s and Youth Media and their Public Access Roger Meyer
Growing up Australian: The National Imaginary in School Readers Jane McGennisken
Books or Toys? A Traveller’s tale: researching early movable books for and by children in material and virtual collections Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

ARCYP Call for Papers - ‘Growing up global’: Childhoods in a Transnational Context

September 25, 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS
‘Growing up global’: Childhoods in a Transnational Context
A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA, VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
JUNE 1-8, 2013
DEADLINE: November 1, 2012

As people and institutions connect across the borders of nation-states, children are invariably part of the processes of transnationalism. Yet their presence has largely been ignored by much of the scholarship on transnationalism. While they may lack the abilities to fully articulate and engage with the social, political, and economic forces behind transnational movement and circulation, young people are just as affected by - and central to - these global currents. Thinking about childhood in a transnational context requires a greater awareness of how contemporary global culture is creating a unique experience of childhood itself, both ‘of’ childhood, and ‘for’ children themselves.

The purpose of this panel is to put children and childhood at the center of discussions concerning transnationalism. We seek papers that investigate the ways in which "the child" both impacts and is impacted by circulation across global borders. We encourage research that questions how children experience transnationality and how we understand the child and childhood in the context of nation states whose borders are not what they once were.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

researching children and childhoods in transnational contexts
the experiences of children in the transnational context
the relationships between global capital and the transnational child
securitization and the transnational child
children in transnational families
cosmopolitanism and the transnational child
transnational migration and the child

Following the instructions under Option # 1 at www.accute.ca/generalcall.html, send your 700-word proposal (or 8-10 page double spaced paper), a Proposal Submissions Information Sheet, and a 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical statement, as three attachments in an email addressed to admin@arcyp.ca by November 1 2012.

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.

ARCYP Call for Papers - Institutionalized Spaces, Geographies, and Environments of Young People

September 25, 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS
Institutionalized Spaces, Geographies, and Environments of Young People
A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA, VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
JUNE 1-8, 2013
DEADLINE: November 1, 2012

This panel invites papers that explore spatial conceptualizations, experiences, and socio-cultural/political histories of young people within and in relation to institutionalized or publically funded/constructed physical or material spaces and environments that have been intentionally designed for young people. Research foci may include (but are not limited to): children’s museums and theatres; public libraries; children’s hospitals and rehabilitation centres, juvenile detention centres, and residential schools; public schools (and the spatial analysis thereof) summer camps, playgrounds and play spaces, and skate parks; and, other institutionalized physical/material spaces and environments allotted to young people.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

The politics of private/public discourses of childhood relevant to these spaces;
Spatial experiences that result from criminal justice and legal policies around young people;
Socio-cultural histories of select institutionalized spaces (i.e. children’s hospitals etc.);
Relationships between national/civic/public identities and the allotment of spaces intended for young people in public environments.

We would especially encourage proposals that specifically explore spatially oriented analyses of the institutional contexts foregrounded in this CFP, and strongly encourage work that examines topics from social science perspectives and/or cross-disciplinary work rooted in geography, history, law, criminal justice, indigenous studies and sociology.

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.

ARCYP Call for Papers - Genderqueer Children and Youth

September 25, 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS
Genderqueer Children and Youth
A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA, VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA
JUNE 1-8, 2013
DEADLINE: November 1, 2012

Elizabeth J. Meyer defines "genderqueer" as a term that challenges "the existing binaries of how we conceptualize and embody gender. . . . Genderqueer is an identity that has been embraced by individuals who feel that their gender identity does not fit clearly in the man/woman binary." The Gender Equity Resource Center defines "genderqueer" as "a person who redefines or plays with gender, or who refuses gender altogether. A label for people who bend/break the rules of gender and blur the boundaries."

For many genderqueer people their feelings of "gender dysphoria" can be traced to their earliest childhoods. Often children’s intuition of the disjunction between their bodies and their sense of their gendered selves is their very first memory (see Deborah Rudacille). Thinking about expressions and embodiments of gendered identities, it is clear that young people are of central concern to researchers and scholars.

We therefore invite papers about children and youth who are "queering gender" and about representations of and by those young people—including, but not limited to, "genderqueer," "gender non-conforming," "transgender," "gender-gifted," "polygender," "genderless," "gender-bending," and "gender-blending" children and youth. Given that the lived experiences and mediated encounters of genderqueer young people are such a productive space of inquiry, we are interested in all research at the intersections of gender, identity, and childhood, and we encourage proposals from a wide range of academic disciplines.

Following the instructions under Option # 1 at www.accute.ca/generalcall.html, send your 700-word proposal (or 8-10 page double-spaced paper), a Proposal Submissions Information Sheet, and a 100-word abstract and 50-word bio-bibliographical statement, as three attachments to an email addressed to admin@arcyp.ca by November 1, 2012.

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.

Gender in Fairy Tale Film and Cinematic Folklore Course

September 25, 2012

The University of Winnipeg’s Department of Women and Gender Studies is offering an online course on Gender in Fairy Tale Film and Cinematic Folklore for the 2013 Winter Term.

Course Number: WGS-3005-761
Course Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Orme
Prerequisites: WGS-1232, WGS-2001, WGS-2002 or ENGL-2114 or permission of the instructor

Fairy tale film (movie or TV versions of international wonder tales) and cinematic folklore (representations of other traditional genres in film) express notions of gender that have multiple implications for their creators and audiences. Using feminist film theory, we explore filmed versions of traditional culture primarily for adults. Topics include postmodern and psychoanalytic perspectives; metamorphosis, enchantment, monstrosity, and abjection; transgender and transbiology; the rise in popularity of adult fairy tale film; analyses of particular auteurs; adaptation theory; genre and generational shifts and remixes; historic and contemporary perspectives on innovative cinematography and special effects, and/or contemporary iconography.

This course features guest lectures by Jack Zipes, Cristina Bacchilega and Sidney Eve Matrix.

For further information or permission to take the course, please contact Dr. Greenhill at p.greenhill@uwinnipeg.ca or 786-9439.

Joel Bakan Talk - Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children

September 19, 2012

The Uniter Speaker Series presents Joel Bakan, author, filmmaker, and professor of law at UBC, on September 19 at 7:30PM in Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall. Admission is free.

Joel Bakan, author of the international bestseller The Corporation, and writer of the hit documentary film based upon it, will talk about his new book Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children.

Whether the industry is marketing to kids or digital gaming, pharmaceuticals or industrial chemicals, farm labour or K-12 education, a similar dynamic is at work, Bakan argues: children are being neglected, harmed and exploited by large corporations increasingly unrestrained in their pursuit of profit. Change is possible, Bakan suggests, and he offers concrete ideas about how to pursue it.

Presented by The Uniter, the official student newspaper of The University of Winnipeg, The Uniter Speakers Series is part of the newspaper’s ongoing efforts to enhance its contribution to community life on and off campus.

Call for Proposals: Frances E. Russell Grant

September 10, 2012

IBBY Canada Call for Proposals: Frances E. Russell Grant

The Canadian National Section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY Canada) is now accepting proposals for the 2012 Frances E. Russell Grant. The $1,000 grant is intended to support IBBY Canada’s mission "to initiate and encourage research in young people’s literature in all its forms" and is given in support of research for a publishable work (a book or a paper) on Canadian children’s literature.

The deadline for proposals, which may be submitted in English or in French, is October 31, 2012.

The grant supports scholarly work only; works of fiction are not eligible. The types of works that are eligible for the 2012 Frances E. Russell Grant include:

Studies of individual authors and their work, especially if considered in their socio-historical context.
Comparative studies of two or more authors, which illuminate their stylistic differences, or consider their social and historical approaches.
Subject/Genre overviews, for example, children’s fantasy or historical fiction.
Biographical studies of Canadian children’s authors or illustrators.
Studies of Canadian children’s illustrators and their work.
Related subjects including contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of Canadian children’s literature.

The following materials are required: a proposal, a curriculum vitae, a synopsis of methods and stages by which the applicant will pursue the research, and a summary of what the funds are to be used for. The competition is open to Canadian citizens or landed immigrants. Please send proposals as e-mail attachments to: Deirdre Baker, Frances E. Russell Grant Chair, at russell@ibby-canada.org.

If candidates prefer not to use e-mail, proposals can be mailed to:

IBBY Canada
c/o The Canadian Children’s Book Centre
Suite 217, 40 Orchard View Blvd.
Toronto, ON M4R 1B9
Attention: Deirdre Baker, Frances E. Russell Grant Chair

A jury, appointed by IBBY Canada, will select the successful applicant by December 31, 2012.

ABOUT IBBY AND THE FRANCES E. RUSSELL GRANT

The Frances E. Russell Grant was established by the late Marjorie Russell in memory of her sister, a long time supporter of IBBY Canada. Past winners include Vivian Howard, Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman, Michelle Mulder, André Gagnon, Ronald Jobe, Carole Carpenter, Linda Granfield, and Françoise Lepage. For more information about the Frances E. Russell Grant, please visit the IBBY Canada web site at www.ibby-canada.org or write to info@ibby-canada.org.

AHRC Research Studentship - Children’s Media in the Arab World

August 21, 2012

The University of Westminster invites applications for a full-time three-year AHRC-funded PhD studentship exploring Definitions of Childhood in the Arab World and their Implications for Screen-Based Media, starting in January 2013 within the University’s Arab Media Centre.

Three years, full time £16,000 annual stipend plus fee waiver.

The PhD is linked to a three year AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) study on Orientations in the Development of Pan-Arab Television by Children, led by Professor Naomi Sakr, Professor Jeanette Steemers, and Dr. Tarik Sabry, which starts in January 2013. As part of their studies the doctoral student will be expected to provide some assistance to the research team on tasks that relate directly to the student’s research topic (including literature reviews, document summaries, television programme analysis and the transcription and analysis of research data).

Successful candidates must be able to read and speak Arabic to a competent level. We particularly welcome candidates with a strong interest in children’s media or media industries more generally, but are also interested in candidates who are knowledgeable about Arab history, politics and culture.

The PhD will be suitable for candidates with a good first degree in the social sciences or arts and humanities (2.1 or better). Candidates would normally be expected to have a Masters degree in a related area, with experience in research methods at that level, but we will also consider candidates with an excellent first degree.

To be eligible candidates must have a relevant connection with the UK, normally consisting of a minimum of three years UK residence for purposes other than education.

The studentship will be located within the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) at the University of Westminster - the UK’s number one research group in media and communication as rated by the UK Government’s 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.

The Studentship consists of a fee waiver and a stipend of £16,000 per annum. Successful candidates will be expected to undertake some teaching duties.

Prospective candidates wishing to informally discuss an application should contact Professor Naomi Sakr, N.Sakr01@westminster.ac.uk.

For application details go to http://tinyurl.com/bskp9cx.

This studentship is funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council). For further information, please visit www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/bgpcb.aspx.

The closing date for applications is 5pm, Friday, 5 October 2012.

Storytime Installation at Gallery 1C03

July 23, 2012

Storytime: Glen Johnson & Leslie Supnet (September 6 – October 6, 2012)

Storytime is an exciting new collaborative multi-media installation by Winnipeg artists Glen Johnson and Leslie Supnet which will be shown in Gallery 1C03. In total, this project has four distinct components: 1) an exhibition that pairs Supnet’s drawings alongside Johnson’s stories and a short animated film by Supnet which is narrated by Johnson; 2) an accompanying full-colour illustrated publication containing the drawings/stories with a critical essay on the project by Winnipeg-based writer Tom Kohut [pending funding]; 3) two public performances by Johnson; 4) a public artist talk by Supnet.

Storytime represents the very first collaboration between Supnet, a visual artist and animator, and Johnson, a writer and performance artist. The pieces presented in this exhibition are entirely new. As the two artists became acquainted with one another’s work over the last few years, they realized that they share a certain overlapping sensibility. Both artists are interested in the tradition of illustrated stories and are drawn to a certain kind of anthropomorphism in their work, perhaps best exemplified by the work of Beatrix Potter or Thornton W. Burgess and Harrison Cady. Emphasizing the collaborative nature of their work from conception, neither of the artists wanted the project to be solely a matter of Supnet illustrating Johnson’s stories. Supnet began to work on drawings that were inspired by existing stories but she also gave sketches to Johnson for which he subsequently wrote new stories. A story might inspire a drawing that necessitated rewriting the story or a drawing that inspired a story might have to be altered to fit the new story. By continuing this back and forth process over a lengthy period of time the two will produce a body of richly layered drawing and story pairs.

The exhibition in Gallery 1C03 will include a selection of 15 – 20 of these paired drawings and stories, each presented in the format of a bound hardcover children’s book. The books will be placed on small low tables, encircled with chairs. These furniture groupings, spread throughout the front two-thirds of the gallery, will resemble the reading area of a bookstore, library or classroom. This installation will allow gallery visitors to sit at the tables and handle the "books," thus engaging with the works as they would illustrated children’s books.

Two to three new short animated films, collaboratively created by Johnson and Supnet, will be presented as part of an installation in the back third of Gallery 1C03. The films will be screened on what will appear as an old style cabinet television. In order to ensure image and sound quality, however, the screen will actually be a flat panel monitor mounted inside an old tv cabinet. The television will be placed within a small living room setting. There, seated on a vintage-style couch, gallery visitors will be able to watch the short films as they would have watched cartoons in their childhood homes. In addition to the living room area with the television, there will be an oversized chair with an end table and a lamp to serve as the setting for Johnson’s performative story readings.

Johnson’s performances will be part of his ongoing "Uncle Glennie" story reading practice. Begun at Gallery 803 in 2006, the series attempts to replicate the experience of a children’s story time with Johnson reading selections from his storybook. While Johnson’s readings are modeled on children’s story times, the character of his stories is by no means juvenile. Although the stories are rarely overtly adult or inappropriate in tone or content, the themes and the manner in which these themes are handled are not tailored for young audiences. When "Uncle Glennie" is not performing, his book of stories will be left on the table by his chair for visitors to peruse.

Supnet’s drawings and short animated films, like Johnson’s stories and readings, appear child-friendly on the surface but they often deal with dark subject matter in a subtle and adult-oriented way. In her words, the images reference "identity, isolation, longing and despair, all with a touch of whimsy and the surreal." She is interested in using her drawing "as a mechanism to cope with the little tragedies we all face day to day." Each work possesses a strong and instantly recognizable sentiment, including her distinct brand of melancholy and an edge of irony. She hopes to "invoke a sense of childhood wonder, and inspire playfulness in the lives of the viewers."

Storytime has been planned to open in early September during the University’s first week of classes and Student Orientation Week. The exhibition will be promoted as part of O-Week, with the first of Johnson’s performances taking place in partnership with these celebrations and sponsored by the University’s Student Association.

Significantly, Johnson and Supnet are University of Winnipeg alumni and their exhibition will also open as part of the University’s 2012 Homecoming celebrations.

Johnson’s second performance will take place as part of Culture Days, again allowing new audiences to be exposed to both contemporary performance as well as Gallery 1C03’s programming. His performance will be recorded and an audio podcast of it will be posted on the gallery’s website and blog for those who were unable to attend the event in person.

Call for Papers for 21st IRSCL Congress: Children’s Literature and Media Cultures

July 3, 2012

The 21st biennial conference of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature on Children’s Literature and Media Cultures will be hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, The Netherlands.

Conference Convenor: Lies Wesseling
Conference dates: August 10-14, 2013

Conference theme:

Contemporary children and adolescents divide their time over many different media. These media do not develop in isolation. Rather, they shape each other by continually exchanging content and modes of mediation. This conference addresses the exchanges between children’s literature and adjacent media (oral narrative, theatre, film, radio, TV, digital media).

Media are best defined as cultural practices that forge specific links between senders and receivers of messages, facilitating certain types of communicative behavior. As newer media tend to imitate, if not absorb, older media, they force older media to reassert their uniqueness and indispensability in a rapidly changing media landscape. How has children’s literature staked out its own niche in these historically variable "mediascapes" in the course of time? How do electronic and digital media affect children’s emergent literacy and literary competence? How have children’s books and the newer electronic and digital media impacted on children’s play? What sort of communicative behaviors are facilitated by the diverse media available to children and adolescents nowadays? Which ethical and political issues are raised by the fact that children’s literature has to share its claim to the audience’s attention with a whole gamut of alternative media? These questions are central to the 21st biannual conference of the IRSCL.

