Call for Papers: CHILDREN'S LITERATURE AS A TERRITORY OF CONFLICTS: TEXTS, PERSONALITIES, AND INSTITUTIONS

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PROPOSALS

RESEARCH CENTER FOR RUSSIAN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

INSTITUTE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE (THE PUSHKIN HOUSE)

ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

URAL FEDERAL UNIVERSITY

 CHILDREN'S LITERATURE AS A TERRITORY OF CONFLICTS: TEXTS, PERSONALITIES, AND INSTITUTIONS

June 1-4, 2014

Institute of Russian Literature (The Pushkin House)

St. Petersburg, Russia

This international conference will discuss children's literature as a territory of conflicts: institutional, personal, and textual. Presentations might address issues such as:

Antagonisms between the state and the writer/reader, problems of religious and political censorship, tension between traditional and innovative forms of children’s literature, previously silenced and taboo subjects (gender, disability, race, ethnicity, sexuality, criminality, death, etc.), generational differences and conflicts, shifts in aesthetic norms and values, construction of the canon and mechanisms of canonization of children’s literature, multiple adaptations and translations of foreign texts, historical conceptions of plurality within children’s literature, children’s literature in the school curriculum, etc. 

Proposals may also address:

·       Innovative authors of children’s books and their careers

·       Professional, regional, and informal societies of writers

·       History of different generations of children’s writers

·       Problems and conflicts in national children’s literatures

·       Theoretical and critical approaches to children’s literature

Please send us your 300-word proposal and a short bio by September 1, 2013. You will be notified by October 1, 2013, if your abstract has been selected for the conference.

Working languages: Russian and English

Contact information: detlit2014@gmail.com

Organizational committee:

Marina Balina, Illinois Wesleyan U

Valentin Golovin, Institute of Russian Literature (The Pushkin House)

Mariia Litovskaia, Ural Federal U

Svetlana Maslinskaia, Institute of Russian Literature (The Pushkin House)

Larissa Rudova, Pomona College

Inna Sergienko, Institute of Russian Literature (The Pushkin House)

Valerii Viugin, Institute of Russian Literature, St. Petersburg