2014 ACLAR conference, "Emotional Control: Affect, Ideology and Texts for Young People"

The eleventh biennial international conference 

of the Australasian Children’s Literature 

Association for Research (ACLAR)

Emotional Control: Affect, Ideology and Texts for Young People
Waterfront Campus, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia
June 30 – July 2, 2014 

proposal deadline: February 28, 2014

Keynote speakers:
Professor John Stephens (Macquarie University)
Dr Juanita Ruys (University of Sydney)

Over the past two decades, studies of affect and emotion have expanded beyond the field of psychology and been embraced by disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Theorists of affect are concerned with the ways embodied forms of knowing and feeling interconnect with the aesthetic, ethical and ideological, including their effect on texts. According to Grossberg (1992), ‘affect is the missing term in an adequate understanding of ideology.’ The 2014 ACLAR conference explores affect and emotion, with a particular emphasis on how theories of emotion and affect might extend research on the ideological agendas encoded in texts for children and young adults.

Abstracts that address the conference theme are welcome and the full range of children’s texts and media may be examined. Papers may engage with, but are not limited to, the following topics:



Affecting fictions: How do emotion and affect position readers or audiences to subscribe to the ideology of a text?
Papers might:

• Focus on the way genre, motif, setting, medium and/or semiotics manipulate – invite or foreclose – particular emotional responses to the textual content;
• Consider the emotional or affective responses invited by fictional events because of the age of the implied reader or for reasons such as censorship or didacticism;
• Examine the influence of technology, marketing, fan fiction and/or peer culture in promoting young people’s affective investments in a text.

Sense and sensibility: Are emotions universal or constructed?
Papers might:

•  Consider how the national, cultural, geographical and/or historical origin of a text influences the representation of emotion and/or the implied reader’s emotional response;
• Examine the way fictions set in the past negotiate differences between historical sensibilities and those of the contemporary reader;
• Explore the body and embodiment in the textual evocation of emotion and affect.

Feeling and self: What roles do affect and emotion play in the representation of gender, race, indigeneity, class, LGBT, disability, nationality, religion, etc?
Papers might:

• Investigate the role of affect in positioning the implied reader/viewer to empathize – or not – with characters from dominant and minority groups;
• Focus on the ideological implications of the textual reproduction or subversion of identity-based emotional stereotypes (such as, but not limited to, masculinity and femininity);
• Address issues of authenticity, appropriation and essentialism. 

Emotional socialization: How do children’s texts mobilize affect to educate and acculturate readers and audiences to respond to the life experiences and the life politics of their world?
Papers might:

• Attend to the modeling of emotional intelligence or resilience in fiction or non-fiction;
• Compare the emotional/affective appeal embedded in children’s texts with public discourses in regard to the same social issue;
• Evaluate the merits of theories of affect in relation to cognitive/ narratological/poststructuralist/post-theory modes for explaining how texts socialize young readers or audiences. 

Abstracts of no more than 300 words are due by February 28, 2014 (deadline extended)
Abstracts should be emailed to: aclar2014@gmail.com

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Job Announcement: Professor/Reader in Children’s Literature, University of Roehampton, London

Closing Date: March 2nd, 2014

Full Job Posting: University of Roehampton Website

Person of Contact: Laura Peters, Head of Dept. lpeters@roehampton.ac.uk 

NCRCL website

Outline of the Post

Applications are invited for a full-time, without-term Professor/Reader in Children’s Literature. We are particularly looking for applicants with research and teaching interests in reading, memory, oral history, and/or writing for children, complementary to those of staff in the National Centre for Children’s Literature (NCRCL) and in English literature more broadly. Roehampton has a growing international reputation for its work in both memory and reading.

The department is home of the AHRC-funded Memory Network, the AHRC-funded Memories of Fiction: An Oral History of Readers’ Life Stories, Prison Reading Groups and the award-winning NCRCL. We are seeking applications from highly motivated candidates who will be research leaders in their area with a track record of world class research, external research funding success, and collaborative external partnerships.

The post entails:

• carrying out and publishing, or producing in alternative format world-class or internationally excellent research
• contributing to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, including the supervision of research students
• actively engaging with external research-related organisations
• carrying out research-related enterprise activities where appropriate
• contributing to curriculum development
• applying for substantial external research grants
• providing research leadership (Professor) or contributing to research leadership (Reader)
• actively engaging with external research-related organisations
• representing and promoting the research of the Department or School in the University, national and international context
• providing research mentoring for colleagues
• contributing to administrative, managerial and committee work within the department and university, particularly in relation to research
• contributing to quality assurance and enhancement of all activities
• undertaking any other appropriate duties as requested by the Head of Department/School

Outline of the Person

The successful candidate will have:

• a PhD or professional doctorate in an appropriate subject area
• an extensive (Professor) or substantial (Reader) record of research and publication or other research outputs of world-class or internationally excellent quality;
• experience of teaching at university level
• a broad understanding of relevant fields and knowledge of current developments
• a commitment to providing learning and teaching that is research-led or research-informed
• research plans or other evidence of a vibrant and sustainable research trajectory at the forefront of the field
• experience of applying successfully for external research funding
• experience of (Professor) or potential for (Reader) research leadership
• the ability to plan and deliver high quality and supportive teaching and to foster skills and confidence in a diverse range of students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels
• commitment to providing high-quality academic and personal support to students
• the experience and/or potential to contribute to developments in learning and teaching, including existing and new programmes
• experience of supervision of doctoral students to successful completion
• a willingness to undertake continuing professional development and training as appropriate
• the ability to work both independently and as a collegial team member
• excellent organisational, communication and interpersonal skills