The aim of the conference is to strengthen the ever closer ties between children’s literature scholars and media experts, and to bridge the gap between hermeneutic methods from the humanities and empirical, experimental methods from the social sciences.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Adriana Bus, Gudrun Marci-Boehncke, Jackie Marsh, Kerry Mallan, Junko Yokota

For further information about the conference, the call for papers, and the submission of abstracts, go to: www.irscl2013.com.

Subversive Fairy Tale Films Seminar with Jack Zipes

June 12, 2012

Special Visiting Scholar Seminar
Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota
Friday, July 20, 2012
9:30AM to 12:30PM
University of Winnipeg, Room 2M70

Subversive Fairy Tale Films (co-sponsored by Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Art Gallery)

Jack Zipes, world-renowned expert on fairy tales and author of The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films (Routledge, 2011) will screen three experimental feminist fairy-tale films that counter the dumbed-down Hollywood versions of fairy tales. The films will be followed by a seminar discussion led by Dr. Zipes.

You must register for this special seminar, which will run ONLY if we get sufficient numbers. To register, send an e mail to l.fauzi@uwinnipeg.ca by noon July 6.

"Mapping Arabic Children’s Literature Studies" - A Lecture by Dr. Sabah Aisawi

June 12, 2012

CRYTC is pleased to present "Mapping Arabic Children’s Literature Studies," a public lecture by Dr. Sabah Aisawi on June 21 from 12:00 to 1:00. The lecture will take place in room 2C14 on the University of Winnipeg campus.

While children’s literature written in Arabic has made tremendous strides in the last three decades, academic studies of that literature are very scarce. This talk addresses the position of Arabic Children’s Literature Studies today in light of contemporary international studies of English children’s literature. Through briefly sketching her own work in this area, Dr. Aisawi aims to draw the attention of both Arab and non-Arab scholars to a little trodden field of study that can offer a wide variety of research topics.

Dr. Sabah Aisawi is an Assistant Professor at the College of Arts, University of Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and is a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Aisawi was the first woman to gain a PhD in Saudi Arabia in the field of children’s literature, and is a contributor to the Guide to Children’s Writers and Illustrators in Saudi Arabia.

ARCYP Program at 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences

February 22, 2012

Congress 2012 of the Humanities and Social Sciences CROSSROADS: SCHOLARSHIP FOR AN UNCERTAIN WORLD
Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
May 26 – June 2, 2012

Association for Research in Cultures of Young People Program
May 28 – 29, 2012

MONDAY, MAY 28, 2012
1:30 – 2:45 p.m. / Room: TBA
Project Groundings: A Transnational Approach to Art and Youth Identity Development in conjunction with SSHRC-funded Project Groundings and Toronto’s Nia Centre for the Arts
Chair: Naila Keleta-Mae (U of Waterloo)

Emerging Artists from Nia Centre for the Arts articulate their life stories through spoken word, theatre, and photography, exploring the complex ways in which Afrodiasporic identity is textured, disrupted, and devalued by everyday occurrences of violence. How might art address systemic violence in African Jamaican and African Canadian lives?

Open to all Congress delegates; admission free

TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2012
9:00 – 10:15 a.m. / Room: TBA

Joint ACCUTE / ARCYP Session
TROUBLING NORMATIVITY IN CULTURES OF YOUNG PEOPLE
Chair: Louise Saldanha (Grande Prairie Regional College)
Krys Verrall (York University)“The Meaning of Difference”
Brendan Burrows (University of Ottawa)“’Punks from South Central’: Re-situating Marginality and Hegemonic Whiteness in Larry Clark’s Wassup Rockers”
Molly McKibbin (York University) “Racialization and Belonging in Rachel Harper’s Brass Ankle Blues”

10:30 a.m. – 12:00 noon / Room: TBA

Joint ACCUTE / ARCYP Session
YOUTH CREATORS, THINKERS, AND EXPRESSIONS OF “CHILD CONSCIOUSNESS”
Chair: Cheryl Cowdy (York University)
A. Clotilde Houchon (University of Utah) “Disguised as Dick Tracy: Comics, Safe House, and Transmigrant Youth”
Stuart Poyntz (Simon Fraser University) “Scenes and Urban Youth Media Production Ecologies in Canada”
Jennifer Hardwick (Queen’s University)“These Are Our Stories, These Are Our Songs: Multimedia Storytelling in Another Slice”

1:45 – 3:30 p.m. / Room: TBA

Joint ACCUTE / ARCYP Session
YOUTH, (IMAGINARY) BORDERS, AND THE NATION STATE
Chair: Stuart Poyntz (Simon Fraser U)
Heather Snell (University of Winnipeg) “Global Citizenship and YA Literatures in Canada: Unpacking Contemporary Representations of the Young (Virtual) Traveler”
Sara Dorrow and Dale Ballucci (University of New Brunswick) “Constructing Childhood at the Boundaries of the Nation: An Investigation of the Treatment of Children at the Canadian Border”
Helene Staveley (Memorial University) “Border, Nation, Playground, Gamespace: The Fantastic Spaces of Children’s Books by Margaret Atwood and Welwyn Wilton Katz (and Maybe Salman Rushdie, Too)”
Geneviève Brisson (University of British Columbia) “Québécois Young Adult Novels in Translation in Canada”

4:00 – 5:30 p.m. / Room: TBA

Joint ACCUTE / ARCYP Session
ROUNDTABLE: THE FRIENDLY GIANT’S "EMPTY CHAIR": THE MISSING HISTORIES OF CANADIAN CHILDREN’S MEDIA INDUSTRIES
Chair: Natalie Coulter (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Participants:
Kristine Moruzi (University of Alberta)
Peter Moss (Youth Media Alliance)
Leslie Regan Shade (Concordia University)

Although Canada has a long and distinguished history of producing media texts for children (children’s television, film, music, magazines, and video games), that history is often invisible. This roundtable of scholars and practitioners will begin to recuperate the history of Canadian children’s cultural industries.

Open to all Congress delegates; admission free

2012 David Almond Fellowships for Research in Children’s Literature

February 9, 2012

Newcastle University’s School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and Seven Stories, the national centre for children’s books proudly announce the creation of David Almond Fellowships. The awards recognise both David Almond’s contribution to children’s literature and his connections with these partner institutions: he is a patron of Seven Stories and an honorary graduate of Newcastle University.

Further particulars

Eligibility for the award

Applicants must hold a first degree or higher from a recognised institution of higher education. Note: non-EEA applicants are reminded that to take up a Fellowship they must hold an appropriate visa. Neither Newcastle University nor Seven Stories can help with this process. Please see the UK visas website for more information: http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/howtoapply

Responsibilities

Fellowships must be taken up before the end of December 2012. Recipients are expected to spend at least three days in Newcastle and are encouraged to time their visits to enable them to participate in events organised jointly or separately by the Children’s Literature Unit and Seven Stories. (Please note: successful applicants must contact Seven Stories and agree a date for the visit prior to making travel arrangements; normally a minimum of two weeks notice is required before any research visit.) Acknowledgement of the Fellowships must accompany all dissemination activities arising from the research.

Application process

Applicants are asked to submit the following items by 1 June, 2012

an application form
a curriculum vitae
a brief proposal (of 1,000 words maximum)
one confidential letter of recommendation (sealed and signed; confidential letters may be included in your application packet or recommenders may send them directly)

Applications may be submitted by email or post.

Email: Kim.Reynolds@ncl.ac.uk

Post: David Almond Fellowships
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
UK

Mavis Reimer at Panel Discussion for Chris Reid: I like to believe I am telling the truth

January 30, 2012

Mavis Reimer will be participating in the panel discussion for Chris Reid: I like to believe I am telling the truth, a double-sited exhibition co-presented by Gallery 1C03 and the Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre.

This panel discussion has been organized to complement Chris Reid’s current exhibition, I like to believe I am telling the truth, at Gallery 1C03 and Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre. The exhibition includes large-scale pastel drawings, quirky re-interpretations of Ukrainian Easter eggs and multi-media sculptural installations that incorporate recycled and found objects. Through these diverse media, Reid invents lush visual narratives containing a sundry cast of characters – from folkloric symbols of her Ukrainian heritage and her husband’s African heritage such as Baba Yaga buildings and Anansi the spider to idiosyncratic anthropomorphic cats, dolls, bunnies and bread – that play out their actions in surreal prairie landscapes and unsettling domestic environments.

Three academics have been invited to share their current research as it relates to themes in the exhibition. Dr. Pauline Greenhill, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Winnipeg, will present “That’s Not Folklore! (A)Musings on Art and Tradition” which includes a discussion of how Raymond Williams’ ideas of archaic, residual and emergent traditions focus an understanding of processes linking folklore and art. For her presentation "Folklore Characters as Perceived by People, Art and the Media", Joint Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Manitoba’s Department of German and Slavic Studies & Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies Dr. Svitlana Kukharenko will deliver an overview of anthropomorphism in Ukrainian folklore. She will also speak to representations of Baba Yaga and Koshchey in Russian high art and Soviet cinema. Dr. Mavis Reimer is Canada Research Chair in Young People’s Texts and Cultures, and Professor of English at The University of Winnipeg. In "No Place Like Home: Some Thoughts about Unhoming in Contemporary Culture", Dr. Reimer will talk about the ways in which the ideas of place, the relationships and the feelings associated with "home" are disrupted in contemporary culture. She will focus on the ways in which the work by Chris Reid can be read beside a group of Canadian narratives for young people that represent and encode such unhomings. Following the presentations, audience members are encouraged to engage in a question and answer dialogue with the panelists.

The exhibition runs from February 9 to April 14, 2012, and the panel discussion takes place in Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall on Thursday, March 22 at 7:00PM.

Chris Reid is a visual artist and educator based out of Brandon, Manitoba. Reid completed Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees from the University of Alberta as well as a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she specialized in painting and drawing. In addition to her artistic practice, Reid has worked as a contemporary art curator and is employed as a Housing Resource Worker for the Brandon Regional Health Authority. She has been the recipient of grants for her art from the Manitoba Arts Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Reid has exhibited across Canada and in the United States for more than 25 years, including recent solo exhibitions at the Yukon Arts Centre, Latitude 53 and the Thames Art Gallery. I like to believe I am telling the truth is Chris Reid’s first solo exhibition in Winnipeg. It will travel to the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba later this year.

Invitation to Contribute to International Child Research Ethics Project

January 9, 2012

This is an invitation to contribute to an important international initiative aimed at improving understandings and practice in relation to ethical research with children and young people. This work, under way for the past two years, will culminate in an International Charter and Ethics Guidelines.

By way of brief background, Childwatch International convened a meeting at the University of London in July 2011 to discuss ethical issues and approaches to research with/on/for children and young people. This was attended by leading international child and youth researchers and managers in the fields of ethics philosophy, policy and practice. Participants at this meeting reviewed work previously undertaken by Childwatch International that included findings from an international survey exploring ethical issues in research with children in different international contexts and a comprehensive international literature review identifying key developments in this area (see: http://www.childwatch.uio.no/projects/project-of-the-month/2010/research-ethics). The meeting agreed that while the importance of ethical research with children and young people is now widely accepted, the tension between universally agreed principles and situationally applied practice needs considerably more thought.

In order to progress this agenda, Childwatch International has partnered on a project with the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre that will:

a) Develop an International Ethics Charter for research involving children and young people (also linking to the values embedded in the spirit of the UNCRC)

b) Develop Ethics Guidelines that can be applied within and across different international (research, policy, practice and disciplinary) contexts. These need to reflect universal principles and have relevance within diverse cross-cultural contexts

c) Identify cost effective, flexible approaches to training/capacity building for organisations and disciplines seeking to adopt more ethical child and youth research practice in a range of contexts

d) Develop a web portal to provide a repository of information, publications and resources relevant to child and youth research, as well as a discussion board for advice and support around ethical issues and dilemmas encountered by researchers, policy makers, practitioners and ethics governance bodies

In progressing this project we are mindful of the excellent work that has been undertaken in different international contexts, much of which we have already incorporated through the consultations and activities related to our previous survey, literature reviews and resource mapping exercises. We are conscious, however, there may be recent initiatives we’re not aware of in relation to:

Child/youth research ethics initiatives, resources or activities that you would like to draw to our attention;
Training programs, modules or initiatives informing and/or supporting either new or more experienced researchers.

We would appreciate your further input on these two matters, particularly. More importantly, however, we would warmly welcome your ongoing engagement with this initiative as we are very committed to ensuring the development of the Ethics Charter and Guidelines continues to involve those in the child/youth research, policy, NGO and ethics governance communities with expertise and experience to contribute.

Contacts:

Associate Professor Nicola Taylor
Acting Director, Centre for Research on Children & Families University of Otago New Zealand
nicola.taylor@otago.ac.nz

Professor Anne Graham
Director, Centre for Children & Young People Southern Cross University Australia
anne.graham@scu.edu.au

Jeunesse Editor Catherine Tosenberger at MLA’s Chat With An Editor

December 21, 2011

On Monday January 7, Jeunesse editor, Dr. Catherine Tosenberger will be participating in the "Chat with an Editor" session at the MLA Convention in Seattle. Dr. Tosenberger will be on from 11:00AM to 12:00PM.

The service gives scholars the opportunity to meet one-on-one with an experienced editor to discuss any aspect of the publication process. It is not an article vetting service, but rather a chance for authors to obtain advice on any aspect of writing, submitting, and publishing a journal article, in a neutral and friendly atmosphere. Advisors and advisees will meet in Room 2A, Washington State Convention Center. In recent years, about half of the advisees have been graduate students and half have been assistant professors, postdocs, adjunct or part-time professors, and independent scholars.

For more information about this event, see here.

Dodson Visiting Professorship in Children’s Literature at UBC

December 9, 2011

The University of British Columbia holds an international reputation for excellence in advanced research and learning. It is located in Vancouver, Canada, one of the world’s most beautiful and culturally diverse cities. SLAIS, the iSchool at UBC, is pleased to invite applications for the first Dodson Visiting Professorship named in honour of Suzanne and Earl Dodson.

This is a competitive position that provides funds to enable the successful candidate to spend a term engaged in Teaching and Research at the iSchool and with the UBC Community. Academics at all levels from all countries are encouraged to apply. Applicants will normally hold a doctoral degree, and currently be employed in an institution of higher education.

This inaugural position will be for a Visiting Professor in the field of Children’s Literature, who will bring expertise and an active record of scholarship in children’s or young adult literature or a related field. Preference will be given to candidates who have a proven track record of high quality research productivity and experience in teaching. This is an opportunity to work with the Chair of our Master of Arts in Children’s Literature, who is an award-winning researcher in the area of Canadian literature for children.

This Visiting Professorship opens the opportunity to teach, interact, and mentor students in the Master of Arts in Children’s Literature Program by teaching two classes in this multidisciplinary field.

Expertise in the area of children’s or young adult literature or media and an understanding of the issues surrounding children’s or young adult literature scholarship are required. This research will be showcased at a colloquium, which will be open to all faculty, librarians, students and alumni.

The Dodson Visiting Professorship funds this position for one term in the amount of $15,000, and can be supplemented with teaching (up to 2 courses) to $30,000.

Address all enquiries and applications comprising a letter of interest and a current CV to:

Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite
Director – SLAIS, the iSchool at UBC
The University of British Columbia
The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
Suite 470, 1961 East Mall
Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1 CANADA

Closing date: Review of applications will begin on March 1 2012 and continue until the visiting professorship has been awarded.

Start date: Either September 4 2012 or January 3 2013

Martine Leavitt Reading at U of W

October 28, 2011

CRYTC is pleased to host a reading by YA novelist Martine Leavitt on November 7. It will take place from 12:30PM to 1:30PM in room 3C01 at the University of Winnipeg.

Martine Leavitt has a Honours English degree from the University of Calgary and a Master of Fine Arts from Vermont College, where she is currently a member of the faculty. She has written seven award-winning novels for young adults, including Tom Finder, winner of the Mr. Christie Award, Heck Superhero, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Keturah and Lord Death, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her eighth novel, My Book of Life by Angel, will be out in the fall of 2012. Her novels have been published in Japan, Korea, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands.

This event is free and open to the public.

