CFP - Children's Media and Literature in a Mediatized World

Children's Media and Literature in a Mediatized World
Conference at Aarhus University, Centre for Children's Literature
30 May – 1 June 2017

Children and young people live in a mediatized world in which literature, other visual and verbal texts, media and platforms converge and coalesce. Established notions of producers and users, target groups, genres and literary forms and experiences are thereby challenged.

Users and readers are ascribed with new forms of agency, while at the same time children confront an increased commercialization and demands for standardized schooling and academic achievements.

At this conference we wish to examine these challenges, bringing together scholars from children's literature studies, media studies and adjoining fields. For instance, children’s literature, in its many manifestations, must be seen as tightly interwoven with the broad-spectre media cultures in which children and young people engage.

Children’s literature and media must be understood in the light of contemporary developments, which enable new, cross-media publishing forms, as well as new modes of interaction and engagement between writers and readers, users and producers. Children and young people are in many cases producers and co-producers of media content themselves, and they often seem to cross traditional borders between digital and analogue media and texts in their everyday practices.

These developments bring about analytical, theoretical, methodological and empirical challenges which will be addressed at this conference.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Children’s and young people's everyday life with (digital) media
• Children's literature in a new media landscape
• Children and young people as consumers and producers of texts and media
• Children's media and texts in family life and schools

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Rebekah Willett, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ute Dettmar, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt
Björn Sjöblom, Stockholms Universitet
Philip Nel, Kansas State University

Please send abstracts of max 300 words and a 100-word biography to Sarah Mygind, sarah.mygind@cc.au.dk no later than 1 December 2017.

Notification of acceptance: 15 December

Conference organizers: Nina Christensen (nc@cc.au.dk) and Stine Liv Johansen (stineliv@cc.au.dk) and Sarah Mygind.