CFP - Climate Change in Children’s and Young Adult Fiction (MLA 2019)

Children’s Literature Association non-guaranteed session on children’s and young adult climate fiction (“cli-fi”)
Modern Language Association Conference
Chicago, 3-6 January 2019

Often abbreviated as “cli-fi,” climate fiction is a new—and booming—genre of Anglophone literature that addresses and thus compels its readers to think about anthropogenic climate change. Recent work by Adam Trexler, Amitav Ghosh, and others has ignited a lively conversation in environmental literary studies about the genre—especially cli-fi novels, which dominate it. Although more and more cli-fi novels are written for young audiences (including some of the genre’s better-known titles, like Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker [2010]),environmental literary critics have not yet devoted sustained attention to children’s and YA cli-fi.

Given the growing number and popularity of children’s/YA climate novels, the time is ripe to analyze this significant subgenre of environmental literature.

We consequently invite proposals for presentations on children’s and/or YA cli-fi, especially those which help identify dominant characteristics of the genre, account for its emergence, analyze its significance, and outline areas of further research.

Possible topics include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Children’s and YA cli-fi in the media
• Children’s and YA cli-fi and climate change awareness/activism
• Conventions and characteristics of the genre
• Social and environmental justice in children’s and YA cli-fi
• Corporate corruption in children’s and YA cli-fi
• Depictions of altered geographies
• Kinship/community in children’s and YA cli-fi
• Resilience in children’s and YA cli-fi

Please submit a 500-word abstract and CV to Clare Echterling at cechterling@ku.edu by March 1, 2018.