Every Good Writer’s Plan with Martine Leavitt

October 7, 2011

Join accomplished Young Adult author Martine Leavitt in a full-day masterclass on plot and structure in longer works of fiction.

John Gardner said, "Though action with no meaning beyond its own brute existence can have no lasting appeal, plot is, or must sooner or later become, the focus of every good writer’s plan." This workshop will offer tips on how to make that plan, how to structure a longer work of fiction and set up that structure in those first ten pages - usually all the time you get with that agent or editor.

Date: Sunday, November 6
Time: 8:30 am - 4:30 pm
Place: 218-100 Arthur Street (Burns Family Classroom)
Cost: $100 for Manitoba Writers’ Guild members, $150 for non-members

Submission Deadline: October 17

Eligibility: Writers with some history of publication are eligible to apply.

Please submit: 8-10 pages of creative writing that you would like to work on in the class,and a short CV outlining your publication background to info@mbwriter.mb.ca.

Cheques should be made out to the Manitoba Writers’ Guild and mailed to 218-100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg MB, R3B 1H3.

This masterclass is limited to 10 participants.

Martine Leavitt will also be doing a reading at the University of Winnipeg on November 7, 2011 from 12:30 to 1:30 in Room 3C01.

2011 International Brothers Grimm Award Winner

September 28, 2011

The International Institute for Children’s Literature in Osaka is pleased to announce the 2011 winner of the International Brothers Grimm Award: Professor Jiang Feng, Professor Emeritus of Zhejiang Normal University in China.

The award presentation ceremony and Professor Jiang Feng’s commemoration lecture will be held on December 11, 2011.

Jiang Feng has founded the basis for and has contributed to development of research on Chinese children’s literature for a long time. He has also been active as one of the central figures in the field of children’s literature research in Asia.

He began his pioneering research into children’s literature as a lecturer at Zhejiang Normal University in 1952. He put his energy into educating scholars, and in 1979, he founded the first graduate school to confer a master degree in children’s literature, an institution which has produced many scholars and editors of children’s literature in China.

Professor Jiang Feng has written many books, including Introduction to Children’s Literature（1982), a theoretical and practical handbook for the study of children’s literature. It is still in print, having gone through several pressings, and it was the recipient of the first Children’s Literature Research Award in China. It is also used as a textbook in Malaysia.

He consciously started arranging a comprehensive history of children’s literature in China which resulted in: Chinese Modern History of Children’s Literature （1987); Chinese Contemporary History of Children’s Literature（1991); Chinese History of Children’s Literature（1998); and The Development History of Children’s Literature（2007). In addition, he edited the Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature in the World（1992), which evaluated Chinese children’s literature from a global point of view. These books are essential for the basic research of Chinese children’s literature.

Professor Jiang Feng also published the first book on toys in China, On Toys (1992), examining the fact that eighty percent of toys in the world are produced in China and going on to consider the long history of toys in China.

He played an important role in the 10th Conference of the Asian Children’s Literature Association held at Zhejiang Normal University in October, 2010, and has disseminated information on Chinese children’s literature via many international conventions, such as the International Symposium between China and Japan in 1985.

Call for Peer Reviewers: Journal of Graduate Research in Young People’s Materials and Culture

September 19, 2011

The Journal of Graduate Research in Young People’s Materials and Culture (JGR) is a peer-reviewed open-access e-journal that will publish graduate student research in the areas of children’s and young adult literature, childhood studies, and cultural studies related to children and young people, as well as creative writing for children and young adults. We are committed to promoting outstanding research and creative writing by emerging scholars in children’s and young adult literature. The manuscripts selected for publication undergo a double blind peer review and will be drawn from papers presented at the biennial Graduate Student Children’s Literature Research Conference held at the University of British Columbia.

JGR will publish one issue every two years, concurrent with the conference schedule, but will hopefully grow to become an annual or semi-annual publication over time with open submissions year-round. Issues will be published in the fall following the conference (i.e. October 2012 publication after the May 2012 conference) and the theme of each journal issue will reflect the conference theme.

We are currently developing a list of peer reviewers to help evaluate manuscript submissions within the months following the 2012 conference and hopefully after each conference in succeeding years. We will be utilizing a double blind peer review process to select and approve papers for publication. Readers will be asked to undertake the basic reviewing tasks of summarizing the article, providing a recommendation on acceptance, and listing suggestions for revision as appropriate. Because the articles will be submitted by graduate students and not established scholars, we are hoping the review feedback will be slightly more detailed and constructive to help students build a better understanding of the scholarly publishing process.

If you are interested in contributing as a peer reviewer please send an email to jgr.journal@yahoo.ca indicating your areas of interest and the types of papers you would like to review. Feel free to view our site, which currently includes a mock-issue with an example of the format of published works (http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/ypmc/index). We will be accepting both scholarly essays and creative writing pieces.

ARCYP / Children’s Studies Program Symposium 2011

September 8, 2011

ARCYP / Children’s Studies Program Symposium 2011 CHILDREN’S MATERIAL CULTURES
York University - Friday October 21, 2011 – 1:00 – 4:30 p.m.

On Friday October 21, 2011, from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m., the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People (ARCYP) and the Children’s Studies Program at York University will co-present a symposium on new research in Children’s Material Cultures. The symposium is free and open to all faculty and students in the Children’s Studies Program as well as to other interested people from York and beyond. Presenters will include ARCYP Executive members and York Children’s Studies Program faculty and students.

The symposium will consist of two panels/roundtables and open discussion on new and emerging research on children’s material cultures, and will include time for refreshments and socializing and meeting with the presenters.

CALL FOR BRIEF PAPER PROPOSALS

ARCYP Executive Members, ARCYP Members, and interested York Children’s Studies Faculty or students are invited to send a TITLE and ONE BRIEF PARAGRAPH describing their proposed 15-20-minute presentation to the symposium coordinator in an e-mail message to admin@arcyp.ca no later than Friday September 23 so that the event can be publicized appropriately.

Description

For the purposes of this symposium, children’s material culture is understood to refer to those things that are central to the way meaningfulness and relationality are constituted, negotiated, and made anew within the diverse and globalized contexts of young people’s contemporary lives. This includes the practices through which children’s things - including toys, games, literatures and technologies – are used and consumed, and the way such things (and their associated practices) are situated in relation to particular contexts and to questions of political economy, gender, race and sexuality. While children and youth in the global North and South continue to be the site of an immense set of challenges, pressures, and risks – that have to do with the environment, war, health, politics, the economy, and the role of new technologies – that shape young people’s mobility, opportunity, and sense of the future, this symposium seeks new research that examines how and in what ways children’s things are implicated in and, in some instances, an antidote to the above risks. This includes work that addresses the amplified role of consumerism as a constituent feature of the children’s material cultures and work that examines how this culture operates in the spaces and places children call home.

Topics for the symposium may include but are not limited to the following:

research from various methodological traditions – including phenomenology, cultural studies, and ethnography – that addresses children’s use of games, toys, and technologies as a feature of play, work, or education
research that examines the changing nature of consumerism and consumer practices in children’s material culture
research that examines the role of things (toys, games, and technologies) in relation to children’s socialization

More generally, we are interested in:

materialist-feminist criticism and analyses of children’s literature and culture
materialist analyses of post-colonial children’s literature and culture
the political economy of children’s literature and culture

Contact: Stuart Poyntz, Symposium Coordinator
admin@arcyp.ca

CFP - The Same Text but Different: Variants in Children’s Media

September 7, 2011

Children’s Literature Symposium: Critical Perspectives on Children’s and Young Adult Literature

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Same Text but Different: Variants in Children’s Media
February 3-4, 2012
The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Perry Nodelman

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS: October 15, 2011
NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: November 15, 2011

Conference Website: http://www.ChildrensLiteratureSymposium.org

About the Children’s Literature Symposium

Each year, the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee organizes a symposium centered on issues related to the study of children’s and young adult literature. The overarching goal of these symposia is to explore children’s and young adult literature through scholarship, research, and criticism: approaching children’s and young adult literature as genres, as opposed to indications of readership. The Children’s Literature Symposium (CLS) provides a program through which participants engage with critical and theoretical perspectives on children’s and young adult literature. Through presentations that address contemporary issues and trends affecting children’s and young adult literature, media, and culture, the CLS aims to engage professionals from the fields of English, education, and library/media science in scholarly discussions about children’s and young adult literature. Themes selected for CLS conferences both reflect current trends (or currently ignored but potentially significant areas) and work to shape where and how children’s literature studies might most usefully move forward. Undergirding the decision to focus each CLS on a specific topic is a belief in the value of a group of contributors all working in and around similar issues.

2012 Children’s Literature Symposium Theme

This year, the CLS Steering and Planning Committees invite proposals from scholars, critics, researchers, librarians, educators, children’s book authors and illustrators, and graduate students for presentations that address the topic of "variants" in children’s and young adult literature: books with plots built upon folklore or other previously written tales. Interest in variants is hardly new, and ultimately, all texts build upon one another. However, recent increases in the publication of picturebooks, novels, and releases of other media (such as film and video games) with plots or structures that draw on folklore (e.g., Gidwitz’s [2010] A Tale Dark and Grimm, Weston’s [2010] Dust City), the work of authors like William Shakespeare(e.g., Dionne’s [2010] The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet, Stone’s [2011] The Romeo and Juliet Code, Ray’s [2011] Falling for Hamlet), Henry James (e.g., Griffin’s [2011] Tighter), or Jules Verne (e.g., Blackwood’s [2010] "sort of sequel," Around the World in 100 Days), or composers like Vivaldi (e.g., Zalben’s [2011] Four Seasons: A Novel in Four Movements) suggest a renewed cultural fascination with texts that "play" with other texts. In addition, single texts have been adapted across media: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002), for example, has been released as both a 2009 feature film and as a 2008 graphic novel (adapted and illustrated by P. Craig Russell).

Through this year’s symposium, we seek to further discussions and enrich understandings of both historical and contemporary children’s and young adult literature and media that lean on, contradict, or extend other texts—privileging some at the expense of others. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

Literary lore, fractured fairy tales, and the authorial use (and/or abuse) of folklore
Cultural literacy and cultural capital
Reinscribing and disrupting media Canons
Shifting audiences: retellings or the appropriation of children’s texts for adults (or "adult" texts being retold or appropriated by/for children)
Variants as/in translation
Fanfiction, slash fiction, and other reader-created retellings
Re-writing of "mainstream" texts by traditionally marginalized populations (i.e., people of color, queer sexualities)
Theories of variation in narrative and poetic structures (generally—and in texts for young people explicitly)

We invite abstracts (of approximately 250-500 words) for individual paper presentations or virtual papers treating critical concerns in children’s and young adult literature. While all proposals will be considered, preference will be given to those which focus on most clearly on the conference theme.

Proposals must be submitted electronically to the symposium website, http://www.ChildrensLiteratureSymposium.org on or before October 15, 2011. Proposals will undergo a process of blind review, and presenters will be notified of the results on or before November 15, 2011. Receipt of proposals will be confirmed via email within 24 hours of submission.

CFP - Troubling Normativity: Race/Whiteness in the Popular Cultures Of Young People

August 19, 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS - Troubling Normativity: Race/Whiteness in the Popular Cultures Of Young People
A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE
AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO AND WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY, WATERLOO, ONTARIO
MAY 28-31, 2012
DEADLINE: November 15, 2011

This panel invites papers that use race/whiteness as a framing or entry point for critical inquiries into popular culture produced for, about, or by young people. How are systems of racialization, whiteness, and normativity produced and consumed, secured and maintained, or contested and countered? Do contemporary cultural industries affiliated with young people's texts and cultures (television, music, film, video games, publishing, theatre, etc.) challenge what Stuart Hall has famously characterized as "racialised regimes of representation" (1997) and the naturalization of racial hegemony? How does race become meaningful in relation to multicultural clichés of diversity and harmony? How does race function as co-constituent with class, sexuality, and gender?

Possible topics with a focus on race/whiteness in popular culture produced for, about, or by young people might include (but are not limited to) the following:

popular music (K'naan, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, etc.);
popular film (Shrek, The Princess and the Frog, etc.);
video games (Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, etc.);
"tween" culture (the Obama girls, Hello Kitty, etc.);
television (Dora the Explorer, Sesame Street, etc.);
literature (The Hunger Games, Twilight, etc.).

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.

CFP - Youth,(Imaginary) Borders, and the Nation State

August 19, 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS: Youth,(Imaginary) Borders, and the Nation State
A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO AND WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY, WATERLOO, ONTARIO
MAY 28-31, 2012
DEADLINE: November 15, 2011

The nation is a fractured space today, constituted with various institutional and imaginary boundaries that shape experiences of belonging, identity, and childhood. Some boundaries are geographic, such as the borders between the Canadian provinces or between neighbouring countries. Some are related to language – for instance, the boundary between the "two solitudes" in Canada – or relate to the passage of time – for instance, the boundaries between childhood, adolescence and adulthood. These boundaries may be defined as limits never or hardly ever crossed, or as opportunities for youth to grow and mature. Given this, we invite papers that explore and complicate the relationship of youth to imaginary boundaries.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

young adult and children's literature in translation and the process of translating;
young adult bilingual/ multilingual literature;
(imaginary) borders and young people's electronic and digitally mediated texts;
young people's experiences in other countries or provinces, and volunteering abroad;
bilingual and multilingual youth experience.

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.

CFP - Youth Creators, Thinkers, and Expressions of "Child Consciousness"

August 19, 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS: Youth Creators, Thinkers, and Expressions of "Child Consciousness"
A JOINT SESSION OF ARCYP AND ACCUTE AT THE CONGRESS OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO AND WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY, WATERLOO, ONTARIO
MAY 28-31, 2012
DEADLINE: November 15, 2011

For Merleau-Ponty, the danger of "dogmatic rationalism" in psychological models of development is the creation of a false dichotomy between two "impermeable" mentalities – that of the child and that of the adult – a hierarchy that fixes "adult experience within concepts such as the 'representation of the world'" and "renders communication between the adult and the child theoretically impossible." These quagmires are vindicated for Merleau-Ponty by the "extraordinary 'anticipations' of the child's thought." We invite papers that analyze various examples of child and youth creative and philosophical consciousness and cultural production. How do young creators and thinkers disrupt the notion that the products of their thought are defined as extraordinary for what they 'anticipate' rather than for what they 'are'? How do they make permeable the division between adult and child/youth experiences, 'representations of the world,' and effective knowledge?

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

young people as creators of culture and cultural expression;
young people as co-creators or collaborators;
young people as scholars, philosophers, theorists;
young people’s writing, visual art, film;
youth and digital media, such as YouTube, blogs, fan fiction, etc.;
the material conditions, dissemination, and transmission of youth cultural and philosophical thought and expression.

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.

Fairy Tale Film Symposium at U of W

August 5, 2011

All are invited to participate in a Fairy Tale Film Symposium at the University of Winnipeg. Visiting scholars Cristina Bacchilega, Professor of English at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa; Sidney Eve Matrix, Queen’s National Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Film at Queen’s University; and Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota will each discuss their latest research, on Monday, August 15 from 1:30 to 5:30 pm in 2M70.

For more information please visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/186973328024809?ap=1#!/event.php?eid=193978003989963 or contact Pauline Greenhill at p.greenhill@uwinnipeg.ca.

