[UPDATE] Call for Papers, International Conference on Children's Literature: The Child in the Book

full name / name of organization: 
Taiwan Children’s Literature Research Association and English Department of Soochow University
contact email: 

Children's literature as a field of academic study has grown steadily in Taiwan over the past several years. Many other Asian nations have also seen a concerted interest in both the production and criticism of literature for young people. This interest has given rise to the creation of the Taiwan Children's Literature Research Association (TLRCA), a distinctly Taiwanese organization in the process of formation that is dedicated to the study of children's and young adult literature. The first action of the TLRCA is this conference, held in conjunction with the Children's Literature Association (ChLA), that seeks to unite Asian scholars of children's literature with each other and with scholars from regions where the study of children's literature has had a longer tradition.

By focusing the theme for this conference on "the Child in the Book" we wish to interrogate the ways in which children and childhood are constructed in texts for young people from a variety of cultures and perspectives. What ideas lay behind the representation of children in literary texts? What assumptions are made about potential readers? If childhood is a shifting idea that is ideologically constructed, then how do these ideas shift between texts written by or for people in different national contexts? Do the historical ideas of childhood that have played such an extensive role in North American and European societies translate to other societies and cultures? While issues of childhood representations in all settings are welcome, of special concern is the representation of cultures and diversity in Asian contexts as well as with Asians in non-Asian settings.

The following are suggested topics, but other ideas implied by the title are also welcome

Children and childhood in Asia

Children in translation

Comparative perspectives of childhood

Minority childhoods

Refuge children

Children and war

Immigration and childhood

Cross-cultural childhoods and experiences

Representations of adolescence

Representations of diversity

Questions of authenticity in representation

Childhood in graphic novels

Childhood in non-print media (film, theater, video games)

Media representations of children

Children as writers

Child narrators and focalizers

Please email abstracts fewer than 500 words with brief resume to TLRCA Conference Committee (tclra101@gmail.com)

Deadline for abstracts is March 1, 2012
Notification of acceptance by March 30

Conference website: https://sites.google.com/site/tclra2012/