Dr. Sarah Park

Dr. Sarah Park is an assistant professor of Library and Information Science at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her research interests include representations of the Korean diaspora in children’s and young adult literature, youth services librarianship, social justice, transracial
adoption, and Korean diasporic history. She teaches courses on children’s and young adult literature, social justice, web design, and library and information science. Her book, Diversity in Youth Literature, edited with Jamie Naidoo, is set to be released this summer by ALA Editions.

The Keynote Address she’ll be presenting at Stranger in a Strange Land is entitled Storying Adoption.

More information on Dr. Park can be found on her website.

Dr. Elizabeth Marshall

Elizabeth Marshall is associate professor in the faculty of education at Simon Fraser University, where she teaches courses in children’s and young adult literature. She is co-editor of Rethinking Popular Culture and Media, and has published articles on the representation of North American girlhoods in children’s literature, popular culture, and women’s memoir. Dr. Marshall’s work has been published in Harvard Educational Review, Gender and Education, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, College English, Children’s Literature Quarterly, and Rethinking Schools.

The Keynote Address she’ll be presenting at Stranger in a Strange Land is entitled Global Girls and Strangers: Transnational Travel in The Nancy Drew Mysteries.

More information can be found on Dr. Marshall’s website.

Conference Details

Featured

Stranger in a Strange Land: Exploring Texts and Media for Young People Across Cultures and Continents is a Peer-Reviewed Graduate Student Conference on Children’s Literature and Cultural Texts with keynote speakers Elizabeth Marshall and Sarah Park held at the University of British Columbia on Saturday, April 28, 2012.

This is a one-day conference showcasing graduate research that explores and questions any facet of children’s literature. We are particularly interested in research that draws
upon the broadly interpreted themes of navigation, exploration, and narrative.

The conference fee of $18 for students and presenters, and $35 for faculty and professionals, includes morning and afternoon refreshments and a catered lunch.

Call for Paper Proposals

Stranger in a Strange Land: Exploring Texts and Media for Young People Across Cultures and Continents is a one-day conference showcasing graduate research that explores and questions any facet of children’s literature.

You are invited to submit a paper proposal that contributes to and extends existing
research in the area of children’s texts, which may include novels, film, picture books, and other culturally produced modes of children’s literature. We are particularly interested in research that draws upon the broadly interpreted themes of navigation, exploration, and narrative.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • The child or young adult as explorer/explored, navigator/navigated
  • Displacement or unwilling transportation to foreign spaces
  • Childhood and adolescent development
  • Children, young adults, and cross-cultural exposure
  • Multilingual or translated texts
  • Navigating (or negotiating) identity, gender, race or religion as a child or young adult in an adult world
  • Exploring place: the child as traveller/runaway/adventurer in a strange land
  • Race and ethnicity in children’s and young adult texts
  • Cultural, physical, psychological, ideological, or literary restrictions and barriers to exploration and imagination
  • Childhood feelings of displacement or not fitting in

Papers on any children’s or young adult genres are welcome as are papers that discuss other children’s texts such as film, virtual texts, or graphic novels. The topics above are a guideline for the proposals we would like to see, but we are eager to receive and review paper proposals on any topic related to children’s and young adult texts.

Please send a 250 word abstract, the title of your paper, a 50-word biography, your name, your university affiliation, email address, and phone number to Robert Bittner at ubc.conference2012@gmail.com by March 19, 2012. Please put “Conference Proposal” in the subject line of your email and indicate if you will need any A/V equipment (projector, speakers, etc.)