Extended deadline - 10 June 2026 - for chapter proposals for edited collection: ‘Race, Ethnicity, and Representation in Irish Children’s and Young Adult Literature 1600–2000’
Extended deadline for chapter proposals: 10 June 2026.
Chapter proposals are invited for an edited collection that examines how race and ethnicity have been imagined, negotiated, and represented in Irish children’s and young adult literature — and in literature by young people — from 1600 to 2000. The edited collection aims to reassess canonical authors, bring renewed attention to overlooked or out-of-print writers, and historicise the representation of race and ethnicity in Irish youth literature from 1600 to 2000. The volume is intended for scholars, researchers, and students in Irish Studies, youth-literature studies, book history, childhood studies, media studies, cultural studies, and related fields. We warmly encourage submissions from both established and emerging scholars and from a range of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, theoretical, and methodological perspectives.
We welcome submissions on 1600–2000 Irish fiction, poetry, and nonfiction for young people and by young people, and on diverse genres and textual forms such as picture books, religious tracts, plays, theatre, comics, schoolbooks, periodicals, chapbooks, hornbooks, folklore collections, travel writing, radio, television, and film.
Potential topics:
- Colonialism, empire, and Irish identity formation
- Irish Traveller storytelling and culture and representations of Irish Travellers
- Depictions of migration, diaspora, and transnational childhoods
- Race, science, anthropology, and childhood in 17th–20th century youth-literature texts
- Irish-language youth literature and racial/ethnic difference
- Folklore, oral storytelling, and constructions of the “Other”
- Juvenilia and writing by young people
- School stories and educational texts
- Publishing histories, practices, and circulation networks
- Post-colonialism and post-colonial readings
Submissions may focus on well-known or lesser-known figures, including but not limited to: Maria Edgeworth; Jonathan Swift; Lady Mount Cashel; Rosa Mulholland; L.T. Meade; Flora Shaw; Oscar Wilde; Lady Gregory; Katherine Tynan; Padraic Colum; James Stephens; Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha; Patricia Lynch; Máirín Cregan; Peig Sayers; Sinéad de Valera; Cathal Ó Sándair; Meta Mayne Reid; Eilís Dillon; Joan Lingard; Tom McCaughren; Sam McBratney; Michael Scott; Marita Conlon-McKenna; Maeve Friel; John Quinn; Gerald Whelan; Catherine Sefton (Martin Waddell); Éilís Ní Dhuibhne (Elizabeth O’Hara); Mark O’Sullivan.
Please email a 400-word proposal including an outline of the theoretical framework and primary text/s for analysis and a 150-word author biography by 10 June 2026 to raceirishyouthlit@gmail.com with the subject line ‘Proposal for edited collection’. Please let us know at the time of your proposal if you anticipate including any images or permissions.
The book proposal is under consideration for the Routledge Studies in Irish Literature series.
Co-editors: Dr Patricia Kennon (Maynooth University, Ireland: patricia.kennon@mu.ie) and Dr Siobhán Morrissey (University of Galway: siobhan.morrissey@universityofgalway.ie)