CFP - Edited Collection on Ghost Children in Children's and Young Adult Literature

CFP: Edited Collection on Ghost Children in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Scholarly essays by researchers outside the United States are sought for a collection on the figure of the ghost child in children’s and young adult literature.

From sentimental hauntings of bereaved parents to evil specters who threaten the living, the ghost child is a figure freighted with emotion. Trapped in a permanent state of childhood/adolescence, the ghost child, because of its lack of body, does not physically mature. It experiences a stasis that is tragic, frightening, and disturbing. In many texts, however, the ghost child undergoes some type of transformation that allows it to "grow up" in perhaps alternative ways. This collection aims to demonstrate the ways in which ghosts suggest nuanced and complicated constructions of childhood.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• visual representations of ghost children in picture books, comics, film, or TV
• ghosts and identity development (or lack thereof)
• stasis and transition
• permanent childhood/adolescence
• notions of "growing up"
• the categories of child and adolescent as they relate to the body
• the status of the outsider
• death

Submit abstracts (between 500-750 words) by October 10 to Elizabeth Talafuse, Texas A&M University: talafuse@tamu.edu. Please include contact information and a short C.V. Complete essays will be 5000-7000 words. The editor is working with a press and is looking for a couple of additional chapters to extend the collection.