CFP No Longer for Kids: Children’s Literature and Higher Education (3/15/2023; MLA 2024)

No Longer for Kids: Children’s Literature and Higher Education

deadline for submissions:
March 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Noah Mullens / University of Florida

contact email:
noahmullens@ufl.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/01/17/no-longer-for-kids-children%E2%80%99s-literature-and-higher-education.

Call for Papers: MLA 2024

Co-sponsored by the Children’s Literature Association and MLA Libraries and Research Forum (non-guaranteed)

Deadline Extended: March 15th

In March 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the “Parental Rights in Education” bill— dubbed the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. The policy bars teachers from discussing “sexual orientation or gender identity” with students between kindergarten through the third grade. While LGBTQ+ picture books are not necessarily banned, the implication of the law is that queer literature will no longer be easily accessible to children in elementary schools. The passage of the law is another instance of the trend of banning texts that deal with race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality. Conversely, other texts are taken out of circulation due to antiquated or harmful depictions of gender, race, and/or sexuality. This process of curation and restriction has happened throughout history. However, this panel addresses the pedagogical questions undergirding these processes.

What happens to these texts? Many are relegated to one specialized area: higher education. But what occurs when a piece of children’s literature can only be taught in a university setting, and how has it occurred in the past? How do curators shape children’s books when archiving them as research objects for scholars? Why are certain texts canonized or applauded in higher education but do not share a similar popularity with parents or elementary educators? What are possible interventions for dealing with book bans in children’s literature?

With the recent publication of the 50th edition of Children’s Literature, the annual journal of the Children’s Literature Association and The Modern Language Association Division on Children’s Literature, this roundtable asks to reflect not only of the study on children’s literature in academia, but to consider the texts that can only be studied in higher educational contexts.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Syllabi of children’s literature courses and the tastes, sensibilities, and aesthetics scholars have privileged
• The various considerations and restrictions public librarians, school librarians, and archivists navigate when curating children’s books
• Historical examples of literature that was removed from child educational settings but persisted in higher education
• Policies that reframe particular children’s texts or crossover texts to a strictly adult audience
• Differences in how scholars in higher education and readers outside of the university perceive the intended audience of children’s literature
• Texts that make critical contributions to children’s literature scholarship and representation that do not gain traction outside of the academy
• The multiple qualifiers for when to take a book out of circulation and the controversies surrounding how these texts should be approached, researched, and taught in a higher educational context
• The differences or similarities between what Michelle Ann Abate calls a “children’s literature for adults” and children’s literature that becomes adult through political agendas

Please send a brief abstract (150-200 words) for short papers suitable for a roundtable discussion to Noah Mullens (noahmullens@ufl.edu) by March 15th, 2023.



Last updated February 27, 2023

Survey/CFP MLA and Sherlock Holmes!

Contribute to an MLA Approaches Volume on Sherlock Holmes Stories 

Source: https://news.mla.hcommons.org/2021/03/01/contribute-to-an-mla-approaches-volume-on-sherlock-holmes-stories/

Posted 1 March 2021 by Benjamin Schacht

The volume Approaches to Teaching Sherlock Holmes Stories, edited by Tom Ue, is now in development in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature. Instructors who have taught works that feature Sherlock Holmes are encouraged to contribute to the volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey.

 

CFP MLA's Teaching Science Fiction in the Literature Classroom (4/15/20)

Science Fiction in the Literature Classroom

The presence of science fiction in university classrooms is by now no longer shocking; the genre has become a mainstay not only in literature and philosophy classrooms but also in STEM fields, as its predictions and extrapolations pose memorable and concrete case studies to explore the societal and ethical implications of technological innovation, as well as interesting practical engineering problems to try to solve with real-world science. As the world around us becomes more and more science fictional with each passing year—often in ways that have eerie resonance with the dystopian and apocalyptic predictions of years past—the speculations of science fiction will only have more purchase in our attempts to prepare our students for a future that seems very much in flux.
But in film and literature departments science fiction still often suffers from a reputation as being easy, silly, and fundamentally undemanding, an essentially degraded form of artistic production unworthy of serious attention by serious critics. This reputation persists despite the canonization of major writers of science fiction—Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler, Philip K. Dick, and J. G. Ballard, among many others—who are treated as exceptional deviations from the genre rather than emblematic of it, and also denies the science fictional dimensions of work by acclaimed writers such as Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, David Mitchell, and David Foster Wallace.

This volume, Teaching Science Fiction in the Literature Classroom, will be divided into three sections. The first, “Form and Genre,” will focus on teaching science fiction in its own terms, as a genre with rules, conventions, and principles quite specific to itself. The second, “Canonicity and Prestige,” will consider science fiction appearing in the classroom alongside more traditionally acclaimed literature and film, often on the same syllabus. The third, “Creation,” will consider pedagogy that invites students to create science fiction, with all the possibilities and pitfalls that can entail.

