Paper Call – War, Militarization & Childhood

A Joint Session Of ARCYP And ACCUTE
80th Congress Of The Humanities And Social Sciences
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
May 28-31, 2011
DEADLINE: November 15, 2010

The ideologically-loaded Western concept of “the child,” and of childhood as a time of innocence and play, seems to make the idea of a child soldier oxymoronic. Yet, according to UNICEF, “an estimated 300,000 child soldiers—boys and girls under the age of eighteen—are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide” despite the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits child soldiers. What activist groups like War Child, with their vision to create a world in which no child knows war, make perspicuous is that there is not an incontrovertible separation between children’s spaces and the theatre of war. This panel invites papers that deal with, and complicate, the intersection of the ideological ideal of “the child,” war, and militarization.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: functions of child soldiers in the war on terror; histories and stories of child soldiers; artistic, digital, and literary representations of child soldiers; self-representations through memoirs by former child soldiers; the intersection(s) of the concepts of the child soldier, religion, and international law; the voices and perspectives of male and female child soldiers.

Following the instructions under Option # 1 at www.accute.ca/generalcall.html, send three documents in separate electronic files directly to admin@arcyp.ca by November 15, 2010: (1) a 700-word proposal or 8- to 10-page double-spaced paper, without identifying marks; (2) a 100-word abstract and 50-word biographical statement; and (3) a Proposal Submissions Information Sheet.

NOTES: You must be a current member of ARCYP or ACCUTE to submit to this session. Rejected submissions will not be moved into the general “pool” of ACCUTE submissions.

ARCYP Membership information is available at http://arcyp.ca/membership.

Please feel free to print and share the PDF file of this Call for Papers, available at http://arcyp.ca/archives/221.

Association for Research in Cultures of Young People (ARCYP)
Dept. of Humanities, PO Box B7, Vanier College, York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
Phone: (416)736-2100 ext. 60498
Fax: (416) 736-5460
E-mail: admin@arcyp.ca
Website: http://arcyp.ca