CFP: Children’s Literature and Media (ChLA)

CHLA 2010: Children’s Literature and Media
June 10-12—Eastern Michigan University—Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor MI

Many texts from various media now constitute children’s culture: novels, picture books, and poetry as well as video games, text messages, Facebook, television shows, and films. It is important that we expand our understanding of these child-oriented cultural forms and media platforms. Doing so expands the way we define and analyze children’s culture and, hopefully, provides new critical tools by which to understand children’s books. This conference, the 37th Annual Children’s Literature Association Conference, therefore seeks to illuminate the broader electronic children’s culture within which children’s literature exists and thus highlight the multivalent, dialectical relationship between literature and other media written for younger readers, viewers, and consumers.

Some suggested topics follow, but other ideas are welcomed:

• History of genres such as children’s film, television, video games, picture books
• Discussions of particular shows, child stars, games, films, web texts, or works of children’s or young adult literature
• Digital spaces: public spaces, virtual bodies, the on-line child/the child on-line
• Ratings and children’s media; funding for children’s television; censorship of children’s media
• Hypertexts: cell phone text messaging, Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, blogs, web sites
• Media as contemporary folklore; electronic orality; the urban myth on-line
• How has electronic media affected the form and content of children’s books? How have books been altered or adapted into other forms? How do author web sites or other ancillary materials affect the way we read a work of literature?  How have developments in print technology affected children’s texts?
• Children’s media and literature and gender and/or sexuality
• Images of race, ethnicity, nationality and/or social class in children’s media and literature
• Global media and literature; images of children around the world

Send 300-500 word paper proposals to Annette Wannamaker and Ian Wojcik-Andrews at chla2010@emuenglish.org by January 15, 2010.

For more information and conference updates go to http://chla2010.emuenglish.org