cfp.english.upenn.edu

Two confirmed plenary speakers:
Professor George Rousseau, (Magdalen College, University of Oxford)
Dr Anna Green (University of East Anglia, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery )

An inter-disciplinary conference open to both postgraduates and academics at any stage of their career, seeking to examine the contrasting images and representations of children as angels or devils, innocent or evil, light or dark in fiction and culture in the fields of Arts and Humanities. Why are children offered little dimension in representations? What is the significance of representing the child either as innocent or evil – to both the originating discourse and in a wider context? Is such polarization detrimental to our understanding of what it means to be a child and how we respond to real children?
The “humanities” is intended as a fluid term; depictions from any period of history, any social or cultural context, fictional or media representations are encompassed. In light of this, submissions are invited from a range of disciplines and topics may include, but are certainly not limited to, depictions of the child as:

• A devil, demon, monster, wicked/sinful
• As angelic, child-saints or martyrs, innocent
• Contrasting images of the two • The child as “uncanny”
• The child in art
• Televisual, cinematic or dramatic depictions.
• The Freudian child as depicted by psychoanalysts or psychoanalytic readings of figures.
• The child in horror/gothic fiction
• Monstrous births
• Supernatural children; vampires, werewolves, ghosts, zombies
• Contrasting images as represented in adult fiction and/or children’s literature
• Children in Victorian chapbooks – models of religious virtue?
• The sexualised child
• The child in myths, fairy and folk tales
• The “foreign”, tribal, refugee or postcolonial child
• Representations of children in the media – current or historical.

We invite abstracts of 250-300 words for 20 minute (previously unpublished) papers, sent in Word format to devils_dolls@live.co.uk by Friday 31st August 2012 with the “subject” of the email as ‘Devils and Dolls abstract’.

Please ensure your abstract appears in the following format:
 Paper title
 250 – 300 word abstract in plain text
 Name of author and affiliation
 Email address
 Up to ten keywords (these can be compound terms)
 Please also indicate whether, if required, you would be happy to chair a panel.

All abstracts will be acknowledged by email receipt, and you should therefore receive an acknowledgement within 5 working days.

Once the deadline has passed, a panel will review the abstracts anonymously and a draft conference plan will be constructed. We will reply to all submissions to offer both a decision and some feedback. If your paper is not selected at this time, we hope you are still able to attend the conference and contribute to the discussion.

Some papers may be selected to comprise a collection of essays in a special edition of HARTS and Minds: Bristol Journal of Humanities and the Arts.

We look forward to reading your abstracts and hopefully meeting you at the conference!

Jen Baker
Daniel Bowers
Liz Renes

contact email: devils_dolls@live.co.uk
Web Address: http://devils-dolls-conference.weebly.com