CFP Children's series books and internationalism (Collection) (11/1/11)

http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/41769

Call for contributions to essay collection: Children's series books and internationalism
full name / name of organization:
Marietta Frank, U Pitt-Bradford, and Karen Sands-O'Connor, Buffalo State College
contact email:
marietta@penn.edu and sandsk@buffalostate.edu

The editors are currently seeking proposals for a collection of essays investigating internationalism in children’s series books. With the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center bombings, the “Arab Spring,” and the increasing demands of non-Western countries for a voice in global politics, this is a particularly pertinent moment to examine how literature for children faces the challenges and possibilities of global interaction. Series books, with their reliance on the comfort of the familiar blended with the lure of adventure, frequently use the foreign and/or international setting as moral proving ground for the characters. We are especially interested in the attitudes taken by authors of and characters in series books toward other nations and people throughout time, and the ways in which series books have acted as explicator or advocate for a nation’s foreign policies, or as dissenting voice to either official policies or socio-cultural attitudes of the time. We welcome essays on series books for children from any perspective, but possible topics might include:
--Colonialism and imperialism and international perspectives in series books
--Comic book heroes and international “bad guys”
--Cold War politics in series books
--Science fiction and internationalism
--Gender and gender differences in series books set in foreign countries
--Environmental or other global concerns in series fiction
--Nonfiction series about global issues
--Non-Western perspectives on internationalism
Please send 500-word titled abstracts, with a brief (no more than 150 words) author biography, by November 1st, 2011, to both editors (sandsk@buffalostate.edu and Marietta@penn.com). Authors whose abstracts are accepted will be expected to produce completed (5000-7,500 words) chapters by June 1st, 2012.