IBBY Announces Nominees for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards 2012

May 20, 2011

The Hans Christian Andersen Awards are presented every two years by IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) to an author and an illustrator whose complete works have made an important and lasting contribution to children’s literature. IBBY National Sections from 33 countries have made their selections, submitting the following 28 authors and 31 illustrators as candidates for the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Awards:

Argentina: Author: Maria Teresa Andruetto; Illustrator: Pablo Bernasconi
Australia: Author: Christobel Mattingley; Illustrator: Bob Graham
Austria: Author: Monika Pelz; Illustrator: Renate Habinger
Belgium: Author: Bart Moeyaert; Illustrator: Louis Joos
Brazil: Author: Bartolomeu Campos de Queiros; Illustrator: Roger Mello
Canada: Author: Tim Wynne-Jones; Illustrator: Stephane Jorisch
Cyprus: Author: Elli Peonidou
Czech Republic: Illustrator: Peter Sis
Denmark: Author: Lene Kaaberbol; Illustrator: Charlotte Pardi
Finland: Author: Sinikka Nopola / Tiina Nopola; Illustrator: Virpi Talvitie
France: Author: Jean-Claude Mourlevat; Illustrator: Henri Galeron
Germany: Author: Paul Maar; Illustrator: Rotraut Susanne Berner
Greece: Author: Christos Boulotis; Illustrator: Effie Lada
Iran: Illustrator: Mohammad Ali Baniasadi
Ireland: Author: Eoin Colfer
Italy: Author: Bianca Pitzorno; Illustrator: Francesco Tullio-Altan
Japan: Author: Masamoto Nasu; Illustrator: Satoshi Kako
Republic of Korea: Author: Hwang Sun-Mi; Illustrator: Hong Seong-Chan
Latvia: Illustrator: Anita Paegle
Netherlands: Author: Tonke Dragt; Illustrator: Annemarie van Haeringen
Norway: Author: Bjorn Sortland; Illustrator: Oyvind Torseter
Romania: Author: Silvia Kerim; Illustrator: Valeria Moldovan
Russia: Illustrator: Gennadij Spirin
Serbia: Author: Ljubivoje Rsumovic; Illustrator: Dobrosav Zivkovic
Slovak Republic: Author: Daniel Hevier Illustrator: Peter Uchnar
Slovenia: Author: Tone Pavcek; Illustrator: Alenka Sottler
Spain: Author: Agustin Fernandez Paz; Illustrator: Javier Zabala Herrero
Sweden: Lennart Hellsing; Illustrator: Anna-Clara Tidholm
Switzerland: Author: Franz Hohler; Illustrator: Kathrin Scharer
Turkey: Author: Sevim Ak; Illustrator: Feridun Oral
United Kingdom: Author: Philip Pullman; Illustrator: John Burningham
USA: Author: Paul Fleischman; Illustrator: Chris Raschka
Venezuela: Illustrator: Arnal Balleste

The elected Chair of the International Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury, Maria Jesus Gil (Spain) and Jury members from Argentina, Austria, Brazil, France, Greece, Iran, Russia, Sweden, Turkey and the United States of America, will meet on 10-11 March 2012 and the shortlist will be disseminated immediately. The winners will be announced at the IBBY Press Conference at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair on Monday, 19 March 2012.

For more information about IBBY’s programme and current projects please contact the IBBY Secretariat or visit: http://www.ibby.org.

IBBY CANADA CALL FOR PROPOSALS: FRANCES E. RUSSELL GRANT

April 4, 2011

The Canadian National Section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY Canada) is now accepting proposals for the 2011 Frances E. Russell Grant. The $1,000 grant is intended to support IBBY Canada’s mission "to initiate and encourage research in young people’s literature in all its forms" and is given in support of research for a publishable work (a book or a paper) on Canadian children’s literature.

The deadline for proposals, which may be submitted in English or in French, is May 1, 2011. The grant supports scholarly work only; works of fiction are not eligible. The types of works that are eligible for the 2011 Frances E. Russell Grant include:

Studies of individual authors and their work, especially if considered in their socio-historical context.
Comparative studies of two or more authors, which illuminate their stylistic differences, or consider their social and historical approaches.
Subject/Genre overviews, for example, Canadian fantasy or historical fiction.
Biographical studies of Canadian children’s authors or illustrators.
Studies of Canadian children’s illustrators and their work.
Related subjects including contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of Canadian children’s literature.
Research for children’s fiction or non-fiction based on Canadian topics or subjects.

Three copies of the following materials are required: a proposal, a curriculum vitae, a synopsis of methods and stages by which the applicant will pursue the research, and a summary of what the funds are to be used for. The competition is open to Canadian citizens or landed immigrants. Please send proposals to:

IBBY Canada c/o The Canadian Children’s Book Centre
Suite 101, 40 Orchard View Blvd.
Toronto, ON M4R 1B9

Attention: Deirdre Baker, Frances E. Russell Grant Chair

A jury, appointed by IBBY Canada, will select the successful applicant by June 1, 2011.

ABOUT IBBY AND THE FRANCES E. RUSSELL GRANT

The Frances E. Russell Grant was established by the late Marjorie Russell in memory of her sister, a long time supporter of IBBY Canada. Past winners include Vivian Howard, Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman, Michelle Mulder, Andre Gagnon, Ronald Jobe, Carole Carpenter, Linda Granfield, and Francoise Lepage. For more information about the Frances E. Russell Grant, please visit the IBBY Canada web site at www.ibby-canada.org or write to info@ibby-canada.org.

The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) believes in the ability of children’s books to bridge cultures and, ultimately, to promote peace. Jella Lepman, founder of the International Youth Library, started IBBY in 1953 in postwar Germany. Her goal was to promote international understanding through children’s books. Established in 1980, IBBY Canada is one of more than seventy sections worldwide.

"The new tween heroine in The Chronicles of Narnia and Coraline: Rewriting discourses of identity through cross-media narratives" - A Lecture by Naomi Hamer

March 4, 2011

CRYTC is pleased to present a lecture by Dr. Naomi Hamer, who teaches in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Hamer will be delivering a lecture entitled, "The new tween heroine in The Chronicles of Narnia and Coraline: Rewriting discourses of identity through cross-media narratives," on March 9, 2011. This event will take place at 12:30PM in 1L04.

Dr. Hamer recently completed her doctorate in cross-media texts and the literacies of tween girls, at the Centre for Research on Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. Her research focuses on cross-media adaptation, franchising and audience cultures, and questions relating to gender and sexuality in texts for children and young people.

"The Graphic Strategy of Skim: The Adaptation of Ukiyo-e, a Japanese print, in the graphic novel by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki" - A Lecture by Sumiko Shirai

February 22, 2011

CRYTC is pleased to present a lecture by Dr. Sumiko Shirai, Professor in the Department of Children’s Literature and Culture at Shirayuri College in Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Shirai will be delivering a lecture entitled, "The Graphic Strategy of Skim: The Adaptation of Ukiyo-e, a Japanese print, in the graphic novel by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki," on March 2, 2011. This event will take place at 12:30PM in 1L04.

Skim, a graphic novel by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, tells a coming-of-age story that includes suicide, depression, and homosexual love. Dr. Shirai will speak about the likeness between the image of the heroine Skim and the image of "Beautiful Women" in traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

Vladimir Nabokov and the Poetics of the Child by Paul Morris

February 9, 2011

Date: Thursday, February 10, 2011
Time: 2:30 PM
Location: 409 Tier Bldg, University of Manitoba

Central and East European Lecture Series speaker, Dr. Paul Morris

Children and images of childhood play a prominent role in the writing of Vladimir Nabokov, a multilingual Russian-American writer most famous in North America as the author of Lolita (1955). While the motif of children in Nabokov’s oeuvre is multi-faceted, the fate of these fictional children usually is not. Frequently, they suffer and die. Nabokov criticism has wrestled with the troubling implications of these repeated depictions of pain and suffering. A common reading has been to suggest that the image of the child serves as metaphoric representation of the fragility and transience of life and, likewise, as an extreme expression of evil. Paul Morris offers an analysis which partakes of this interpretation and expands it considerably. With a reading based primarily on Nabokov’s poetry, he suggests that the child in Nabokov’s writing is more than an image of primarily thematic importance. The child functions as an essential element in Nabokov’s poetics and represents a defining feature of his distinctive authorial voice.

Dr. Paul Morris teaches translation at the College universitaire de Saint-Boniface. He has published on a variety of topics related to Canadian, American and Slavic literatures. His Vladimir Nabokov: Poetry and the Lyric Voice appeared in March 2010 with the University of Toronto Press.

Mavis Reimer Skywalk Lecture

February 7, 2011

On February 9, 2011, Mavis Reimer will be presenting a lecture entitled "Operation Go Homeless: Street Kids in Canadian Children’s Literature" as part of the Winnipeg Public Library’s Skywalk Series.

The lecture takes place at noon in the Carol Shields Auditorium at the Millennium Library, 251 Donald Street.

In the Skywalk Lecture Series, the leading teachers and researchers from The University of Winnipeg inform, engage, and challenge you on topics of broad historical, political and scientific interest.

Youth, Citizenship, Rights Symposium at York University

January 20, 2011

ARCYP and York University’s Children’s Studies Program are sponsoring the Youth, Citizenship, Rights Symposium on January 22, 2011. Members of the ARCYP Executive, scholars from various disciplines from across Canada, Children’s Studies faculty and senior students and children will address their research in relation to youth, rights, and citizenship in papers presented in three short panels, including open discussion. The symposium will be held in Vanier College Senior Common Room (010 Vanier College), and admission is free.

Panels include Citizenship: At Home, At School, and On the Street; Children, Rights, and the Aesthetic of Citizenship; and Citizenship within the Digital Domain.

See http://arcyp.ca for more information.

ChLA Research Grant Opportunities

January 18, 2011

Each year the Children’s Literature Association provides grants in two categories--Faculty Research and Graduate Student Research. These are competitive grants that vary in award amount from $500 to $1500, based on the number and needs of the winning applicants. Up to $5,000 is available to be awarded in each category.

Further details about criteria and application procedure for the ChLA Faculty Research Grants can be found at http://www.childlitassn.org/faculty_grant.html.

Further details about criteria and application procedure for the Hannah Beiter Graduate Student Research Grants can be found at http://www.childlitassn.org/beiter_grant.html.

Applications will be accepted from now through February 1, 2011. Any questions about eligibility of projects or other matters relating to the grants should be directed to the Grants Committee Chair, Susan Stan, at stan1sm@cmich.edu or to the ChLA Administrator, Kathy Kiessling, at kkiessling@childlitassn.org.

CFP - Revolt, Rebellion, Protest: Change and Insurrection in Children’s Literature

January 11, 2011

Revolt, Rebellion, Protest: Change and Insurrection in Children’s Literature
June 23-25, 2011
Hollins University - Roanoke, Virginia

Call for Papers

Revolution, upheaval, protest, and cultural change have swept over the world in repeating cycles since civilization began and literature for children has encouraged those changes or deplored them, but always recorded them in its pages. So in 2011, at the 38th Annual Children’s Literature Association Conference, we will look at the way and speed at which our world is changing, through the lens of children’s literature. We will consider how children’s literature and characters in children’s literature, in all media from books to video games, institute change, transgress the norm, protest the status quo or seek to protect it.

We also welcome papers on the work of Virginia Euwer Wolff, winner of the 2011 Phoenix Award for her novel The Mozart Season.

Some suggested topics follow, but other ideas are welcome and encouraged:

The idealization of the past in children’s literature
Patriotism and children’s literature
The "red diaper babies," children of leftist or radical parents
Competing historical visions (Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Disney’s Song of the South for instance)
Historical fiction vs. works written during the revolution itself
The trickster figure in children’s literature
The American Revolution, the French Revolution, or the English Civil War
Children’s Literature as a mirror of changing socials values and norms
Explorations of racial and gender discrimination in children’s literature
The use of fantastic worlds and settings to explore traditionally taboo topics
Visions of society in series such as "Dear America" and the "American Girl" books
Depictions of the civil rights, anti-war, and women’s movements of the last century
Censorship and children’s literature
The "problem book" and championing a cause
Literature of the immigrant child
Chicano and Latino children’s literature
Historical context and changing social values - how a text may be enlightened for its time and embarrassing in our own

Send 300-500 word paper proposals to Kathryn Graham, paper selection committee chair, at chla2011@vt.edu. Deadline January 15, 2011.

For more information and conference updates go to: www.hollins.edu/chla2011

Mavis Reimer Renewed as Canada Research Chair in Young People’s Texts and Cultures

November 26, 2010

The University of Winnipeg is pleased to announce the renewal of Dr. Mavis Reimer’s appointment as Canada Research Chair in Young People’s Texts and Cultures.

Dr. Reimer is receiving a renewal of her current Tier II award, which is over a five-year term at $100,000/year. She will continue to direct the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures in its scholarly inquiry into literary, media, and other cultural texts for children and youth. In her first five-year term, Dr. Reimer was very successful in expanding this area of research, bringing world-renowned visiting scholars to the University and making the University of Winnipeg an internationally recognized institution in this research field. She was also instrumental in the creation of the Masters in Cultural Studies. For more information on CRYTC’s projects, click here.

The Canada Research Chairs program stands at the centre of a national strategy to make Canada one of the top countries in research and development. The program invests $300-million per year to attract and retain some of the world’s most accomplished and promising minds. To learn more about this program, visit the Canada Research Chairs website.

"No Man on The Island: Emotions, Ethics, and the Politics of Recognition" - A Lecture by Dr. Debra Dudek

November 23, 2010

CRYTC is pleased to present a lecture by Dr. Debra Dudek, Lecturer in the School of English Literatures, Philosophy and Languages at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Dr. Dudek will be delivering a lecture entitled, "No Man on The Island: Emotions, Ethics, and the Politics of Recognition," on December 10, 2010. This event will take place from 1:30PM - 3:00PM in 2M70.

This talk focuses on how representations of displacement present young readers with ethical dilemmas relating to displaced beings as objects of fear and compassion and as triggers to social justice. Narratives which work overtly to encourage an ethical action often rely on an emotional engagement with—-or a compassionate response to—-the story and/or with a particular character. In two recent picture books both titled The Island, readers bear witness to unethical behaviour by a group, behaviour that is offset by the compassionate actions of an individual. In these narratives, readers both recognize themselves and acknowledge others, which leads to an understanding of how the ethical actions of an individual can challenge group belief systems. These two picture books exemplify a growing body of literature for young people that demonstrates the importance of recognizing emotional engagement as a key component of ethical action.

Download flyer here.

Girls, Texts, Cultures Symposium at U of W

September 30, 2010

Clare Bradford, our Visiting Trudeau Fellow, and the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures will be hosting a symposium entitled "Girls, Texts, Cultures" at the University of Winnipeg from October 15 to 17.

This symposium will feature nine panels with scholars from Canada, Australia, the USA and the UK. The panels will cover topics from Cross-Media and Digital Girls to Cultural Imperatives and Texts for Girls to Girls Performing.

All panels will take place in the CFIR Boardroom (4CM41).

Download the program here.

CFP – Congress 2011 – War, Militarization, & Childhood

August 16, 2010

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 http://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 print and share the CFP at the ARCYP website.

CFP – Congress 2011 – Commotions: Geographies of Migration & Young People’s Cultures

August 16, 2010

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.

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 print or forward the CFP at ARCYP website.

CFP – Congress 2011 – Young People’s Cultures & Games, Gaming, and Play

August 16, 2010

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.

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 print or forward the CFP at the ARCYP website.

Mavis Reimer on CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup

August 16, 2010

Mavis Reimer, Canada Research Chair in the Culture of Childhood, just made an appearance on CBC Radio One’s Cross Country Checkup to discuss their topic of "Can you ever really return home?" on August 15, 2010.

Visit our Media Page to listen to the podcast.

Graduate Conference - National and Global Imaginaries: Culture, Community, Mobility

July 20, 2010

Diana Brydon will be hosting a graduate student conference as the culmination of her spring seminar Topics in Local, National and Global Cultures: National and Global Imaginaries: Culture, Community, Citizenship.

The conference will be held on Thursday, July 29 in 2M70. See this program for details.

Immediately following the end of the graduate mini-conference there will be a reception hosted by the Department of English to honour this year’s cohort of graduate students - the very first for this program. This will also take place in 2M70 from 3:00PM to 6:00PM.

Call For Papers: Fear and Safety in Children’s Literature

July 9, 2010

Fear and Safety in Children’s Literature
Call For Papers

20th Biennial Congress of IRSCL 4-8 July 2011
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Children’s literature has always been responsive to the tenor of the times. Texts for children and young adults take up the social, political, and humanistic interests and ideologies of the past and present, as well as speculate about the future. Since the earliest fairy tales, children’s writers have given imaginative interpretation to the darker, riskier side of society, while also offering reassurance, hope, and celebration of the human spirit.

The Congress will address a range of critically important topics, texts, and theories related to the theme of Fear and Safety in Children’s Literature. Confirmed keynote speakers are: Professor Mavis Reimer, Canada Chair in the Culture of Childhood, University of Winnipeg; Professor David Buckingham, Director of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, London University (UK); and Professor Gillian Whitlock, University of Queensland (Australia).