Scholars interested in contributing an essay of approximately 3,000–4,000 words are invited to submit a 250–500-word abstract outlining their chapter. The deadline for submissions of abstracts is 15 April 2020; please e-mail submissions and any questions for clarification to Gerry Canavan (gerry.canavan@marquette.edu). Permission from students must be obtained for any relevant quotations from student work in the essay; previously published essays cannot be considered. Learn more about the MLA guidelines for publication.

CFP Essays for MLA Volume on Teaching Young Adult Literature (proposals by 11/1/2015)

Call for Essay Proposal for Volume on Teaching Young Adult Literature (1 November 2015)
full name / name of organization: MLA Publications
contact email: kscoat2@ilstu.edu
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63154

Proposals are invited for a volume entitled Teaching Young Adult Literature to be edited by Karen Coats, Mike Cadden, and Roberta Seelinger Trites. This volume in the MLA’s Options for Teaching series aims to bring together a range of articles describing innovative and successful approaches to designing and teaching stand-alone Young Adult Literature courses at the post-secondary level, as well as incorporating YA texts into other undergraduate and graduate courses relevant to MLA members and Education and Library Science faculty.

This volume will be a resource for new and experienced teachers of young adult texts. It will provide suggestions for supplementary materials and pedagogical activities for a variety of student audiences in a range of college settings. Abstracts that use specific YA texts as examples to demonstrate how to teach genres within YA literature (e.g. graphic narrative, historical fiction, the verse novel, etc.) are welcome, as are abstracts that focus on themes, topics, methods, and problems in teaching Young Adult literature in various settings.

Your abstract should clarify your intended topic, setting, its relevance to the subject of Young Adult literature pedagogy, the texts, genre(s) or theories you expect to explore, and the value of your intended topic to a broad range of instructors and students. Please note that any quotations from student papers will require written permission from the students. Contributors to a volume must be members of the MLA when their contribution is submitted in the final, approved manuscript, through publication.
If you are interested in contributing an essay of between 2000–3000 words, please submit an abstract of 350–500 words to Karen Coats at kscoat2@ilstu.edu by 1 November 2015.


By web submission at 07/25/2015 - 18:49

CFP 19th-Century Science Fiction (3/15/15; MLA Austin 1/7-10/16)

One quick CFP since I see it:

CFP MLA 2016 (Austin, 01/07-01/10) Special Session: 19th-Century Science Fiction
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/60702
full name / name of organization:
MLA / Jessica Kuskey
contact email:
jkuskey@ucsc.edu

Papers sought for a special session to be proposed for MLA 2016 on any aspect of nineteenth-century science fiction. Potential angles on this topic may include:

- proto-science fiction
- texts traditionally not viewed as science fiction, reconsidered as aligned with the emergence of the genre
- historical/cultural influences on the emergence of the genre
- literary/cultural impacts of the emergence of the genre

300-word abstract and 1-page CV by 15 March 2015, sent to Jessica Kuskey (jkuskey@ucsc.edu)

By web submission at 02/08/2015 - 19:44

CFP Science Fiction and Transgressive Identities (3/10/14; MLA 1/8-11/15)

Sorry for the late post:

MLA Panel: Science Fiction and Transgressive Identities
full name / name of organization:
Stefan Hoppner
contact email:
shoppner@ucalgary.ca
Modern Language Association Convention

January 8-11, 2015, Vancouver, Canada

Special Session: Science Fiction and Transgressive Identities

Science fiction has often been considered a narrative genre that is particularly well-suited for exploring alternative realities via speculative scenarios. Authors such as Fredric Jameson and Seo-Young Chu have suggested that these scenarios are much less investigations of our possible future or alternative past, as they are about the readers’ present conditions. The impact of disruptive technologies or hypothetical models of social interaction can be explored and played through in some kind of narrative simulation and presents an analysis of present potential. Ursula LeGuin’s non-gendered aliens, Octavia Butler’s ternary gender constellations and interspecies relationships, or Isaak Asimov’s concept of cybernetic consciousness are examples for a particular kind of exploration, namely of alternative identities and the fluid boundaries of what it means to be human. How do these identities and narratives disrupt and transgress their traditional counterparts? How does an author’s cultural and historical background play into his or her specific conceptions of alternative identities and transgression?

This panel intends to explore how SF works as a narrative mode to negotiate identities beyond traditional gender and species boundaries, or the limits between human and non-human forms of existence. Contributions about non-Western and non-canonical Science Fiction writers are particularly welcome.

Please send 300-word abstract and short CV by March 10, 2014, to Stefan Hoeppner (shoppner@ucalgary.ca) and Gerrit Roessler (gerrit.k.roessler@gmail.com).


By web submission at 02/24/2014 - 17:41