cfp.english.upenn.edu

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

In honor 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 reexamine 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