In addition, the successful candidate may have:

• the experience and/or potential to deliver or contribute to substantial impact of their research outside academia
• the experience and/or potential for substantial research-related or other enterprise activity
• experience of major external professional research engagement and networking
• substantial professional experience in areas relevant to the work of the department
• membership and experience of leadership of relevant professional bodies or organisations

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ChildLit Cartography: The Glass Puzzle

With winter break firmly behind us, it's time to dive right into a new year and a new semester. I for on would like to recommence with my exploration of maps found in children's literature. Since I basically posted about it ONCE last semester, I think it deserves a bit more attention this time around, particularly because of the underscored prevalence of these images throughout children's books.

Many maps in literature, children's or otherwise, fall under a typical structure meant literally to map a terrain, to guide a reader visually, and to give concrete value to the intangible world emerging from words. For some, this is a burden of information, but for others, this is a necessary element to understanding the story. When we consider that reading includes much more than words on a page, but can address and appeal to all the senses, then the visual stimulation of a map unfolds numerous interpretations and significances.

And yet, admittedly, I do find that a number of texts seems to include maps solely because of the genre they fall under: fantasy. In fact, I came across a blog post by fantasy author J.S. Morin concerning Amateur Cartography, or how to conceive of mapmaking for a fantasy story. In it, he traces the two general mental processes engaged in the creation of a fantasy map: "writing to the map" or mapping as you write. This is all hunky and dory, but what struck me most was what he dubbed the "Reader's Bill of Rights": what a reader can and should expect of an included map.  Legibility, consistency with the text, physical sensibility, and relating to the story are perfectly understandable, but I wondered about one issue he raises, specifically in relation to a novel I read last year, The Glass Puzzle, By Christine Brodien-Jones.

The story itself suffers from an incessant need to explain every characteristic of the young heroine, Zoe Badger. It also takes on too much, leaving the author overwhelmed by the end to wrap up too many threads and details. In brief, the young girl and her cousin visit their grandfather in the town of Tenby, Wales, and unwittingly stumble upon a glass puzzle that opens a portal to a parallel universe (or rather, an alternate timeline). Blunder after blunder result in their homeland overrun by possessing spirits and a damaging force hellbent on domination. Much like the author's previous book, The Scorpions of Zahir, this story relies on the redemptive powers of the young girl; though the story struggled to engage me fully, I did appreciate the author's attempt to create a worthy girl role model. But I was honestly most engaged by the map. 

My first reaction to it: It looks like a claw! The map seems to grown out of the upper left corner in an attempt to unfurl and grab the far reaches of the scroll itself. Roads widen, shorelines tremble and dig into the sea. The perspective it offers is almost threatening, or at least ominous. A welcome change from the standard issue of maps.

And yet, it's so packed with information, only forty percent of which I think exists within the story itself. Trying to find a location while reading led me to scour the entire map over and over again, sometimes getting completely lost. So when Morin says that a map should include more information than is included in the story, does he imply that the map should overwhelm the reader's senses? Does this map fail in that regard? Or is this case of inundation intentional, much like the suffocation that the town suffers when overrun by threatening forces? Does the city therefore invite what it displays? And if I take this one step further, are we then complicit in our own near-destructions? Certainly I'm reading too much into this, but I can't help but wonder about the ethics and implications of the map.

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Professor Kate Capshaw to Speak at SDSU on April 23rd!

The National Center for the Study of Children's Literature (with a special thanks to SDSU's Instructionally Related Activities Grant) is thrilled to announce a visit from Dr. Katharine Capshaw!

Prof. Capshaw will give a talk this April titled "Freedom (and Fury) Now: Civil Rights Photographic Picture Books for Children."

Room: Leon Williams Room, Malcolm A. Love Library, SDSU
Date: Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014

Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm

Open to the Public, Students, and Faculty!

Professor Capshaw writes:

My presentation will explore the photographic picture book, Today (1965), published by the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), one of the first "Head Start" programs in the United States and the children's organization most committed to civil rights ideals in the mid-1960s. While the CDGM existed only for two years (1965-1967), it emerged at a turning point in the civil rights campaign in Mississippi; born from the Freedom Summer literacy campaign of 1964, initiated after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the CDGM aimed to train a new generation of children in the values of the movement. The presentation will then connect Today with the children's photographic books of the Black Arts Movement, including Poems by Kali (1970) and June Jordan's Dry Victories (1972), texts which imagine the child as an icon of black nationhood and express anger at civil rights failures.

Bio:

Katharine Capshaw is Associate Professor of English at UConn and Editor of Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Her forthcoming book, Civil Rights Childhood: Photo Books and Liberation (Minnesota 2014), examines texts from the 1940s to the present day. Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance (Indiana 2004), Smith's first monograph, won the Children's Literature Association's best scholarly book award.

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