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.)