Surrounded by Conflicts: Children’s War Literature in the Making

Nous avons le plaisir d’annoncer la tenue d’un atelier de réflexion et d’échanges de deux jours, à l’université d’Aarhus (Danemark) en juin prochain, qui sera consacré à la littérature jeunesse en temps de guerre. Le format de cet atelier, inhabituel pour les chercheurs français, mérite d’être signalé ici: les chercheurs et chercheuses qui participeront à ce “workshop” devront avoir préalablement adressé uleur article sur le sujet. Chaque article fera l’objet d’une assez courte présentation orale (les participants pourront avoir lu les textes avant l’atelier), et surtout de discussions collectives, dans le but de déboucher sur une publication ultérieure. Lien direct.

Date: 12-13 June 2025
Venue: Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University
 

Since 1989/1991 young generations of child readers have grown up across Eastern Europe and the newly independent states, while their countries struggled to define and narrate emerging national and minority identities. Some experienced coming of age during relatively peaceful transitions, others became witnesses to revolutions, unrest, and wars. The changing conditions for publishing, circulating, and reading books paved the way for a new independent children’s literature, gradually developing on a private and internationalized book market, while normative notions of childhood changed and redefined the role of children’s books. Today, the Russia-Ukraine war has brought conflict and atrocities back to Europe, but also prompted a new surge of children’s war literature and reawakened scholarly interest in such literature. 

In recent years, the canon of war literature for children and young adults has significantly expanded, with scholars shifting their focus from the appropriateness of the medium to new functions of children’s literature in war-torn societies. We are indebted to existing methods for examining atrocity-themed children’s literature that challenge ideas of childhood as a protected, peaceful stage of life and literary theoretical discussions of war as a representational problem in children’s literature. However, in this workshop, we want to move beyond the problem of representation of war in children’s literature, to shed light on the cultural wars embedded in the making, circulation, and reception of children’s war literature across the region. We welcome new research approaches to understand contemporary literary responses to war and conflicts across the East European region from 1989/1991 to the present. 

How and why do publishers, authors, illustrators, educators, and other adult actors continue creating and communicating about war literature for children? How does war-themed children’s literature contribute to nation- and identity-forming processes? How do wars and conflicts affect children’s publishing and other involved institutions? What is the role of literary institutions from publishers, schools, libraries to book institutes in war-torn societies? What are the potentials of informal and civic networks in reading and writing for war-affected children? 

With this non-exhaustive list of questions, we hope to open a dialogue on children’s war literature in the making in the stated region and time.

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Call for papers 

We are looking for original, not published papers. Please send a proposal of no more than 300 words and a short bio (max 100 words) by 10 January 2025, to the following e-mail address: aarhusworkshop@cas.au.dk. Authors will be notified of acceptance shortly after. The language of submission is English.  

The workshop will be based on discussion of pre-circulated papers of between 3,000 and 5,000 words. The deadline for submitting papers is 25.05.2025. The workshop will be organized around a series of panels. On each panel, the participants will have 15 minutes to present the main points of their papers. These presentations will be followed by commentary and discussion. Our goal is to produce a peer-reviewed special issue or edited volume for an internationally acclaimed publishing house.

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Practical information 

Location: Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), 1630, Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 6B, 8000 Aarhus  

The event is organized by Birgitte Beck Pristed; Ekaterina Shatalova; Nadiia Pavlyk, AU School of Culture & Society; Nina Christensen, AU Centre for Children’s Literature and Media, and Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies.

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