Submissions for abstracts open: July 19, 2010

Closing date: November 1, 2010

Please visit the Congress website for details: http://irscl2011.com/.

Call For Papers - Childhoods Conference: Mapping the Landscapes of Childhood

June 22, 2010

Venue: University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
Date: Thursday, May 5 – Saturday, May 7, 2011

This multidisciplinary conference will engage scholars and practitioners from a wide variety of academic disciplines (including the sciences, arts, humanities, social sciences, policy studies, and education) in a consideration of the state of child studies, which has changed significantly in recent decades. Disciplines long dedicated to the study of the child, and childhood, have been recently revitalized and are engaged with the central problematic of what the child and childhood represent, including how these categories relate to others such as infant and youth. Figured in the plural, childhoods pose a significant crossroads for theoretical and empirical work on the nature of being human and development broadly construed. Various disciplines consider childhood as an experience, as a biological fact, as a social category, as an artistic and literary construct, as a category for historical and demographic analysis, as a category of personhood, and as a locus for human rights and policy interventions. Participating scholars will examine childhoods of the past, present, and future from around the world, and will present research results, policy approaches, and theoretical paradigms that are emergent in this re-engagement with the child and childhood. Bringing together divergent networks of expertise, this conference offers the opportunity for new research collaborations and the scholarly dissemination of innovative research.

Conference Format: three days of multidisciplinary panels with scholarly presentations on conference themes; poster sessions; several keynote events; practitioner sessions; and a film night.

Conference Themes and Questions: definitions and boundaries of childhood: invented or discovered?; indigenous theories and experiences of childhood; the importance of gender; the impact of globalization; the impact of changing technologies on children and childhood, and on the study of children and childhood; concepts of adolescence; vulnerability and empowerment; and health, development, disability, and risk. Proposals for papers on additional themes will also be considered.

Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Patrizia Albanese (Co-director of the Centre for Children, Youth and Families, Ryerson University)
Dr. Mona Gleason (Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia)
Dr. Allison James (Professor of Sociology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences, University of Sheffield)
Dr. Perry Nodelman (Professor Emeritus, Department of English, University of Winnipeg)
Dr. Mavis Reimer (Canada Research Chair in the Culture of Childhood and Director of the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures, University of Winnipeg)
Dr. Richard Tremblay (Director, Research Unit on Children’s Psychosocial Maladjustment, University of Montreal)

Submission Guidelines: For presentations, and for posters, please submit a 300 to 500 word proposal/abstract by October 1, 2010 on the conference website: www.uleth.ca/conreg/childhoods/. Proposals for organized panels that are multidisciplinary are also welcome. Please note that presentations should be a maximum of 20 minutes in length. We would especially like to encourage graduate students to contribute posters on their current research and will offer a prize for best student poster.

For more information and to submit abstracts, please see the conference website http://www.uleth.ca/conferences/childhood. For general inquiries, please contact childhoods@uleth.ca.

New Listserve for Childhood Studies

June 3, 2010

The Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden are excited to announce a new listserve catering to the multi-disciplinary field of Childhood Studies. Those of us who study issues around children and childhood are in far flung departments and professions, separated by disciplinary boundaries. This listserve will be a vital point of connection for scholars and practitioners in the multi-disciplinary field and serve a much needed function as a central clearinghouse of information for our disparate field. We welcome calls for papers, announcements of conferences, events, new books, articles and other resources, requests for information, and information on new programs and departments. This list will also provide an opportunity to find people with similar interests across our broad field and open up discussion within it.

To join, please go to: https://email.rutgers.edu/mailman/listinfo/exploring_childhood_studies

Patrick Cox and Anandini Dar Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/

Folklore Talks at U of W

May 25, 2010

On Wednesday, May 26 (9-10:30 am, 3M61), you’re invited to a special sneak preview of several papers on folklore and gender, presented by UW faculty and students; these talks will be presented at the Folklore Studies Association of Canada meeting this weekend.

The presenters are Marcie Fehr, Kendra Magnusson, Emilie-Anderson Gregoire, Anita Best, Pauline Greenhill, and Catherine Tosenberger. Come and hear discussion of Canadian folk practices, Halloween costumes, and fairy tales!

"…And This Is My Garden" Documentary Screening

May 20, 2010

“… And This is My Garden”, a new documentary from Winnipeg filmmaker Katharina Stieffenhofer, explores an innovative school gardening program that is breaking new ground in education and literally growing a healthier community in the process. The documentary, produced in association with Buffalo Gal Pictures, will screen at Cinematheque May 21 – 23.

“…And This is My Garden” is set in the small northern community of Wabowden, Manitoba, where schoolteacher Eleanor Woitowicz is spearheading an education-based sustainable food movement called the Mel Johnson School Gardening Project. This initiative, based on the Frontier School Division’s science curriculum “Veggie Adventures”, was introduced into the Mel Johnson School in 2006. Woitowicz teaches students how to take care of their own backyard vegetable gardens and reap the rewards of growing their own chemical-free food.

Students develop valuable skills in sustainable food production, healthy lifestyle choices and food preparation, while fostering a sense of responsibility, pride and increased self-esteem. Woitowicz was awarded a Manitoba Excellence in Sustainability Award by the Manitoba Government for her educational efforts in 2009.

The success of the Mel Johnson School Gardening project has already caught the attention of many influential organizations including the David Suzuki Foundation & Manitoba Conservation. On May 5, 2010 - following an invitation by the United Nations - the teachers presented on their Mel Johnson School Gardening Project to the UN Committee on Sustainable Development in New York as one of three projects chosen out of sixty from thirty countries.

Screening: Cinematheque, Art Space Bldg., 100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg, (204) 925-3457

Fri May 21, 2010 at 7:00 PM
Sat May 22, 2010 at 7:00 PM
Sun May 23, 2010 at 4:00 PM

For more information, see: http://www.winnipegfilmgroup.com/cinematheque/and_this_is_my_garden.aspx

New Virtual Canadian Studies Course: Multicultural Ideology in Canadian Children’s Literature

April 16, 2010

The Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries is offering an online course on "Multicultural Ideology in Canadian Children’s Literature" for the first time. It will be taught within the framework of its successful program of Virtual Canadian Studies. The course is open to undergraduate as well as graduate students enrolled at any university worldwide (the language of instruction will be English) and will thus offer a great opportunity to participate in an international class and discuss literature from different perspectives. Participants can earn 3 to 7 credit points in this course and - upon successful completion - they will receive a certificate from the Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries stating credit points and percentage, which their home universities have to validate in their own system. Registration deadline is April 23; the course will start on May 3 and continue for 12 weeks.

Download the flyer here.

IRSCL Symposium on International Texts for Young People

April 13, 2010

The Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures, in association with the International Research Society for Children’s Literature, will host a symposium on international children’s literature on April 29 from 2:30PM to 4:30PM in 2M70 at the University of Winnipeg.

This symposium will feature talks by IRSCL Board Members, including Dr. Clare Bradford (Australia), Dr. Helene Ehriander (Sweden), Dr. Hans-Heino Ewers (Germany), Dr. Kerry Mallan (Australia), Dr. Rose May Pham Dinh (France), and Dr. Mavis Reimer (Canada). Each scholar will be presenting on trends in texts for young people from his/her own country.

Download the flyer here.

U of W Grad Student Wins ChLA Graduate Essay Award

March 29, 2010

The Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures would like to congratulate University of Winnipeg Graduate Student, Kendra Magnusson on winning the 2010 ChLA Graduate Essay Award.

The judging panel for the 2010 Graduate Student Essay Award sponsored by the Children’s Literature Association has selected Kendra’s essay, "Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: Daniel Handler and Marketing the Author," as the winner of this year’s master’s level competition.

As a winner of this year’s master’s award, Kendra is invited to present her winning paper at the 2010 ChLA Conference, which will be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from June 10-12.

Perry Nodelman Book Signing: The Hunt for the Haunted Elephant

March 26, 2010

Perry Nodelman will be at McNally Robinson Grant Park on April 17 from 2:00PM to 3:30PM to sign his latest children’s book The Hunt for the Haunted Elephant, which he co-wrote with Carol Matas. The Hunt for the Haunted Elephant is the third book in their Ghosthunters series.

Interested Fictions: What Children’s Literature Can Tell Us - Lecture by Dr. Clare Bradford

March 9, 2010

The Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures is proud to present Dr. Clare Bradford’s lecture, "Interested Fictions: What Children’s Literature Can Tell Us," as part of Inaugural Lecture Series at the University of Winnipeg.

Dr. Bradford is the Visiting Trudeau Fellow at CRYTC.

Date: April 7, 2010
Time: 12:30PM - 1:30PM
Where: 3D01

Refreshments will be served.

Download the event poster here.

ARCYP and YoungCuts present Film ’N Youth at 2010 Congress

February 19, 2010

To kick off the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People’s activities at 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Concordia University, ARCYP is teaming up with YoungCuts to present Film ’N Youth, a showcase of short films by youth.

Date: May 30, 2010
Time: 4:00PM - 5:30PM
Place: EV 3.760, Concordia University
Cost: Free!

Click here for further details.

ARCYP at 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences

February 19, 2010

The Association for Research in Cultures of Young People will be running an entire day of panel presentations on May 31, 2010 at this year’s Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Concordia University.

Join us for three panel sessions (Hope and Change?: Young People’s Cultures and Social Justice, Childhood and Nature, The Child and the City) and a roundtable called Participatory Ontologies and Youth Cultures.

Click here for the complete schedule. Room numbers are TBA.

The Environmental Imagination and Children’s Literature Symposium at University of Toronto

February 4, 2010

THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINATION AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE will feature renowned children’s authors from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.: David Almond, M.T. Anderson, Susan Cooper, Sarah Ellis and Tim Wynne-Jones.

They will be joined by Professor Lawrence Buell, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University and Professor Marguerite Holloway, professor of science and environmental issues journalism at the Journalism School, Columbia University.

Academics and university students, writers and illustrators, teachers, librarians, publishers and editors -anyone eager to think hard about children’s literature is invited to this fest of thinking readers and writers. Interested high school students are also welcome.

What makes the imagination in children’s books “environmental”? What do climatologists and botanists, children’s writers and artists, and the playing child have in common? Examining the stuff of which children’s books are made - words and pictures - some of the world’s leading children’s writers and experts on literature will look at the way children’s books create and critique the environment and environmental issues. Why is wilderness necessary in writing as in the natural world? How do miniature characters change a child’s environmental imagination? What happens when fantasy takes on the climate? What do “affluence, effluents, dancing cows, and forty-two pounds of edible fungus” have to do with the child’s relationship to the natural world?

March 5/6, 2010 at Trinity College, University of Toronto

http://www.trinity.utoronto.ca/News_Events/Events/clc.htm

Jeunesse Editor Catherine Tosenberger at MLA’s Chat With An Editor

November 30, 2009

On Monday December 28, Jeunesse editor, Dr. Catherine Tosenberger will be participating in the "Chat with an Editor" session at the MLA Convention in Philadelphia. Dr. Tosenberger will be on from 4:00PM to 5:00PM.

For the past ten years, in an effort to help younger scholars submitting their work to journals, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, an Allied Organization of MLA, has sponsored "Chat with an Editor" at the MLA Convention. With so many requests from editors and authors to keep this program going, the MLA has stepped forward to officially sponsor these sessions, which will now take place in the room the MLA maintains for certain associated organizations.

The service gives scholars the opportunity to meet one-on-one with an experienced editor to discuss any aspect of the publication process. It is not an article vetting service, but rather a chance for authors to obtain advice on any aspect of writing, submitting, and publishing a journal article, in a neutral and friendly atmosphere. Advisors and advisees will meet in Room 203-B of the Philadelphia Convention Center. (Please note the chats will not take place in the book exhibit hall). In recent years, about half of the advisees have been graduate students and half have been assistant professors, postdocs, adjunct or part-time professors, and independent scholars.

For more information about this event, see here.

CFP: Nationalism(s) and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood

October 20, 2009

Deadlines: 15 November 2009 and 1 February 2010

This proposed collection of essays seeks to address the interplay between nationalism (or nationalisms) and cultural memory in a range of texts for or about young people, including books, periodicals, films, television series, games, tourism sites, websites, and archives. The overall collection will be concerned with the ways in which cultural memory is shaped, contested, forgotten, recovered, and (re)circulated, sometimes in opposition to dominant national narratives, featuring young characters and/or targeting young readers who are often assumed not to possess any prior cultural memory. Submissions that examine the circulation of such texts across national borders are particularly welcomed.

Possible topics include:

Texts for children and/vs. texts for adults (as well as crossover texts);
Transnational co-productions or co-publishing ventures;
Textual transformations (adaptations, translations, abridgments, retellings, parodies, fan/slash fictions, authorized or unauthorized sequels and prequels);
Depictions of the past and the future (including history/biography, revisionist histories, science fiction and futurism);
The circulation of colonial and postcolonial discourses (from empire to colony, or from former colony back to empire);
Depictions of war and conflict, particularly contentious historical and political conflicts;
The role of food, dress, and festival in the transmission of cultural memory;
The cultural production of texts, including branding, genre, and assumptions about gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, and nationality;
Reception of texts, either by critics/scholars or by young people.

The collection of essays will be edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, a Leverhulme Visiting Fellow at the University of Worcester. Deadline for 200-word abstracts and bionote: 15 November 2009. Deadline for 20- to 25-page chapters: 1 February 2010. Please direct abstracts to the editor by e-mail: ben@roomofbensown.net. Authors whose work is selected for inclusion in the volume will be invited to present part of their work in progress at a one-day symposium to be held at the University of Worcester in April 2010. Queries are welcomed at any time.

Job Opening: Asst. Professor, Children’s Literature, Kansas State University

October 1, 2009

Assistant Professor

Tenure-track position for specialist in Children’s Literature. Ph.D. in English (ABD considered) with focus on children’s literature required. All children’s literature fields will be considered, but candidates with sub-specialties in ethnic, world, or multi-cultural children’s literature especially encouraged to apply. Teaching responsibilities include undergraduate and graduate courses in children’s and young adult literature; five course per year teaching load. Demonstrated excellence in teaching, evidence of research and publication or its potential required. Commitment to diversity required. The department offers a graduate concentration in children’s literature and a collegial environment for professional development.

Send letter of application, c.v., evidence of teaching effectiveness (sample syllabi, statement of teaching philosophy), and a list of graduate courses completed to Karin Westman, Head, English Dept., ECS Building, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506. (Letters of reference and writing samples will be requested later.) Review of applications begins November 2, 2009 and continues until the position is filled. Kansas State is an equal opportunity employer and actively seeks diversity among its employees.

View the posting on Kansas State University’s English Department website: http://www.k-state.edu/english/positions/

Past Continuous Conference: Historical Fiction For Children

September 25, 2009

Saturday, October 10, 2009

9.30am-5.30pm, Bedson Teaching Centre, Newcastle University

A day-long conference to explore the writing of historical fiction for children, to be held at Newcastle University.

Following the successful acquisition of the Geoffrey Trease and Leon Garfield archives by Seven Stories, and to mark the centenary of Trease’s birth, a one-day conference has been planned to examine all aspects of historical fiction for children. The conference will be of interest to those who write, study or read children’s historical fiction, as well as those who teach history or children’s literature.

View the conference programme here.

Final Call for Nominations for the Schiller Prize for Bibliographical Work on Pre-20th Century Children’s Books

September 21, 2009

October 15 2009 is the deadline for nominating monographs, essays, theses, dissertations, or electronic resources published, approved or posted between 1 January 2007 and 1 October 2009 for the 2010 Justin G. Schiller Prize for Bibliographic Work on Pre-20th-Century Children’s Books. The prize is sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America.

Submissions may concentrate on any children’s books printed before the year 1901 in any country or any language. They should involve research into bibliography and printing history broadly conceived and should focus on the physical book as historical evidence for studying topics such as the history of book production, publication, distribution, collecting, or reading. Studies of the printing, publishing, and allied trades, as these relate to children’s books, are also welcome.

For complete information on the application process, including the submission requirements, visit the homepage of the Bibliographic Society of America (www.bibsocamer.org).

In 2007 the prize was awarded to Lawrence Darton’s “The Dartons: An Annotated Check-list of Children’s Books Issued by Two Publishing Houses 1787-1876” (London: British Library; New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2004).

