Call for Papers: ChLA Accessibility Committee Guaranteed Session 2025

No ‘Shortcuts’: Creating Spaces for Disability Communities

DEADLINE EXTENDED - Friday 29th November 2024

In her monograph Handiland: The Crippest Place on Earth, Elizabeth A. Wheeler notes how: “Neither a family nor a community with disabilities is the same thing as a disability community, a group of people with similar or dissimilar disabilities, often peers, who come together to celebrate, commiserate, agitate, and self-advocate…these group formations can help prepare young people for future involvement in public politics and culture” (121, emphasis original). In what spaces can these disability communities function? In what spaces can they thrive? 

This roundtable, sponsored by ChLA’s Accessibility Committee for ChLA’s 2025 online conference (June 9-14), invites scholars to consider the spaces and places wherein disability communities thrive. We are interested in a wide variety of texts and materials which discuss and/or trouble normative spaces and disability communities. Within children’s literature, we are keen to explore texts with ‘non-normative’ childhood settings such as hospitals, therapy, or orphanages. We are likewise interested in accessibility in normative childhood settings such as classrooms, schools, playgrounds, parks, zoos, camps, etc. In addition to our interest in literature and theory, we are especially interested in practitioner experiences and teaching children’s literature about/in disability communities. In both K-12 teaching and teaching children’s literature within college/university classrooms, we are eager to hear about considerations of disability justice and disability in education beyond traditional paradigms. 

For this session, we will have an open discussion between scholars/practitioners without presentations beforehand. Because we would like to include diverse voices, we hope to hear from scholars from a variety of standpoints and career stages and have them propose a topic or personal/professional experience about a disability community they wish to share in a roundtable discussion. We particularly encourage BIPOC scholars, disabled scholars, grad students, and early career scholars to apply. Presenters will be welcome to participate in this roundtable in addition to delivering a regular conference paper. If you are interested in participating, please send the following to accessibility@childlitassn.org by the extended deadline of 29 November 2024:

• A 150-200 word narrative on your scholarly, practical, and/or personal experiences which would allow you to contribute to our roundtable discussion 

• Your CV

• The time zone you will be in June

We hope to notify applicants shortly afterwards so that we can submit our finalized panel by the ChLA submission deadline of 2 December 2024. Reach out to us if you have any questions, and we hope to see your submission!

ChLA 2025 General CFP here: https://chla.memberclicks.net/2025-virtual-conference