REIYL 2022

Safe Passage: Trauma Recovery and Community Restoration in

 Inclusive Youth Literature and Beyond

11-13 August 2022 | Glasgow, Scotland

Keynote Speaker: Author, Educator and Activist Renée Watson

About REIYL 2022

Trauma recovery and community restoration is not just a theme for this conference; it is also an essential form of care necessitated by our collective experiences over the last three years. With ongoing political and civil unrest, a worldwide pandemic, economic uncertainty and environmental crises, we have to take a breath – even for just a minute – to lay down our tools and to take stock of what it means to move through and from tragedy and violence. 

This is a time to listen and to learn from the experiences of those who came before us. To be considerate of the needs of those around us. To form systems of protection, solidarity, support and joy. This conference is an invitation for us to listen, learn, gather and heal as a community, with compassion for ourselves and others, so that we can reflect on this journey in our research philosophies, interests and practices.  

For REIYL 2022 we welcome proposals for papers that address these core themes in the context of inclusive youth literature, media and culture.

Possible Submission Topics

• Representation of war and displacement in youth literature – for example, movements in and out of Palestine, Tigray, Syria and Ukraine
• Representation of refugee and immigrant experiences in youth literature
• Representation of spiritual and/or religious grounding in youth literature
• Communities coming together at different intersections of diversity to reflect on collective tragedies
• Crises – for example, the global climate crisis, white supremacist domestic terrorism, pandemics past and present, rollbacks of human rights (such as legal attacks on reproductive justice, the rights of trans youth, etc.) and the impacts these crises have on communities
• Methodologies, ethics and research practices in academia and publishing:
  - Methodology and researcher life: how do researchers operate, or recover, while doing their work under these conditions?
  - What it means to be expected to function at high levels of engagement in pressured professional spaces
  - Alternative methodologies
• Recovery, survival and joy

Conference Format

The conference will open early on the evening of Thursday, 11 August, and close with a keynote the afternoon of Saturday, 13 August, 2022. There will be opportunities for hybrid presentations and the conference will be livestreamed for participants unable to attend in person, but REIYL will not record or re-air any of the presentations. 

Unless medically exempt, participants will be required to wear masks during all indoor conference sessions.

Conference Fee

£55 non-student rate / £35 student rate

Audience

We welcome researchers working in youth literature, media and culture studies as well as other research areas such as museum studies, library sciences, prison studies and migration studies.

We understand the term "researcher" in its broadest sense and encourage abstract proposals from everyone – students, early career researchers, authors, illustrators, parents/carers, booksellers and more!

We will have a limited number of bursaries covering the conference and travel fees for students based in the UK who will be attending in-person.

Please note that all conference participants will be required to sign up to and follow REIYL's code of conduct.

Due Date for CfP Responses

For responses, please create a single Word file with:

1. Presenter name(s), email address and institutional affiliation (if any)
2. Title of presentation
3. Abstract of 300 words, and 
4. Short bio or one-page CV or resume

Please submit responses by 11:59 pm BST on 11 July 2022 to reiyl.community@gmail.com.

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