Call for Papers: Children's Literature and the Literary

Deadline: 1 March 2004

Session at the Modern Language Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 27-30 December 2004. Sponsored by the MLA Children's Literature Division.

In recent years, children's literature studies has increasingly explored children's material and popular culture, embraced critical models from cultural studies, and expanded its concerns to include interdisciplinary childhood or children's studies models. In light of the changes in children's literature studies and literary studies in general, this panel seeks to explore the role of literariness in children's literature. Is literariness still a meaningful concept? How do we define the literary in our discussions of children's texts? How does the history of children's literature studies, such as the struggle to get English departments to recognize children's literature as "literature" rather than "sub-literature," continue to inform our critical theory and practice? What do "literary" criteria have to offer children's cultural studies, and what does children's cultural studies have to offer children's literature?

Papers are invited that explore these questions or related ones. Both discussions of the role of the literary as it relates to children's literature's disciplinary status and discussion of specific texts are encouraged.

Please send detailed abstracts to Richard Flynn, Department of Literature and Philosophy, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 30458-8023; e-mail: rflynn@gasou.edu. Deadline: 1 March 2004. Panelists must be members of the MLA by 1 April 2004.

This page last updated 25 September 2003.