Please direct questions to:

Andrea Immel Schiller Prize Coordinator
Curator, Cotsen Children’s Library
Princeton University Library
aimmel@princeton.edu

Call For Papers - Sankofa: A Journal of African Children’s and Young Adult Literature

September 16, 2009

Published annually, Sankofa is a peer-reviewed journal aimed at a diverse audience of teachers, students, librarians, researchers, writers, illustrators, editors, and publishers. Sankofa’s primary objective is to disseminate information on African children’s and young adult literature; recognize common inaccuracies, stereotypes, and biases in books set in Africa; provide readers with in-depth book reviews and scholarly articles on emerging trends in African and African diaspora literatures; and stimulate a global conversation on the comparative patterns in the representation of children in literature.

We invite articles for the following sections of the journal:

The African Scene features critical and analytical essays on established and new authors and illustrators, trends and developments in book production for children in Africa, and reviews of outstanding books.
Literatures of the Diaspora focuses on children’s and young adult books of the African diaspora.

We also invite articles for a special issue on "Reading and Writing about Crises in Africa." The articles could deal with how African and non-African authors depict war in books for children and young adults; how do children cope with such situations; discussion of books that deconstruct the stereotype of Africa as a place of war or that show African agency; or books that depict other crises such as AIDS.

Please submit articles (in English, between 3,000 and 5,000 words) to:

Dr. Meena Khorana, Editor-in-Chief
202-E Holmes Hall
Morgan State University
1700 E. Cold Spring Lane
Baltimore, MD 21251 USA
Email: meenakh@aol.com

Call For Papers - Childhood and Youth in Transition Conference

September 16, 2009

The University of Sheffield’s Centre For the Study of Childhood and Youth presents its 3rd International Conference from July 6-8, 2010. The theme is Childhood and Youth in Transition, and this is the first call for papers.

In the context of global social, political and economic changes the conference this year will explore the ways in which these broad shifts are having an impact on ideas of childhood and youth and on children’s and young people’s everyday lives. Themes for exploration might include:

UNCRC and its aftermath - changes in law and policy
Children and young people’s changing citizenship
Technological change, new media and consumption
Environmental change and children’s futures
Economic recession and child poverty
Transitions in the life course for children and young people in relation to school and work
Health, well-being and the body

This year we also welcome suggestions for small symposia around specific themes. If you wish to organise a symposia, please contact Allison James(allison.james@sheffield.ac.uk).

Plenary speakers:

Professor David Buckingham (Institute of Education, UK)
Professor Martin Woodhead (Open University, UK)
Professor Irene Rizzini, (International Center for Research and Policy on Childhood, Brazil)

Abstracts:

Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent to the conference administrator, Dawn Lessels, by January 31, 2010 (d.j.lessels@sheffield.ac.uk).

Venue:

The conference will once again be held in the 4* Kenwood Hall Hotel. This beautiful Victorian Hotel is set in 12 acres of stunning grounds, yet is only a mile from the City Centre. For those choosing to stay at the hotel it also offers free access to the gym, sauna and swimming pool. Wi-fi is available throughout the conference venue.

The conference dinner will take place on Wednesday evening (July 7).

A welcome wine reception and poster session will be held on Tuesday evening (July 6) at Kenwood Hall and opportunities will be available for delegates to participate in the Children’s Film Festival held in Sheffield.

Conference Fees:

£250 Full Conference (includes conference fee, all lunches/teas and coffees - Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday)

£180 Day rate (includes conference fee, 1 lunch, teas/coffees)

£200 Self-funded PhD student (includes conference fee, all lunches/teas/coffees- Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday)

£30 Conference dinner (includes meal, wine and transport)

Accommodation:

This is available at the Kenwood Hall Hotel at a special discounted rate of £79 per night (Bed and Breakfast). Dinner at the Kenwood will also be available at a reduced rate of £20. Other alternative accommodation is also available nearby. All room and dinner bookings should be made directly with the hotels. Details about this can be found on the conference registration form.

Please note that places are limited at this conference so early booking is recommended.

The conference registration form and further details can be found at www.sheffield.ac.uk/cscy.

Call For Papers - Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories

September 15, 2009

Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories

Editors: Jill Doerfler, Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, Niigonwedom James Sinclair

Describing how to understand Anishinaabeg cosmology and epistemology in his 1976 book Ojibway Heritage, Basil Johnston writes that "it is in story, fable, legend, and myth that fundamental understandings, insights, and attitudes toward life and human conduct, character, and quality in their diverse forms are embodied and passed on" (7). As scholar Gerald Vizenor remarks in a 1992 interview with Laura Coltelli: "You can’t understand the world without telling a story. There isn’t any center to the world but story" (156).

Responding to calls for tribally-centered critical approaches in American Indian Studies/Native Studies, this critical anthology focuses on Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe/Chippewa) Studies and the ways in which stories might serve as a center for the field. We invite engagement with and employment of the term "story" in its multifaceted meanings. Simply put, the essays in this book will explore and engage with the following questions:

Can the field called "Anishinaabeg Studies" use "story" as a center? How?
How can stories serve as a methodology within the field of Anishinabeg studies? What kinds of questions can be posed/answered through the use(s) of story?
What are the parameters of an Anishinaabeg "story" and how does it participate in ongoing Anishinaabeg knowledge production?
What political, ceremonial, and/or intellectual roles does "story" play in the articulation and interests of Anishinaabeg communities?
In the current climate of globalization, what are the roles of "story" in moderating multi-dimensional struggles for tribal sovereignty, "traditionalism," and cultural innovation?
How might the knowledge embedded within stories be applied to 1) understand the complexities contained within written/oral histories 2) structure social and political institutions, and/or 3) address contemporary challenges facing Anishinaabe communities.

Essays from a wide array of disciplines (including but not limited to history, law, English, anthropology, ecology, linguistics, astronomy, and geography) are desired. Work may consist of an evaluation of practiced critical approaches in the field or exemplify a new approach through an analysis of an Anishinaabeg-authored "story." Contributors are encouraged to examine "texts" in their culturally-specific historical, political, and subjective contexts. Besides conventional, scholarly essays, provocative work that combines Anishinaabeg storytelling and critique are also welcomed.

Due to the nature of the anthology, essays authored by Anishinaabeg are encouraged.

Abstracts must be between 500-750 words and be e-mailed by December 15, 2009. Please include a one-page curriculum vitae/bio. Once accepted, completed essays will be between 5000-7500 words in length, and contributors are asked to keep this in mind. Please e-mail all submissions to hstark@d.umn.edu under the subject line: "Centering Anishinaabeg Studies."

Questions may be emailed to the editors at:

Jill Doerfler
The University of Minnesota - Duluth, doerflj@umn.edu

Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark
The University of Minnesota Duluth, hstark@d.umn.edu

Niigonwedom James Sinclair
The University of British Columbia, niigon@interchange.ubc.ca

First Visiting Trudeau Fellowship Awarded to Dr. Clare Bradford

September 14, 2009

Dr. Clare Bradford has been awarded the first $225, 000 Trudeau Visiting Fellowship Prize from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. A professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, Dr. Bradford will be a Visiting Professor of literary studies at The University of Winnipeg in the 2009-2010 academic year, and the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures will be hosting her. Her innovative research examines the interplay between children’s literature and social practices, and particularly representations of Indigenous peoples and cultures in children’s books.

"Dr. Bradford has been made a Trudeau Fellow because she creatively focuses on contemporary issues of importance to all Canadians and is truly engaged in reshaping our society," announced Trudeau Foundation President, Dr. Pierre-Gerlier Forest.

"The University of Winnipeg has strong links with the Aboriginal community, and strengthening Aboriginal scholarship on campus in all disciplines is critically important," said Dr. Lloyd Axworthy, President & Vice-Chancellor, The University of Winnipeg. "Dr. Bradford’s expertise will be a welcome addition to our students and faculty."

From March to December 2010, Dr. Bradford will be teaching and supervising graduate students, collaborating and networking with scholars in the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures at the University of Winnipeg, and in the rest of Canada, chairing symposia and conferences and hosting a meeting of the Board of the International Research Society in Children’s Literature.

"The Trudeau Fellowship is an unexpected and wonderful surprise to me, especially as I am the first International Fellow," said Dr. Bradford. "It will enable me to identify and pursue new and innovative areas of research, to learn from my Canadian colleagues at the University of Winnipeg and beyond, and to encourage collaboration among scholars in the field of children’s literature and allied disciplines."

"We will greatly benefit from Dr. Bradford’s presence and involvement on campus," said Dr. Sandra Kirby, Associate Vice-President (Research) and Dean of Graduate Studies. "Her research in children’s texts complements that of our own faculty, and her arrival here is timely, as we are starting a new program, a Master of Arts in English with a Focus in Cultural Studies, that draws on her area of research."

The prestigious $225, 000 Trudeau Fellowships are awarded for a three-year period and include an award and a travel, research and dissemination allowance. Trudeau Fellowships are awarded annually through a rigorous nomination process to highly accomplished Canadians who question society’s worldviews and teach the importance of responsible and engaged citizenship. The Visiting Trudeau Fellowship allows Canadian universities and research institutions to invite an outstanding international or national expert to participate in their activities for a few semesters.

Dr. Bradford is the first ever International Trudeau Fellow and joins four Canadian Trudeau fellows named this year, and Dr. Bradford is the first Trudeau Fellow hosted by the University of Winnipeg.

Adolescence in Canadian Literature: Call For Papers

September 9, 2009

Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne, published at the University of New Brunswick since 1975, invites submissions to a special issue focusing on depictions of adolescence in Canadian literature, to be edited by Jennifer Andrews, John Clement Ball, Heidi Butler, and Benjamin Lefebvre.

As a transitional stage between childhood and adulthood, adolescence has been deployed as a complex metaphor in the literature of numerous countries, including Canada, which has often been depicted as an adolescent (or emerging) nation. The editors welcome original submissions on Canadian texts from pre-Confederation to the contemporary moment for and/or about adolescents, including literatures from all regions, time periods, and types, including depictions of adolescence that extend the range of thirteen to nineteen in either direction. Interdisciplinary approaches are also welcomed.

Possible topics include:

Generic and ideological distinctions between literature for adolescents (the "YA novel") and literature about adolescents
Adolescent perspectives and family dynamics, including narration/focalization
Adolescent voices and the shaping of cultural memory
Adolescent rebellion and cultural citizenship
Adolescence and war, crisis, risk, politics/activism, nationhood/nation-building
Peer groups’ effects on adolescent maturity
Colonial and postcolonial discourses of adolescence
The contemporary bildüngsroman and künstlerroman
Global vs. local, rural vs. urban adolescences
Adolescence and/as performance
First Nations, racialized, gendered, queer, and trans adolescences
Adolescence in English and French Canadas

Submissions should not be longer than 7,000 words and should conform to the MLA Handbook, 6th edition. Please submit electronically via Word attachment to scl@unb.ca. Deadline for submissions is 30 April 2010, with publication scheduled for late 2010 or early 2011. We welcome submissions in English and in French. For more information, visit the journal’s website at http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/SCL/ or contact Heidi Butler at Heidi.Butler@unb.ca.

Animals and Animality Across the Humanities and Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference: Call For Papers

September 8, 2009

The emergent field of animal and animality studies is rapidly being articulated across scholarly boundaries. We invite graduate students to enter this growing conversation and approach the topic from perspectives reflecting the broad (inter)disciplinarity of this field. Discussions will use critical animal studies as a conceptual lens in order to investigate issues including the boundaries between self and Other, agency and biological drive, and reason and non-reason; the codes that permeate our conceptions of non-human animals; and the implications of troubling and/or making porous the human/animal divide. Is understanding human beings as embodied subjects ontologically bound to our relationship to non-human animals? In what ways is animal wellbeing crucially implicated in how we think ourselves into and against animals? As part of these discussions, we welcome investigations into the ways that (as Val Plumwood contends) animals, nature, and racial, colonial, and gendered Others function, now and historically, as overlapping sites of difference. We also invite considerations of the relationship between the conceptual economy that posits animality as an exploitable trope and forms of Othering that render animals as salable things. In approaching these topics, we encourage participants to consider how animal and animality studies has impacted other theoretical lenses, including critical race theory and feminist, postcolonial, and ecocritical/environmental studies, as well as the attendant politics of our disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the field.

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

Thinking with animals/intro-species boundary disruption
Becoming animals and biocentric ethics
The boundary between domestic and wild, sentiment and terror
Making animals "matter" and the role of affect
Animal poetry and ecopoetics
Animals and the nation in the nineteenth century and beyond
Animals and spectacle (both alive and dead)
Urban and wild animals and the politics of space
Animal geographies and environmental histories
Animals and transnational ecologies
Speciesm and racism
Animals and desire/animality and sexuality
Vegetarianism and the politics of meat
Animals in language/symbolic animals
The discourses and iconography of animals in various cultural forms
The uses of animals in war and torture
Animal studies now and its future directions

Proposals may reflect traditional and innovative formats, including papers, panels, roundtables, and community dialogues, as well as creative submissions. Please send an abstract of approximately 250 words, along with your name, department, affiliation, and e-mail address to jaime.j.s.denike@queensu.ca. For creative submissions, send 30 lines of poetry or a 300 word excerpt. For information about our call for artistic submissions for our connected Just Act Natural art exhibit, please e-mail visser.lisa@gmail.com.

The deadline for submissions is October 1st, 2009.

Eco-Childhood: The Child, Ecology, and Eco-criticism - Call For Papers for ARCYP Session at 2010 ACCUTE Conference

September 3, 2009

In the new environmental movement there is a great deal of discourse around saving the environment for children. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is now a picture book intended to teach young readers about the dangers of global warming. Many environmental groups have created educational programs designed to warn children of our destructive lifestyles. This is not the first time or place in history that the child has been taught about preserving nature, nor is it the first time that a social cause has been justified in terms of an adult duty of care towards children. This panel invites papers that deal with the relationships between the concepts of “the child” and “ecology,” or papers that analyze children’s texts and culture from an eco-critical perspective.

Potential topics include:

the role of the study of children’s texts and culture for eco-critics
“the child” as an important critical term for ecological criticism
the role that assumptions about “the child” play in justifying an adult duty of care towards the environment
the ethical implications of the teachings of eco-friendly attitudes to children and youth
environmentalism as imagined in youth culture
young people as eco-activists

Please submit your 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical note via email to arcyp-admin@uwinnipeg.ca by November 15, 2009.

Download this CFP as a PDF here.

Hope and Change?: Young People’s Cultures and Social Justice - Call For Papers for ARCYP Session at 2010 ACCUTE Conference

September 3, 2009

It is often claimed that young people are our future. “Hope and change” have long been associated with young people, but they have also become shimmering catchphrases in political discourses promising some brighter future. To what extent do current ideas, representations, and/or realities concerning youth and youth cultures offer possibilities for re-imagining current local and global struggles for equality, inclusion, alterity, and progress?

Some possible topics may include:

rhetorics of reconciliation
children’s rights
alternative literacies and/or critical pedagogies
discourses of nationhood, progress, security, war and/or terrorism
struggles for human/civil rights (disability, gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.)
transnationalism and families
mobility, space, displacement, and/or homelessness
environmental issues
DIY, culture jamming, youth culture and subcultures

Please submit your 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical note via email to arcyp-admin@uwinnipeg.ca by November 15, 2009.

Download this CFP as a PDF here.

The Child and the City - Call For Papers For ARCYP Session at 2010 ACCUTE Conference

September 2, 2009

Close to 80% of citizens live in urban spaces in Canada, just one of many nations and regions where urbanization is a primary fact of young people’s lives and where many young people’s identities are defined by their experience of living in cities. With its complex social networks and its ethnic and cultural diversity, the city invites multiple possibilities for self-invention or refashioning. The urban environment shapes how young people, from infants to adolescents, are able to express particular identities, participate in peer culture, and engage with their families. This session aims to address questions of how young people negotiate and create urban spaces and, conversely, how urban spaces accommodate young people.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

representations of the urban child
the criminalization of youth cultures
the surveillence of young people
media literacies of the urban child
social identities and youth
children’s play and public space
childhood, youth, and urban lifestyles
urban schools
postcolonial cities and urban youth
cities, globalization and young people
young people’s engagement with new technologies in the urban environments
GBLT as urban identities
homeless youth

Please submit your 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical note via email to arcyp-admin@uwinnipeg.ca by November 15, 2009.

