cfp.english.upenn.edu

"A Dragon Wrecked My Prom: Teen Wizards and High School"

'The Dead rose--we should at least have an assembly.'
- Xander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

High School is difficult enough to negotiate without having to save the
world, but, as a whole genre of teen fiction has explored, teens seem able
to do both. Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the novels of Diane Duane,
Tanya Huff, and Mercedes Lackey, as well as numerous comics, graphic novels,
and cartoons, all present audiences with teens who wield extraordinary
powers while battling the everyday demons of adolescence.

This collection will explore the unique figure of the teen wizard--a
category broad enough to encapsulate Nita Callahan and Kit Rodrigues, the
spellcasting teens of Duane's 'Young Wizards' series, as well as Diana, the
teen heroine of Tanya Huff's 'Keepers' series, Willow Rosenberg (of Buffy),
Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Vanyel Ashkevron (the last herald mage of
Mercedes Lackey's 'Valdemar' novels) and numerous other mystical teens that
span a whole array of different media. How do magic and adolescence go
together, and how are mystical energies bound up with the pain, turmoil, and
abjection of being a teenager? And why is the figure of the teen wizard so
manifestly popular?

Please submit a 500-1000 word abstract, along with a CV, to:
jbattis_at_gmail_dot_com. Deadline: August 30, 2007. Grad student
submissions are welcome, as are creative/critical and multimedia mixtures.
Publisher information will be forthcoming, but I anticipate strong interest
from a press.

Any questions/queries can be directed to:

Jes Battis: jbattis_at_gmail.com
Postdoctoral Fellow, City University New York

--jes battisinstructor, dept of englishsimon fraser universityjbattis_at_gmail.comhttp://www.sfu.ca/~jbattis ========================================================== From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List CFP_at_english.upenn.edu Full Information at http://cfp.english.upenn.edu or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu ==========================================================Received on Fri May 11 2007 - 17:50:10 EDT