NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

Forthcoming Conference Events

The Istituto Universitario L'Orientale in Naples Italy will host a conference on The Ages of Life on February 13-17, 2006, including three seminars on children and youth, given by Ottavia Niccoli (University of Trento), Patrizia Guarnieri (University of Florence), Roni Weinstein (University of Jerusalem/University of Pisa). Please refer to the following website: http://www.iuo.it/dr/storiadonne/news.htm.

The Canterbury Centre for Medieval and Tudor Studies and the School of English at the University of Kent will be hosting a conference on Medieval Children 1200-1500 Conference on June 16-18, 2006. Professors Nicholas Orme (Exeter) and Derek Brewer (Emmanuel, Cambridge) will be giving Keynote Addresses. Drs. Eve Salisbury (Western Michigan), Gary Dickson (Edinburgh), and Jeremy Goldberg (York) will be giving Featured Speeches; and Prof. Peter Beidler (Lehigh) will act as the Featured Walking Tour Leader. Please contact conference organizer Christine Li Ju Tsai at medieval.children@gmail.com for more information.

The International Cultural Research Network and The Department of Education at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki are organising a conference in July 2006 on "Exploring Cultural Perspectives." This includes a strand on "Childhood and Youth -history, health, crime, substance abuse, religion." For more details see: http://www.icrn.ca

The 52^nd meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies on 20-23 April 2006 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign includes a panel entitled "Women, Children and French Indochina." For more details see: http://www.conferences.uiuc.edu/french2006/

Calls for Papers

The Fourth Annual Fort Garry Lectures in History Graduate Student Conference will take place at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba from 27-29 April 2006. Proposed paper topics include "Family and Childhood' and proposals are due by 18 March 2006.

A conference entitled "The Politics of Domestic Authority, Britain 1800-2000" will take place at King's College Cambridge. Papers are invited on the topic of "youth cultures' and among themes to be addressed is the issue of how technology, employment and education have impacted upon structures of family authority. For more information see: http://www.domesticauthorityconference.com/index.html

Submissions are requested for the Institute for the African Child at Ohio University's sixth annual conference "African Children in African Media" scheduled for June 15-17, 2006, at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The conference deals centrally with the issue of how African children have been represented in African audio-visual and print media. Submissions are due by 1 April 2006. More details at: http://www.ohio.edu/afrchild

A panel on "Children's Digital Literature and Culture" at the 2006 MLA will explore intersections of children's literature and culture in digital media, including video games, websites, online diaries and blogs, software (like learning games, Flash games, Living Books), online libraries, and similar digital texts. In doing so, the panel will investigate how these media affect children's literature and culture, including digital media that complements traditional children's literature such as websites by authors and video game tie-ins. Examples include Jane Yolen's single author blog and Neil Gaiman's blog which he updates daily and where readers of all ages can post comments, as well as same-story versions of children's texts that are adapted for multiple media. Examples include The Polar Express and Lemony Snicket, which have texts, movies, websites, and video games. The panel will also examine how different media (blogs, webpages, video games, digital libraries, iPods, GPS, etc) impact and alter children's literature and culture. By investigating these media we will see how children's culture has become a multi-media and multi-disciplinary field of inquiry into childhood and literature. Possible media topics could include video games for children, digital libraries, blogs, Plug N Play gaming systems, ESRP Game Rating System, educational gaming systems (Leapfrog), misc digital media (iPod, GPS). Submissions can also focus on a particular aspect within a specific media. These could include digital media and gender, digital media and history, digital media and race, digital media and children as consumers, digital media and the environment, or digital media and policy/politics. DEADLINE: By March 1, 2006, submit detailed abstract, abbreviated c.v. or brief biographical note via email to cmartin@english.ufl.edu. Or through mail: Cathlena Martin, University of Florida, Department of English, 4008 Turlington Hall, PO Box 117310, Gainesville, FL 32611.

The 7th International Conference of the Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research (ACLAR) will take place in Melbourne, Australia on July 13-14, 2006. The theme of the conference is “Children's Literature at the Edge: New Texts, New Technologies, New Readings, New Readers.” Papers can address (but are not limited to) the following: emerging genres of children’s literature; changing styles of narrative; new technologies and their effects on texts; traditional forms with a new twist; new scholarly directions; cultural shifts and children’s texts; new versions of older texts; and marketing newness. Abstracts (of no more than 250 words) are due by 31 March 2006 to Professor Clare Bradford of Deakin University at clarex@deakin.edu.au.

The annual meeting of the Society of Philosophy and History of Education will be held in the Historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio Sept. 28-30, 2006. Presentations are solicited in the philosophy of education, history of education, and in contemporary issues in education. For more information, write David Snelgrove, Program Chair, at dcsnelgrov@aol.com and visit website http://members.aol.com/sopheswpes/.

Contested Bodies of Childhood and Youth Conference, 17 - 18th July 2006, Department of Geography, University of Durham. The emergence of 'new social studies of childhood' (James et al  1998) has led to much needed reconceptualisations of childhood and youth, placing greater focus on the social construction of age and on young people's agency. There has, however, been relatively little engagement with questions of embodiment, despite the major attention that this issue has received in work on gender, sexuality and ethnicity. An edited collection by Alan Prout ('The Body, Childhood and Society', 2000) begins to bridge this gap, as does work in geography by Gill Valentine, Tracey Skelton and Elizabeth Teather. However, there remains much scope for debate on different ways of conceptualising the embodiment of childhood and youth and for mapping a broader conceptual terrain, especially at a time when concerns about rising levels of obesity in industrialised countries have led to a major upsurge in political and media interest, directed mainly at finding 'pragmatic' solutions that, too often, are based on narrow understandings of child development. This conference invites speakers from across the humanities and social sciences to discuss how and why bodies of childhood and youth are contested, reflecting on the potential for gaining new insights from a range of theoretical perspectives. Possible themes include:

performativity and techniques of the body
 landscapes and scales of embodiment
conceptualising and researching embodiment
disorderly bodies
gender and sexuality
abuse and the disciplining of bodies 
race and ethnicity
political and media discourses of child and adolescent embodiment
emotion, affect and potentialities of the body
educating bodies
social inequalities, spatial disparities and health
resisting bodies
consuming bodies and the politics of food