CFP - Archiving Childhood

calls for papers
Written By

Archiving Childhood: The 3rd NCRCL Conference
Friday 1 July, 2016
https://archivechild.wordpress.com/conference/

Clothes folded in attic-boxes; play-lists of songs and albums; marbles, shells and conkers lined-up on windowsills; memories of stories and nursery rhymes; tins jammed with ticket stubs; alphabetized book-mountains under beds; postcards and photographs lining walls and staircases; shelves packed with fabric, or skeins of yarn; recipes in bulging folders; sideboards full of vinyl records; a writer’s desk and manuscripts; digital images of ancient books, catalogues, maps or illustrations; art collections in a disused telephone box; nature reserves; grand buildings crammed with objects of ancient and modern life.

The urge to collect and preserve can start in early childhood. Archives hold and preserve the past, yet they can also be virtual, future-orientated and open-source. Indeed, the very nature of archives is changing as our children grow into adulthood; in a digital world, material books may end up in digital archives, rather than sitting on children’s bookshelves.

The 3rd NCRCL conference celebrates the archive in all its forms and recognizes it as an important aspect of childhood culture. We invite scholars to explore the archive as a crucial concept in children’s literature studies, taking into account the physical spaces and practical methods, as well as the conceptual possibilities of archiving. PhD students are encouraged to submit proposals for our special graduate poster session.

Papers and posters might examine the following areas:

  • Archive stories
  • Songs, illustrations, and poems in the archive
  • Theories and methodologies of archiving
  • Objects archives, archives of ideas
  • The archive, the library, the museum, the exhibition
  • The archive as memory, memory as archive
  • The reader as archive
  • Archives in children’s literature
  • Children as archivists and collectors
  • Archival silences
  • Archiving senses
  • Collecting and collectors
  • Digital archiving
  • Cataloguing Beyond the archive

Please send an abstract (200 to 300 words) and a short biography to archivechild@roehampton.ac.uk by February 28, 2016.

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