CFP: Children’s Literature in Place: Surveying the Landscapes of Children's Culture (an edited collection)

Deadline for abstract submissions: December 1, 2021Contact: Željka Flegar, flegarzn@longwood.edu; Jennifer Miskec, miskecjm@longwood.eduIn Place: A Short Introduction, human geographer Tim Cresswell argues that “place” is space that people have made meaningful. While landscapes can be observed objectively, and spaces may be abstract, places are imbued with personal and cultural meaning and attachment. The landscapes, spaces, and places of children’s culture are varied and diverse. Here we propose a survey of the changing landscapes of children’s culture, the expected and unexpected spaces and places that emerge as and because of children’s culture.We invite submissions for an edited collection dedicated to individual, international, and interdisciplinary considerations of the changing landscapes of contemporary children's literature, media, and culture, from methodology to content. In particular, we seek explorations of “place” in all of its forms: the places of fiction; physical and virtual children’s places; finding one’s place in children’s culture; the new and expanding places of children’s culture; the places from which scholars approach, assign value to, and collaborate on children’s culture; and even children’s culture’s place in popular culture.It is our aim to build on the impressive body of international research on children’s literature, media, and culture by considering essays on literary and media phenomena as well as individual case studies focused on the changing landscapes of children’s culture, the places and spaces that make up today’s children’s cultural geography in a time of change.Chapter topics might include:

• The place of children’s culture in popular culture

• Significant landmarks in / of children’s culture

• Cross- and transmediated places and spaces (e.g., amusement parks, theme parks, film sets, virtual tours)

• Children’s book festivals and children’s places

• Children’s literature and travel

• Worldbuilding

• Visual landscapes

• Toy landscapes

• Adaptation, publishing, and diversity

• Digital era access and collaboration

• Showcasing and display

• Ecocriticism and children’s literature and culture

• Expanding landscapes: new places, cartographies, and pathways

• New ways of seeing children’s literature through

• Collaboration/interdisciplinarity

• Crossover spaces

By featuring a variety of forms and approaches to storytelling, including different literary and media formats, modalities, and practices, we hope to gain a variety of insights into the changing landscapes of children’s culture, its spaces, places, and contexts. We would especially like to encourage interdisciplinary scholarly collaborations, international multi-author projects, and, in the spirit of this collection, academic conversations about aspects of children’s culture that don’t have an obvious scholarly place.Essays should be 5,000-7,000 words in length, in MLA format.Proposals (no more than 1,000 words, including a short bio) are due on December 1, 2021 to the editors: flegarzn@longwood.edu and miskecjm@longwood.edu*We are currently working with a publisher. We hope to make decisions about accepted articles by mid-January. Full articles would be due by August 1, 2022.