CFP: conference on children's literature and the environment
CALL FOR PAPERS. Deep into Nature: Ecology, Environment and Children's Literature
BRITISH IBBY/NCRCL MA CONFERENCE, NOVEMBER 15TH 2008 (Roehampton University, London)
Global warming is a dominant narrative of our time, and we are surrounded by stories of a doomed future of environmental catastrophe. But landscape and our relationship with nature have long preoccupied children’s literature in the UK and internationally. For their 2008 conference, the British Section of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) and the NCRCL (National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature) want to look at how the environment, and the human/child relationship with the natural world is treated in books for young readers. We will also examine how children’s publishing can respond to issues of consumption and sustainability. For details, go to www.ncrcl.ac.uk.
The conference will include keynote talks by well-known writers and academics (confirmed speakers are academic Roni Natov, and children's book creators Michael Foreman, Michelle Paver and others), and we would like to include a wide range of workshop sessions (lasting about 20 minutes) which might deal with some of the following or other issues:
* the natural world and the human relationship to it
* the child in nature
* eco-activism and its representation
* landscapes both tame (such as gardens) and wild
* the pastoral
* future relationships with the natural world and how they are represented (sci-fi, fantasy, realism)
* issues around production/consumption and sustainability
* eco-criticism and children’s literature
We would particularly welcome international perspectives and contributions from academics and others interested in any of these areas. Brief accounts of papers given will be published in the Spring 2009 issue of IBBYLink, the journal of British IBBY, and we hope that the proceedings of the conference will be published shortly afterwards in full in book form.
The deadline for proposals is June 30th 2008. Please email a 200 word abstract (for a twenty minute paper) as an attached Word document to Laura Atkins at L.Atkins@roehampton.ac.uk. Please also include a short biography and affiliation.