Download this CFP as a PDF here.

Fellowship Programme of the International Youth Library

August 25, 2009

The International Youth Library offers academic fellowships for up to 12 scholars each year. The length of the stay can range from six weeks to four months. Scholars work on research projects that they have already started in their home countries. In the application, scholars must explain the academic relevancy of the project, and demonstrate that access to the collection of the International Youth Library is necessary for completion of the research project because of insufficient access to needed primary and secondary literature in their home countries. Applications from junior scholars are especially welcome.

Application requirements:

Academic qualification
International focus of research project
Sufficient fluency in either Germany or English
Non-German citizenship

Deadline for applications: September 30 for a fellowship stay in the following year

For more information:

Download PDF of application information

Website: http://www.ijb.de

Email: direktion@ijb.de

Anthology of World Nonsense: Call For Submissions

August 19, 2009

Announcing: An Anthology of World Nonsense

We seek submissions of translations of verse or prose nonsense literature from cultures outside of Anglo-American tradition. We are collecting folk nonsense of the "High Diddle Diddle" type, literary nonsense of the "Walrus and the Carpenter" type, and pop culture nonsense, such as some Bollywood film lyrics. (For more detail on exactly what we are looking for see below.)

Submission Requirements: Please send original language text (if possible) and a literal, word-for-word, translation. If you also have a more polished English translation, you may submit it. Any explanatory/translation notes would be appreciated.

Deadline: January 15, 2010

Contact:

Michael Heyman, The Berklee College of Music, mheyman@berklee.edu

Kevin Shortsleeve, Chistopher Newport University, k.shortsleeve@cnu.edu

What Nonsense Is:

Nonsense texts usually exist somewhere between perfect sense, on one hand, and absolute gibberish on the other. They achieve this by maintaining a balance between elements that seem to make sense and elements that do not. Nonsense texts often revel in topsy-turvyness and inversions of natural laws or hierarchical laws of order and place. They are chimerical constructions typified by excessive randomness, often celebrating the impossible and playing with temporal and spatial confusion. They ennoble anomaly while simultaneously rejecting the expected, the orderly and the everyday. These characteristics of nonsense create the effect of questioning commonly endorsed systems, such as language and logic. Nonsense seems to allude to an alien and impenetrable alternative system of authority that rejects established order. Nonsense can be poetry or prose, and it can appear in the guise of any genre or form, including but not limited to short story, novel, travel writing, ballad, sonnet, limerick, song, folk rhymes and tales, lullaby, recipe, and alphabet.

What Nonsense is Not:

Nonsense is not riddles. Nonsense is not jokes. Nonsense is not light verse. Most fantasy is not nonsense. Not all nursery rhymes are nonsense. Not all limericks are nonsense (limericks with the "punch line" ending are usually not).

Examples of Nonsense:

The following examples from English tradition point to styles and genres for which we are looking. We seek similarly styled poems and prose nonsense from continental Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Oceania and Central and South America.

Folk Nonsense: Certain nursery rhymes like "Hey Diddle Diddle" which paint unlikely and seemingly meaningless scenarios, or examples of children’s oral folklore like "One Bright Day in the Middle of the Night," which posits a list of impossible juxtapositions.

Examples from folklore like The Brother’s Grimm "Clever Elsie," in which Elsie cannot remember whether she is she, or whether someone else is she. Passages from mummers’ plays and other carnivalesque traditions in which the world is turned upside down and absurdity reigns supreme.

Literary Nonsense: Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky" or "The Hunting of the Snark," Edward Lear’s "Owl and the Pussycat" or "The Four Little Children Who Went Round the World," some of Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories, Edward Gorey’s The Iron Tonic or The Epileptic Bicycle, John Ciardi’s "Sylvester," Laura Richards’ "Eletelephony," Shel Silverstein’s "If the World Was Crazy."

Some Authors We Are Considering:

(Germany) Christian Morganstern, "The Picket Fence"
(India) Sukumar Ray, "Glibberish-Gibberish"
(South Africa) Nicholas Daly, Wanderer in Og
(Portugal) Fernando Pessoa, "Poema Pial"
(Poland) Stanislaw Baranczak; Jerzy Harasymowicz, "A Green Lowland of Pianos"
(France) Guillaume Apollinaire, "Hat-tomb"
(Norway) Einar Økland, "Siri, What Shall You Do?", Zinken Hopp, The Magic Chalk
(The Netherlands) Kees Buddingh, "De blauwbilgorgel"
(Czech Republic) Pavel Šrut
(Russia) Evgeny Kluev, Between Two Chairs

To follow the blog for the research and travel associated with this volume, please visit: http://jabberwokabout.blogspot.com.

Call For Papers: The 31st Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

August 19, 2009

Theme: Race and the Fantastic

Division of Children’s and Young Adult Literature

The 2010 ICFA welcomes paper proposals on all areas of the fantastic (including high fantasy, allegory, science fiction, horror, folk tales, and other traditional literatures, magical realism, the supernatural, and the gothic) in all media (novels, short stories, drama, television, comic books, film, and others).

The division of children’s and young adult literature is especially interested in paper proposals throughout the field, including picture books, easy readers, novels, short stories, film, comic books, and other forms. We embrace a wide variety of scholarly approaches and interests, including genre, historical, theoretical, and textual, models. We encourage work from institutionally-affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars, who work in languages other than English, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

The conference will run March 17-21, 2010, in Orlando, Florida.

Please submit a 250-word abstract directly to the division head, Amie Rose Rotruck, at arotruck@gmail.com. Abstracts should be turned in by October 31, 2009.

The conference encourages graduate student participation and gives an award for outstanding paper by a graduate student each year.

For more information on the conference or other divisions, please visit http://www.iafa.org.

Call For Papers: Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden at 100

August 17, 2009

In honour of the 100th anniversary of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, Jackie C. Horne and Joe Sutliff Sanders are soliciting essays for a proposed volume in the Children’s Literature Association’s Centennial Studies Series. The series seeks to re-examine children’s classics from a contemporary perspective. All critical and theoretical approaches are welcome. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

The novel in the context of Burnett’s writing for adults
The novel in the context of Burnett’s other children’s novels
The novel in the context of other children’s literature of the period
"Sentimental" and "realistic" constructions of childhood in Burnett’s children’s texts
Animal studies and the (tenuous) line between human and animal in the novel
"Queerness" and other sexualities
Construction of the narrator/narratee
Approaching the novel from the perspective of disability theory and the history of disability in Western culture
Construction(s) of masculinity
Gardening in the period and/or Burnett’s personal history with real-world gardens
Re-envisioning the garden metaphor in later children’s texts
Precursor texts: return from India narratives (Ewing’s Six to Sixteen, etc.)
Constructions of nationality: British, Indian, American
Construction of motherhood/mothers and their replacements
Mourning customs of the period reflected in/resisted by the novel
Burnett and mysticism/religion
Ideologies of class in the novel
Secrets in the novel - those revealed and those kept
The novel’s ending(s)
Illustrations/covers for the novel
Film adaptations
Theatrical productions; Burnett and theatrical copyright law

Deadline for abstracts: January 10, 2010. Completed articles will be due by June 1, 2010. Please send abstracts of 250-500 words by email, with "SECRET GARDEN" in the submission line, to the following editor:

Joe Sutliff Sanders
California State University - San Bernadino
joess@csusb.edu

Red Feather Journal Call For Papers

August 13, 2009

Red Feather facilitates an international dialogue among scholars and professionals through vigorous discussion of the intersections between the child image and the conception of childhood, children’s material culture, children and politics, the child body, and any other conceptions of the child within local, national, and global contexts. The journal invites critical and/or theoretical examination of the child image to further our understanding of the consumption, circulation, and representation of the child throughout the world’s visual mediums.

Some sample topics include, but are certainly not limited to: studies of images of children of colour; child as commodity; images of children in Africa, Asia, Middle East, South America, etc.; political uses of the child image; children in film; children in advertising; visual adaptations of children’s literary works; child welfare images; children and war; or any other critical examination of the child image in a variety of visual mediums.

Red Feather is published twice a year, in February and September, and adheres to the MLA citation system. Authors may submit articles in other citations systems, with the understanding that conversion to MLA is a condition of acceptance.

Interested contributors please submit the paper, an abstract, a current CV, and a brief biography as attachments in Word to debbieo@okstate.edu.

Deadline for submissions for the premier issue is December 15, 2009.

L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature: 9th International Conference

July 20, 2009

At the ninth biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute (University of Prince Edward Island), we invite you to consider L.M. Montgomery and the matter of nature. In recent years, the matter of nature has been the subject of much contested debate and theoretical innovation across disciplines. While multiple romanticisms have informed L.M. Montgomery's passionate views of the natural world, her complex descriptions show her writing both of and for nature. This complexity extends as well to the depiction of cultural and gendered mores (domesticity, friendship, faith, community, biological determinism) as both natural and cultural. In all its forms, nature situates binary relationships that are often represented as hierarchical and oppositional: nature and culture; child and adult; animal and human; female and male; emotion and reason; body and mind; traditional and modern; raw and cooked; wild and domestic; rural and urban.

We invite the submission of abstracts that consider these issues in relation to Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, as well as the range of adapted texts in areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities. Possible questions include:

What are the effects of the representations and images of nature that are crafted and circulated in Montgomery’s work?
How do Mongomery’s narrations of nature shape children and adults within and across cultures?
How do particular constructions of nature work in fiction, across such differences as gender, race, culture, and class?
What are the cultural and historical contingencies surrounding nature in Montgomery’s work?
What does it mean to consider Montgomery as a "green" writer (Doody) or as a proto-ecofeminist (Holmes)?
What do Montgomery’s provocative readings of nature offer us at a time of environmental crises and ecological preoccupations?
How does the notion of "nature" impact some of the most central preoccupations in Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, and life writing (the nature of war, of mental illness, of cultural inheritance, of conflict, of same-sex friendships and of heterosexual marriage, of cultural memory, of national ideologies)?

Abstracts should clearly articulate the paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see http://lmmresearch.org/bibliography for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the conference co-chairs directly: Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net and Dr. Jean Mitchell (mjmitchell@upei.ca). All proposals will be vetted blind and should therefore contain no identifying information.

Please submit one-page abstracts and short biographical sketches by 15 September 2009 to the L.M. Montgomery Institute’s OCS page (http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010).

If you’ve already submitted an abstract for the 2010 Conference, please verify that it has been received by emailing the director at lmmi@upei.ca. All those who were registered through the 2008 OCS page have been made authors and should go to http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/presenter/submit/1 to submit their abstracts. If you were registered, but have forgotten your password, please use the Reset Password link located here: http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/login/lostPassword. If this is your first time using OCS for the L.M. Montgomery Conference, then please register yourself as an author here: http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/user/account?source=&requiresPresenter (make sure to select the "Create account as Author: Able to submit items to the conference" option at the bottom of the registration form).

The (Im)Possibility of Children's Fiction: Rose 25 Years On

July 17, 2009

Jacqueline Rose's The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of Children's Fiction first appeared in 1984, at a time when the study of children's literature was just beginning to take off in academic departments. It was a formidable gauntlet, lauded by some, castigated by others, and mistunderstood by many, but it has more than stood the test of time. Twenty-five years on, it is still one of the most quoted books in children's literature criticism.

To mark this occasion, a special issue of Children's Literature Association Quarterly will be devoted to a reconsideration of Rose's "case." Papers are invited on any aspect of her thesis, including (but not limited to):

the theoretical roots of Rose's "case"
the work's overall validity (is children's fiction utterly impossible, partially possible, or neither of the above?)
its current relevance (has it been superseded by later theoretical developments, or are her ideas as pertinent as ever?)
its relevance to other texts (is Peter Pan exemplary or exceptional? can one "apply" Rose's ideas?)
does her thesis apply to children's fiction only, or to other areas of children's literature and culture (e.g. poetry, drama, non-fiction, film, toys, computer games)?

Please send your papers (which should conform to the usual house-style of ChLAQ, and be between 5000-7000 words in length) to both guest editors, David Rudd (d.rudd@bolton.ac.uk) and Anthony Pavlik (cb2007@boun.edu.tr), by November 1, 2009.

The selected articles will appear in ChLAQ, Fall 2010.

World Summit on Media for Children and Youth 2010

July 13, 2009

The 2010 World Summit on Media for Children and Youth in Karstad, Sweden will be a summit for 2000 delegates from 100 countries with a focus on preparing with children for a new media world in the twenty-first century. It will offer opportunities to network, to be part of debates, to be interactive and to be part of workshops, sharing perspective, experience and expertise. World Summit in Karlstad will take place June 14-18, 2010. For more information and to subscribe to the news, see the World Summit website: http://www.wskarlstad2010.se/

Liverpool John Moores University Call For Papers

July 9, 2009

LJMU's first international conference on The Theory and Practice of Working With Children and Young People is taking place from October 21 to 23, 2009 in Liverpool. The five conference themes are:

Participation
Health and Well-Being
Globalisation and Risk
Higher Education
Evidence-Based Practice

The link to the conference website, with further details and the call for papers and posters is http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/HEA/news/wwcypconf/. If you would like any further information on the conference, you can contact us at 0151 231 8175 or email wwcayp-enquiries@ljmu.ac.uk.

Benjamin Lefebvre Awarded Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship

June 24, 2009

Nominated as an affiliate of the Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Cultures, Benjamin Lefebvre has been awarded a Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship to be taken up at the University of Worcester from August 2009 to May 2010.

Exploring Childhood Studies Conference Call For Papers

June 17, 2009

Department of Childhood Studies
Rutgers University, Camden

The graduate students of the Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, Camden invite submissions for papers and poster presentations for their first formal graduate student conference on April 9, 2010. Graduate students from all disciplines who are engaged in research relating to children and childhood are encouraged to submit proposals.

The field of childhood studies engages in both theoretical and empirical study of children and childhood within historical, contemporary, interdisciplinary, multi-cultural, state, national, and global contexts. Each combination of perspectives provides new insights into the lives of children and the families, cultures, and societies in which they are embedded. The interdisciplinary nature of the field is one of its greatest strengths and the core of its remarkable potential for scholarly advancement, but also leaves the field open for exploration and interrogation, and its borders difficult, if not impossible, to define.

The Exploring Childhood Studies conference proposes defining Childhood Studies by "doing" childhood studies; the conference will explore the field by offering explorations within it. We seek papers from all disciplines that keep childhood as a construct, children as a category, or the child as a real living human as their central focus, providing critical thought and insight while locating them in different contexts, fields, and ideologies.

In keeping with what we believe is the essential interdisciplinary nature of Childhood Studies, this conference seeks to be interdisciplinary itself. We seek proposals from all disciplines-education, literature, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, law, political science, history, criminology, philosophy, medicine, religion, film studies, and cultural studies-as well as interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary scholarly work.

The range of open topics within this field is as broad as the contexts of the experiences of children and childhood: war, health, rights, gender, poverty, wealth, policy, ethics, popular culture, globalization, school, family, home, sexuality, community, and representations in all modes of fiction. The field of Childhood Studies itself is open to interrogation.

Selected papers will be grouped into panels that may be based around discipline, theme, or perspective, but will demonstrate the common grounding of the papers in their mutual exploration of children and childhood studies.

Paper presentations should be limited to 20 minutes in length. Please send 250-word abstract for paper or poster presentation (specify which) and cover letter with name, current level of graduate study, affiliated university, and email address to m_modica@vfcc.edu. Include the words "conference abstract" in subject line, and include name on the cover letter only.

For further information about the Exploring Childhood Studies Conference, contact: Patrick Cox at ptcox@camden.rutgers.edu or Anandini Dar at anandini@camden.rutgers.edu.

Deadline for submission is October 31, 2009. Accepted presenters will receive email notification by January 10, 2010.

Literary Eclectic V Revised Call for Papers

June 16, 2009

Submissions on any aspect of English literary studies are invited for the fifth English graduate students' conference organized by the University of Regina and the University of Saskatchewan, to be held in Regina September 25 and 26. Honours students are also encouraged to submit papers. We also hope that we can consider some creative pieces. Faculty members in the Department of English will select the essays that will be presented at the conference. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes (8-9 pages, double-spaced).

