MLA 2027: Child Narratives of Violence
updated:
Thursday, March 12, 2026 - 2:43pm
Mary Gryctko
deadline for submissions:
Friday, March 13, 2026
Children’s accounts of violence occupy a paradoxical space in public discourse: they are framed as both essential, unquestionable evidence, and, sometimes at the same time, as unreliable and prone to outside influence. Both framings rely on cultural constructions of the child’s “innocence.” This panel invites papers examining narratives of violence told by children, with a particular interest in experiences of institutional or state violence. How do these narratives complicate familiar tropes of children as voiceless victims in need of saving, or of certain topics as exclusively “adult” or “childish”? How do child narrators themselves exploit, resist, and play with or into these tropes?
