The panel will be presented at the MMLA at St. Louis, MO from Nov 10-13, 2016

From the late Victorian period throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, Anglo-American children's literature and young adult fiction experienced a sudden surge in popularity. While some sentimental or didactic North American literature reinforced obedience to parental and societal expectations, such as Susan Warner's The Wide Wide World (1850) and Martha Finley's popular Elsie Dinsmore series (1867-1905), other works explored the possibilities resulting from disobedient adolescence, such as Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gablesseries (1908-1920). Meanwhile, British fantasy literature by authors such as George McDonald and E. Nesbit idealized the middle-class English child as subversive protagonist of the modern fairy story, supernaturally combating social ills and injustices existing in the adult system of legal justice, while at the same time testing and submitting to acceptable moral, social, and gender parameters. Such narratives, whether undercutting or reaffirming adult behavior, also establish childhood as a unique space of negotiation, perception, and decision occurring prior to adulthood.

This session invites proposals for individual papers on the societal pressures in children or young adult literature from this period that worked to shape and necessitate the embodiment of womanhood or manhood, queer or subversive resistance to conforming to idealized, or imperative notions of gender norms, the childish world conflicting with the public or adult sphere, rejection of female or male attire, duty, or performance, and spatial avoidance of the domestic sphere by means of nature or adventure.

Please send abstracts no longer than 250 words to Lydia Craig at lcraig1@luc.edu no later than April 30th, 2016.