This year's keynote speaker is Dr. Warren Cariou, Canada Research Chair and Director, Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture, University of Manitoba. His working title is “Junk: Waste Culture, Addiction, and the Ends of the World."

The deadline for submissions is July 3, 2009. Later submissions may be entertained. Participants must pre-register. Forms for that purpose are being prepared.

Please send papers, with contact information, to:

K. G. Probert
Graduate Chair
ken.probert@uregina.ca

Magic World Of Czech Illustrators For Children At The Manitoba Children's Museum

June 15, 2009

The Embassy of the Czech Republic and the Manitoba Children's Museum in cooperation with the Czechoslovak Benevolent Association and Czech and Slovak Association of Canada are proud to present a special exhibition of the best 20th Century Czech illustrators for children.

Around 90 illustrations by 18 artists covering all genres of literature for children will be featured, ranging from Czech literature to numerous fairy tales and stories from Europe, China, India and the Arab world, which are a part of the world literature heritage for children. Together with the illustrations, animated films on DVD will be available for viewing.

On Wednesday, June 17, at 2:00PM, this special exhibition will have its official opening at the Manitoba Children's Museum. Then, until June 30, you can visit this exhibit during hours of operation: Monday to Thursday, 9:30AM to 4:30PM and Friday and Saturday, 9:30AM to 6:00PM.

Call for Papers: International Research in Children's LiteraturePapers: International Research in Children's Literature

Vol. II, Issue 2 (to be published December 2009), entitled'Internationalisation, Transculturalism and Globalisation:Manifestations in Children's Literature and Film'. The deadline for thereceipt of submissions for consideration is 28 February 2009. Full details here

Release of Kay Stone's Some Day Your Witch Will Come

(Fall 2008)

A selection of Kay Stone's scholarly articles and books spanning 1975-2004. The volume contains reflections on the value of fairy tales as adult literature. The title Some Day Your Witch Will Come twists a Walt Disney lyric to challenge the typical fairy-tale framework and is a nod to Stone's innovative and sometimes unconventional perspective. As a whole, this collection is a fascinating look at both the evolution of a career and the recent history of fairy-tale scholarship. To find out more or to order, click HERE.

Students: Publish with JACK!

Do you have an undergraduate research essay or critical review you are particularly proud of? Do you think maybe it could be improved or published? The Faculty of Arts new "Journal of the Arts through Combined Knowledge" wants your submissions. Click HERE for more information.

Release of Perry Nodelman's The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature

August 2008

What exactly is a children's book? How is children's literature defined as a genre? Nodelman presents close readings of six classic stories to answer these questions and offer a clear definition of children's writing as a distinct literary form.

For more information or ordering, click HERE.

Release of Home Words: Discourses of Children's Literature in Canada
Literature in Canada
(March 2008)

(March 2008)

The eleven essays in Home Words explore the complexity of the idea of “home" through various theoretical lenses and various groupings of books, each considering the ways in which discourses of home underwrite both children's literature and national literatures. Home Words reconfigures the field of Canadian children's literature as it is usually represented, by setting the study of English-language and French-language texts side by side, and by paying sustained attention to the work of Aboriginal Canadian writers for children and the writing of "new Canadians" of colour.

University of Winnipeg contributors include: Mavis Reimer, Anne Rusnak, Doris Wolf, Paul DePasquale, Perry Nodelman, Deborah Schnitzer, and Neil Besner.

Click here for more information.

Book Release Announcement:

Kimberley Reynolds's new book, Radical Children's Literature: Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction (Palgrave MacMillan) reappraises the place of children's literature in culture, showing it to be a creative space where writers and illustrators try out new ideas - about books, society, and the possibilities for narrative in an age of instant communication and multi-media. It looks at the stories young people are given about the world and themselves, and how these interact with changing childhoods and new technologies.

As well, the new book edited by Mary Shine Thompson and Valerie Coghlan, Divided Worlds: Studies in Children's Literature, has been released. This volume, the third collection of studies in children's literature, explores the political, social and cultural divisions that dominate children's books, ranging over Irish and international topics and texts. Articles on the fi ction of Katherine Tynan, Maria Edgeworth and Somerville & Ross, as well as modern Ulster fi ction and contemporary children's publishing, are indicative of the range of Irish material. The international focus extends from Luigi Bertelli's treatment of fascism and Gianni Rodari's communism to the English contexts of Cecil Alexander's English hymns. Rosemary Sutcliffe's Roman Britain series is revisited to explore its masculinities, and gendered divisions are the subject of a review of Oisin McGann's recent fantasy fiction.

Book Release Announcement:

Unsettling Narratives:Postcolonial Readings of Children's Literature

Children's books seek to assist children to understand themselves and their world. Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children's Literature demonstrates how settler-society texts position child readers as citizens of postcolonial nations, how they represent the colonial past to modern readers, what they propose about race relations, and how they conceptualize systems of power and government.

Clare Bradford focuses on texts produced since 1980 in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand and includes picture books, novels, and films by Indigenous and non-Indigenous publishers and producers. From extensive readings, the author focuses on key works to produce a thorough analysis rather than a survey. Unsettling Narratives opens up an area of scholarship and discussion—the use of postcolonial theories—relatively new to the field of children's literature and demonstrates that many texts recycle the colonial discourses naturalized within mainstream cultures.

For more information, click here.

Seven Stories Collection Available Online

The following catalogues from the Seven Stories Collection are now available online. Seven Stories is a collection of original artwork and manuscripts which records the creative process involved in making a children's book and provides an insight into the working lives of authors and illustrators. Seven Stories is the only place in the UK which is actively collecting original artwork by British writers and illustrators for children. The online collections are available initially via the A2A website (www.a2a.org.uk):

Pat and Laurence Hutchins Collection
Johnstone Memorial Collection
Philip Pullman Collection
Sylvia Waugh Collection
Robert Westall Collection

In addition, the Kaye Webb Collection catalogue will become available fromSeptember. In the near future, all catalogues will become available directlyvia Seven Stories' own website (http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/home/).

As indicated on the A2A website, enquiries to view material should bedirected to the Collections Team at Seven Stories (collections@sevenstories.org.uk).

Writing Through Race

Paul Yee, David Chariandry, and Lawrence Hill

Friday, 28 September 2007 from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m.
Eckhardt-Gramattè Hall, third floor, University of Winnipeg

Writing Through Race, an upcoming panel presented by the University of Winnipeg and the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, will include Paul Yee, author of prizewinning children's books Ghost Train, Roses Sing on New Snow, and Tales from Gold Mountain. Yee's work also includes Saltwater City: The Story of Vancouver's Chinese Community.

Other panelists include David Chariandry (Soucouyant) and Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes).

University of Winnipeg to offer Master of Arts in English with a focus on Cultural Studies

Addressing the link between culture and the arts, and the social, economic and political milieu, this program will address five related areas:

cultural theory

cultures of childhood

gender, sexuality and culture

global and local culture

manuscript, print and digital culture.

The program will build upon existing and growing strengths at The University of Winnipeg, including its most recent Canada Research Chair in the Cultures of Childhood.

Cultures of Childhood

Courses in this area investigate historical and contemporary cultural discourses in texts that use the figures of "the child," "the boy," and "the girl" as important rhetorical strategies--not only print texts, but also Internet texts, films, TV texts, texts of material culture such as toys and video games, as well as oral texts such as family stories and schoolyard games. Studying texts designed for young readers, in particular, allows for theoretical investigations into the manufacture of consent in liberal democratic cultures.

This area of concentration is supported by the presence of the Canada Research Chair in the Culture of Childhood in the Department of English and the related Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Cultures.

Watch this space for further announcements.

If you have questions regarding Cultures of Childhood, please contact Professor Mavis Reimer at 786-9185 or m.reimer@uwinnipeg.ca

For general inquiries regarding the program contact Professor Alden Turner at786-9283 or a.turner@uwinnipeg.ca

For more information about graduate programs at the University of Winnipeg follow this link:http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/grad-studies-programs

Press release from The Swedish Institute for Children's Books

New double issue of Barnboken - Journal of children's literature research

Astrid Lindgren: Always on the child's side In May 2007 The Swedish Institute for Children's Books (SBI) arranged an international conference, Astrid Lindgren Centennial Conference. "The Liberated Child-Childhood in the Works of Astrid Lindgren". In this issue, ten of the papers presented at the conference are published and an introduction by prof. Maria Nikoljaeva. The papers contain different aspects of Astrid Lindgren's works and authorship.

Language: English

Contents:Introduction: Astrid Lindgren - famous and unknown, Maria Nikolajeva, Sweden
Always on the child's side, Ulla Lundqvist, SwedenPippi Longstocking and the father of enjoyment, Karen Coats, USAInternational politics in Astrid Lindgren's works, Astrid Surmatz, Holland. The animal figure in Astrid Lindgren's work, David Rudd, EnglandFrom illustrated text to picturebook. Astrid Lindgren's "Mirabelle", Agnes-Margrethe Bjorvand, Norway the animated still life. Ingrid Vang Nyman's use of self-contradictory spatial order in Pippi Longstocking, Elina Druker, SwedenStepping into the dark. Mourning in Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart, Alan Richards, CanadaHarnessing the monstrous. The dark side of Astrid Lindgren, Carole Scott, USAThe vanished land of childhood. Autobiographical narration in Astrid Lindgren's work,Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Germany, Pippi and Ronia. Astrid Lindgren's light and dark pastoral, Roni Natov, USA

Contact information: Mats Näslund, mats.naslund@sbi.kb.se/+46(0)8-54 54 20 56Subscriptions: SEK 120 per year. Foreign subscriptions SEK 200 per year. Single issues SEK 70, this issue SEK 140 (foreign SEK 200).SBI publishes the journal Barnboken, issued twice a year - the only Swedish scholarly journal on children's literature. Each issue offers articles and papers on subjects of current interest. In addition to the research papers Barnboken includes reviews of recent publications on children's literature research. Contributions are written by specialists in the field, and reviewed by a panel of experts. Barnboken is usually published in Swedish with an English summary.

Canadian Ethnic Studies Association

There will be a panel on children's literature at the Canadian Ethnic Studies Association conference taking place this weekend at the Hotel Fort Garry in Winnipeg.On Saturday, from 4:00 - 5:15 p.m. (Session W, no room specified as yet), there is a session entitled What do we tell the Children?: Immigration, Race, and Historical Trauma in Canadian Children's Literature.

Speakers include:
Mavis Reimer: "Making it Home: Manufacturing Consent in Canadian Children's Literature";
Louise Saldanha: "Making Critical Space: Reflections on Race, Children's Literature, and Canada":
Adrienne Kertzer (U of Calgary): "Historical Trauma and Ethnicity in William Bell's Young Adult Fiction."

For more information follow this link:http://cesa.uwinnipeg.ca

University of Winnipeg English Department

The Department of English at the University of Winnipeg invites applications for a probationary, tenure-track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor with specialization in the field of Young People's Texts and Cultures, particularly in the areas of new media texts, game texts, or the culture of online communities. The ability to contribute to other teaching strengths of the Department at undergraduate and graduate levels will be considered an asset. Such areas include First-Year courses, Creative Writing, Canadian Literature, Literary and Cultural Theory, Popular Literature, and Gender Studies. Subject to budgetary approval, this appointment will begin July 1, 2008. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. A completed Ph.D. and a demonstrated commitment to research and teaching are required.

The University of Winnipeg is an urban, primarily undergraduate university that seeks to appreciate, foster and promote values of human dignity, equality, non-discrimination, and diversity. The University is committed to employment equity, to being a place of learning and work that includes all qualified individuals, including women and men, members of visible minorities, Aboriginal persons, people of all sexualities and genders, and persons with disabilities. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, but qualified Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada are given priority.

Deadline for submission of applications is Monday, October 15, 2007. Interested applicants should send a letter of application (including the names of their three referees), a curriculum vitae, and a writing sample (25 page max.), and have three confidential letters of reference sent directly to Dr. Murray Evans, Chair, Department of English, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 2E9, CANADA.

Joint Session with the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada [VSAWC]Victorian Children

International Research in Children's Literature

Invitation for reviews and review copies. Publishers and authors are therefore kindly invited to send books for review, as well as leaflets and suggestions for books to the Reviews Editor, Vanessa Joosen.(see more)

"Freud in Oz" - Dr. Kenneth Kidd

Click here to read the text of Kenneth Kidd talk on the entanglements of children's literature and psychoanalysis, from analytical and therapeutic interest in fairy tales, such as Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, to psychobiographies of Golden Age fantasists such as Lewis Carroll and J. M. Barrie, to the emergence in the twentieth-century of the children's author as child expert.
Watch this space for the video, which will be posted soon!
Dr. Kenneth Kidd's Website
(see more)

Joint Sessions with the Association for Research in Young People's Texts and Cultures[ARYPTC], Continued

Round Table on Child Studies, Children's Studies, Childhood Studies, and Children's Cultural Studies: Producing a Field of Study

Round Table on Child Studies, Children's Studies, Childhood Studies, and Children's Cultural Studies: Producing a Field of Study

In Scandinavia, Britain, the United States, and now Canada, the emerging field of "children's and childhood studies" has been gathering a critical mass: indeed, the birth of the Association for Research in Young People' Texts and Cultures is evidence of the growth of such multidisciplinary and sometimes interdisciplinary research about children, childhood, and children's culture.(see more)

Joint Sessions with the Association for Research in Young People's Textsand Cultures [ARYPTC]

Shifting Borders of Childhood, Youth, and Adulthood

Shifting Borders of Childhood, Youth, and Adulthood

Although under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children are defined as human beings under the age of eighteen, "childhood," "youth," and "adulthood" are defined very differently in various contexts--all of which have consequences for actual children and young people.
(see more)

Joint Session with the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada [VSAWC] Victorian Children

Please send proposals and a completed copy of the ACCUTE Proposal Submission Information Sheet, http://www.accute.ca/Conference.htm., (Proposals are blind-vetted and should not include identification) and a 1-page cv (including e-mail and return address) by 15 November 2007 to Dr. Kristen Guest
(see more)

MTYP ANNOUNCES A SERIES OF WORKSHOPS on WRITING FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES LED BY HERBIE BARNES, MTYP'S NEW ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

MTYP's new Artist-in-Residence, Herbie Barnes, invites submissions for his upcoming series of intensive workshops on creating plays specifically for young people. An Ontario-based director, writer, actor and teacher, Barnes has worked extensively in television, film and theatre, including numerous engagements with MTYP. The residency, which is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, continues through October 2008. The workshops will be led by Barnes through the support of Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

Up to ten writers will be invited to participate in three development sessions to be held at MTYP in the summer and fall. Participation is invited from both new and emerging writers. The sessions will concentrate on the structure of story and narrative, writing technique, and the distinguishing features of theatre for young audiences (TYA). The final workshop will focus on script development and include collaboration from a professional design and directing team, with the goal of producing draft scripts.

The workshops will be held on the following dates at Manitoba Theatre for Young People: June 10 -20, 2008
August 18-22, 2008
September 22-26, 2008

Those interested in applying should submit a writing sample (2-3 page piece of fiction) by email to Rose Condo, rcondo@mtyp.ca at MTYP by April 14, 2008. Interviews to select participants will be held from April 21to 23. For more information, please contact Rose by email or at (204) 947-0394 ext. 234.

British Books for Children and Adolescents 1470-1770

Ruth B. Bottigheimer has posted a 300+ page (in its print-out form) bibliography of British Books for Children and Adolescents 1470-1770 for the use of fellow scholars of children's literature. The bibliography includes instructional manuals and school textbooks along with customarily cited books of manners, religious instruction, and chapbooks. In some cases the fingerprints of the books are included, so that a book's print run can be identified separately from its title-page information.

A brief essay on the parameters of the bibliography touches on the types of material in the bibliography, the meaning of "children" and "adolescents" in the context of the bibliography, the question of successive editions, a book's fingerprint, edition number, print runs, dating, titles, authors, printers, publishers, place of publication for early British children's books, genre, illustrations, measurements, readership, format, location, and observations about individual books. A bibliography like this can never be complete, and additional information from users will be incorporated on an annual basis.

The bibliography can be accessed at this address: http://hdl.handle.net/1951/43009

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