Today we’re sharing two mini-Calls for Papers to participate in our upcoming conference, YA Studies Around The World this November. (Check out all the details here!) These CFPs are for specific roundtable discussions within the conference, for those with relevant YA-focused scholarly or practitioner expertise in the field.
The first CFP is on our Twitter here, focusing on YA in translation:
The second roundtable is ‘Reading While the World is on Fire’. The full CFP, and contact details to participate are as follows:
Global pandemic. Climate crisis, complete with devastating fires and damaging weather events. Racial injustice protests spilling into streets. Actually Brexiting. Continued threats to democracy. I think most would agree 2020 has been an intense and sometimes anxiety-producing year. For readers, a conversation has emerged – what do you read when the world is on fire?
This particular conversation takes on a twist when discussing Young Adult novels.
YA novels are often positioned as having a pedagogical imperative; YA must “do” something. For example, in the U.S. over summer, books addressing the Black Lives Matter movement, police violence, and anti-racism received a lot of attention and signal boosting among teachers and librarians. The underlying assumption was that these books would help teens make sense of the movement. (Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give and the non-fiction Stamped, rewritten for a younger audience by Jason Reynolds, were two frequently cited texts.)
At the same time, another conversation was also occurring among readers and YA gatekeepers (including those engaged in these recommendations): what about reading for escapism, reading as a means to step away from the stressors of 2020. This conversation runs counter to the generally held assumption that YA novels must do something, especially if you are a teacher or librarian recommending a book. However, reading for entertainment, escapism, enjoyment is also vital, especially when the world is on fire.
This panel will explore the tension between the two conversations: the adult gatekeeper’s tendency towards pedagogical impulse in providing access and promoting YA literature and the need for reading for joy or escape.
Discussion questions include:
- Does YA have a pedagogical imperative?
- How can we engage in promoting YA literature without engaging in a pedagogical impulse?
- What is important to promote and recommend in our current times?
- As practitioners, do we engage with YA literature criticism? And if we don’t, what are the barriers to doing so?
The panel will take place at 9pm GMT on 5 November 2020 during the YA Studies Around the World conference. Selected panelists will contribute a 2-3 minute position pitch before participating in above conversation. The roundtable will conclude by opening questions to the audience (using Zoom’s Q&A feature).
If you are someone who works with teens in the capacity of recommending and promoting YA literature and would be interested in participating on the panel, please contact Mary Ann Harlan at maryann.harlan@sjsu.edu by 23 October 2020.
We can’t wait to see you all at YASA’s very first conference next month. Registration will open to the public soon, so stay tuned!
