Inspired by the 2014 Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research conference on affect in children's texts, we are seeking contributions for an edited collection, Emotional Control: Affect and Children's Texts. During the last two decades, studies of affect and emotion have expanded beyond the field of psychology and been embraced by humanities disciplines including Cultural, Literary and Queer Studies, Philosophy and Sociology. Theorists of affect are typically concerned with the ways embodied and unconscious forms of knowing/being interconnect with the aesthetic, ethical and ideological. According to Grossberg (1992), 'affect is the missing term in an adequate understanding of ideology', arguing that it 'explains the power of the articulation which bonds particular representations and realities. It is the affective investment which enables ideological relations to be internalized and, consequently, naturalized'. We seek to examine how theories of affect and emotion help to explain the significant role children's texts play in the socialization, education and acculturation of young people.

We invite proposals that engage with any aspect of the intersection of affect and contemporary or historical children's literature or media. Papers may be inspired by, but are certainly not limited to, the following topics:

• The role of affect in the narrative positioning of the implied reader or audience
• The role of genre, medium and/or semiotics in promoting particular emotional responses to textual content
• The plausibility of emotional or affective responses in 'fiction' versus 'reality'
• The relevance of traditional or popular culture plots and motifs in manipulating or desensitizing the implied audience to textual events
• The representation of emotion during a particular historical period
• The influence of nation, place or space in the representation or evocation of emotion
• The role of affect and emotion in relation to representations of gender, race, Indigeneity, class, disability or sexuality
• The embodiment of emotion and affect
• The affective potential of political or ideological discourses about contemporary issues embedded in texts for young people

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief biographical note to Elizabeth Bullen, Kristine Moruzi, and Michelle Smith at emotctrl@deakin.edu.au by 15 November 2014. Notification of acceptance by 15 January 2015. Final papers of 6000 words will be due by 1 June 2015.