A Sense of Wonder Reading, Writing and Publishing Children’s Literature
The University of Otago Centre for the Book is delighted to announce its 2015 annual symposium in Dunedin, New Zealand’s UNESCO City of Literature. The event will feature an opening lecture by Julia Marshall, an Otago graduate and editor of the very successful children’s publisher, Gecko >Press, on Thursday evening at the Dunedin Public Library. Friday will be devoted to panel presentations at the College of Education on the University campus presenting current research on chidren’s literature. Abstracts are invited for twenty-minute presentations on any aspect of children’s literature, though preference will be given to proposals focusing on the following themes:
- Collaboration (with illustrators, editors, publisher, marketers)
- Relationship of form and content: picturebook dualities and constructions of meaning
- Role of didacticism in children’s publishing
- Reception of particular works, both by critics and young readers
- Transmission of children’s titles across time or space
- Representations of trauma in children’s literature
- Illustrations, binding and advertising of children’s books
- Digital media and the future of children’s books
There are no chronological or geographical boundaries to the symposium’s topic: we welcome papers on Aesop, on chapbooks, on Dr. Seuss, on Gecko Press.
The language of the conference will be English, but papers on books in other languages are also welcome. Abstracts of 250–300 words plus a brief biographical statement should be submitted to the conference organisers (books@
otago.ac.nz) no later than Monday, 3 August 2015.
Decisions regarding submissions will be made within a fortnight after the closing date.
Following the conference, papers will be eligible for consideration for publication in a special issue of Script & Print: Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand devoted to the symposium.
12–13 November 2015
University of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealand