CfP Sammelband: „GESCHICHTEN HINTER DEN GESCHICHTEN“. (RE-)LEKTÜREN DES WERKS RENATE WELSHS

2027 feiert die österreichische Schriftstellerin Renate Welsh – deren Vorlass seit Herbst 2024 im Archiv der Zeitgenossen aufbewahrt, bearbeitet und nun auch beforscht wird – ihren 90. Geburtstag. Zu diesem Anlass soll sich ein Sammelband in der Schriftenreihe des Archivs der wissenschaftlichen (Re-)Lektüre des umfangreichen, aber teils vergessenen oder nur partiell wahrgenommenen Werks der Autorin widmen. Während Renate Welsh seit Jahrzehnten zu den bekanntesten Kinder- und Jugendbuchautorinnen im deutschsprachigen Raum zählt, werden ihre Romane, Erzählungen sowie die zuletzt erschienenen Gedichte für Erwachsene erst in den letzten Jahren verstärkt wahrgenommen. Über Gattungs- und Genregrenzen hinweg sollen neue thematische wie methodische Zugänge zum Werk Renate Welshs angeregt werden.

Renate Welsh (geb. 1937) gehört zu den renommiertesten Kinder- und Jugendbuchautorinnen im deutschsprachigen Raum und darüber hinaus.Mit Das Vamperl (1979) und seinen Fortsetzungen erreichte sie große Bekanntheit, ebenso mit der zeithistorischen Emanzipationsgeschichte Johanna (1979) über ein unehelich geborenes Mädchen in der österreichischen Provinz während der Zwischenkriegszeit. Im Kreis der Wiener Gruppe für Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, rund um die Autor:innen Mira Lobe, Christine Nöstlinger, Käthe Recheis, Vera Ferra-Mikura, Friedl Hofbauer u.a., die in ihrer Literatur an einer Erneuerung des Genres arbeiteten, war auch Renate Welsh höchst aktiv; 1975 erschien z.B. das Gemeinschaftswerk Sprachbastelbuch, mit Schüttelreimen Sprachspielen und einem Schimpfwörter-ABC sowie der expliziten Aufforderung zur Partizipation. Welsh wurde u.a. mit dem Deutschen Jugendliteraturpreis und mehrfach mit dem österreichischen Staatspreis für Kinder- und Jugendliteratur ausgezeichnet.

Dass sich einerseits die Parameter der Zuordnung in Jugendliteratur und „allgemeine“ Literatur über die Zeit verändert haben und sich andererseits im Werk Renate Welshs durchaus große Schnittmengen beider Gattungen finden lassen, zeigt die Neuauflage des Romans Johanna (2021) – nun ohne das Etikett „Jugendbuch“. Eine überarbeitete Neuauflage des Jugendromans Dieda oder das fremde Kind (2002) ist ebenfalls in Planung. Dieser Tendenz der Wiederentdeckung und Neupositionierung einiger älterer Werke Renate Welshs auf dem Buchmarkt soll auch in der wissenschaftlichen Beschäftigung Rechnung getragen werden und eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem umfangreichen Werk der Autorin – über Gattungsgrenzen hinweg – angeregt werden.

Mit Constanze Mozart (1990) und Das Lufthaus (1994), zwei Romanen, die jeweils historische Frauenfiguren ins Zentrum stellen und auf spekulative Weise über deren Lebensrealitäten reflektieren, wandte sich Renate Welsh erstmals vorwiegend an ein erwachsenes Publikum. Im Roman Die schöne Aussicht (2005) beschreibt sie die Biografie einer Frau aus einfachen Verhältnissen vor, während und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. In den letzten Jahren lässt sich zudem eine verstärkte Hinwendung zum autobiographischen Schreiben feststellen. In Kieselsteine. Geschichten einer Kindheit (2019) spürt Welsh eigenen frühen Kindheitserinnerungen nach, Ich ohne Worte (2023) beschreibt die unmittelbare Erfahrung eines Schlaganfalls und den Rückeroberungsprozess der Sprache und körperlichen Autonomie. Zuletzt erschien mit Leih mir dein Ohr (2024) der erste Lyrikband Renate Welshs, der eine Zusammenstellung sowohl älterer als auch rezenter Gedichte enthält. Dass Welshs Oeuvre über Gattungsgrenzen hinweg von Anfang an auch gesellschaftspolitisch motiviert ist, belegen zahlreiche ihrer Publikationen schon früh, z.B. In die Waagschale geworfen. Geschichten über den Widerstand gegen Hitler (1988) oder Ülkü, das fremde Mädchen (1973).

Call for Papers / Sammelband

Eine eingehende wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit dem umfangreichen Werk der Autorin liegt, von Einzelbeiträgen im Bereich der Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung abgesehen, bislang nicht vor – Renate Welsh wird nach wie vor primär im Segment der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur verortet. Die Publikation, die 2027 – zum 90. Geburtstag der Autorin – in der Schriftenreihe des Archivs der Zeitgenossen im Studienverlag erscheint, soll deshalb Relektüren bekannter und Lektüren weniger bekannter Texte versammeln, um thematisch wie methodisch neue Zugänge zum Werk Renate Welshs anzuregen.

Mögliche Themen:

  • Einzelstudien sowie vergleichende Studien zu ausgewählten Werken der Autorin
  • Perspektiven der Gender- und Disability Studies
  • Beiträge zu Welshs Frühwerk im Kontext der Literatur der 1970er Jahre
  • Poetologische, rezeptionsästhetische und literatursoziologische Aspekte zur Transformation von Kinder- und allgemeiner Literatur
  • Formen des autofiktionalen, autobiografischen, dokumentarischen Schreibens bei Renate Welsh
  • Beiträge zu werkbiografischen Schwerpunkten, etwa Zweiter Weltkrieg, Kindheit oder die Soziologie des Dorfes

Abstracts in der Länge von max. 3000 Zeichen können bis 30.6.2025 an hanna.prandstaetter@donau-uni.ac.at gesendet werden. Mit der Entscheidung über die Annahme ist bis Ende August 20205 zu rechnen.

Abgabe der Beiträge (30.000 – 40.000 Zeichen): 30.04.2026

Information:

Hanna Prandstätter, BA MA
Telefon: +43 2732 893 2589
E-Mail: hanna.prandstaetter@donau-uni.ac.at

Call for Chapters - AI in Contemporary Youth Literature and Film:

Essays from Around the World

The Editors are seeking chapters for a collection provisionally entitled AI in Contemporary Youth Literature and Film: Essays from Around the World, which aims to be a timely additional resource to the field of children’s and YA scholarship as well as a resource for anyone interested in AI and youth. We have preliminary interest from McFarland (USA) for publishing the volume. 

Speculative fiction and science fiction adventures have always been a staple presence in Children’s and Young Adult (YA) literature but, in recent years, there has been an exponential increase in the number of works dealing with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of androids, robot animals, parallel technological worlds, and the like. Arguably, one of the main contributing factors is the technological development that resulted in the widespread use of ChatGPT, not to mention the seemingly endless uses that AI can have, from education to space exploration. 

Canonical literary works like I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (1950) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968) posited the relationship between humans and machines as a central theme. This has found fertile ground in children’s and YA books and films as well, where core topics include what it is to be human and finding one’s identity and place within society. 

AI is a timely matter to consider in the literary-cultural sphere within Children’s and YA literature and films not only because of the increasing relevance that these cultural products have been acquiring – including within the adult audience – but also because the young are growing alongside AI, and we should wonder what and how we are telling them about it. To foster a conscientious use and positioning of AI in young people’s lives, it is necessary to make a point of discussing what cultural products offer to the young. This will also help to trace the (in)advisable paths that future works may take. To cite only a few examples, recent scholarship like Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction: Negotiating the Nature/Culture Divide (Lexington Books, 2019) by Jennifer Harrison, Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World (UP of Mississippi, 2018) edited by Anita Tarr and Donna R. White, and Technology and Identity in Young Adult Fiction: The Posthuman Subject (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) by Victoria Flanagan have already begun to ponder AI. This edited volume hopes to expand the topic to consider AI in not just YA literature, but also in film and works for even younger audiences. 

This edited volume aims to provide a wide geographical overview of the presence, representation, and relevance of AI in contemporary Children’s and YA literature and film from a literary-cultural perspective which welcomes interdisciplinary theoretical approaches (including but not limited to fields such as Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Film Studies, Gender Studies, Psychology, and Philosophy). Chapters, written in English, will focus on literary-cultural theoretical reflections and/or analyses of case studies drawn from contemporary children’s and YA fiction and films. Theoretical considerations and analyses other than/not limited to a Posthumanist perspective are especially welcome. 

Scholars and researchers at all stages of their career and based in English- and non-English-speaking countries are invited to submit a proposal. 

Topics of interest primarily include, but are not limited to: 

  • AI and relationships (family/friendship/romance) 
  • Relational identity of human, partly human, and non-human characters 
  • AI establishing or being used in relationships, or AI as an intruder 
  • AI as mediator of subjectivity 
  • AI and queerness 
  • AI and the sense of belonging to a group 
  • The visual representation of androids, robot animals, robot plants, and other technological creatures 
  • The visual representation of AI and ‘classic’ human, animal, or vegetal features 
  • How AI may redefine the categories of ‘human’, ‘animal’, and ‘vegetal’ and how to identify AI as such 
  • Limits of the visual representation of AI 
  • Augmented reality and the representation of AI 
  • Skills and functions of AI and non-AI characters in interaction with each other 
  • The role of AI on page and screen 
  • The perspective of AI in relation to other characters 
  • AI and agency 
  • AI suggesting (in)action to other characters; AI empowering or degrading other characters; AI as a driving force, agent, and thinking entity in relation to other characters 
  • Limits about where and what AI can act and think, and how AI acts and thinks 
  • Human, socio-political, and gender bias or other influence in relation to AI’s agency and thoughts 
  • Other characters and AI’s capabilities 
  • Philosophical, ethical, and political issues of AI in literature and films for and about youth 
  • The nature (subjectivity) of AI 
  • Framing AI within specific cultures or moral values 
  • AI and its governmental (mis)uses 
  • ‘Smartness’ of AI and sociological/readers’/characters’ expectations 
  • AI (mis)use and paranoia revealing societal beliefs about the ethics of young people 
  • AI as a vehicle of a paternalistic, sexist, or other kind of exclusive mindset

If you are interested in contributing a chapter, please send the following (in English):  

  • A 350-word abstract together with 4-5 keywords plus key references (max 6 volumes) 
  • A 100-word bio-note 

to Dr. Sara Pini (sara.pini7@unibo.it) and Dr. Emily Midkiff (emily.midkiff@und.edu) by 30 June 2025. 

Timeline: 

  • You will be notified whether your proposal has been accepted or not by 10 August 2025. (Please note: although we would like to include all contributions into the volume, we are bound to select only a few to comply with McFarland’s length standards and to put together a collection as coherent as possible.) 
  • Full chapters (max 6,000 words) are due by 15 November 2025. 
  • Expected publication: 2026 

If you have any questions, feel free to write to sara.pini7@unibo.it. 

 

(Quelle: Aussendung)

CfP: Waste and Children’s Culture

 

Thematics, Aesthetics, Ethics

International hybrid workshop

Time: 23–24 October, 2025
Venue: Stockholm University, Sweden

CfP

Traditionally, children’s culture has been associated with pastoral and rural settings unaffected by urbanization and environmental degradation. Today, however, there is no place on Earth left untouched by the unwanted leftovers of human activity. We live in what Marco Armiero calls the Wasteocene, referring to a socio-economic system increasingly defined by its production of wasted things, people, and places. In line with this development, contemporary children’s culture is obsessed with waste, rubbish, and polluted environments. Like Oscar the Grouch in Sesame Street, it loves trash!

This international and interdisciplinary workshop wants to examine and trace the history of this change. It wants to disrupt traditional, nature centered perceptions of environmental children’s culture by turning its attention to waste – as theme, aesthetic attitude, and ethical tool. The workshop takes inspiration from Waste Studies, a growing interdisciplinary field of cultural analysis that expands traditional approaches of ecocriticism by focusing on decay, built environments, and toxic sites. Building on insights from writings on rubbish, garbage, and excrement – such as Purity and Danger (1966) by Mary Douglas, Wasted Lives (2004) by Zygmunt Bauman, On Garbage (2005) by John Scanlan, The Ethics of Waste (2005) by Gay Hawkins, The Literature of Waste (2015) by Susan S. Morrison, Waste and Re-Use in Twentieth-Century Fiction (2016) by Rachel Dini – it wants to destabilise expectations of what waste is and does to children’s culture. How is waste, trash, and pollution used as theme, metaphor, and/or environmental message? How is waste used as an aesthetical mode of artistic creation? What are the ethical implications and eco-pedagogical potential of waste? How could a waste-oriented approach to children’s culture provide valuable insights for the broader field of waste studies?

The purpose of the workshop is to bring together scholars of children’s culture, (e.g. children’s and YA literature, picture books, graphic novels, film and television, theater, play, education, history) from different countries who are in particular interested in the topic of waste. You can choose to participate in-person or join via livestream. The workshop is intended as a space for the development of projects and the proceedings will have a hybrid round-table format, with a 15-minute in-person or virtual presentation followed by a 15- minute round of comments and discussion. There will be an opportunity to develop papers into full articles as we are planning to submit a proposal for a collection to an international publisher. The Organizers invite international and historically diverse approaches which might consider topics such as:

  • Representations of waste in children’s culture
  • Waste motifs, metaphors, narratives, and forms
  • Waste in children’s and YA literature, picturebooks, graphic novels, and poetry
  • Waste in different genres such as climate fiction, dystopia, fantasy, and science fiction
  • Wastelands, toxic sites, landfills, garbage dumps, ruins, and trashcans
  • Hoarders and rubbish collectors
  • Waste aesthetics in children’s culture
  • Waste and avant-garde children’s culture
  • Waste and pop art children’s culture
  • Waste and children’s theater scenography
  • Waste and children’s film and television
  • Collage, assemblage, bricolage, objets trouvés
  • Waste ethics in children’s culture
  • The junk playground/adventure playground
  • Children’s culture, waste, and eco-pedagogy
  • Children’s culture, waste, and ecoliteracy
  • Children’s culture and re-cycling
  • Children’s culture and consumerism
  • Children’s culture, environmental devastation, and pollution
  • Waste and childhood discourses

The Organizers welcome submissions from established scholars, early-career researchers, and PhD- candidates. Participants should submit a title, an abstract of maximum 300 words, and a short bio.

Deadline for submissions: 28 May, 2025

Submit abstract to: Lydia Wistisen, lydia.wistisen@littvet.su.se  

Organizers:
Associate Professor Lydia Wistisen, Stockholm University
Professor Nina Goga, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
Professor Lykke Guanio-Uluru, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

 

(Quelle: Aussendung)

CFP: Digital Childhoods – New Online Magazine From the Society for the History of Children and Youth

The Society for the History of Children and Youth is excited to introduce its new online magazine Digital Childhoods. A companion to the society’s peer-reviewed Journal for the History of Childhood and Youth (JHCY), Digital Childhoods offers a more informal and free-form space for sharing ideas and discoveries in the field. They hope this online space will grow to be a lively and accessible place that you will return to regularly.

There are currently three sections to the magazine:

Childish Things is an online gallery of objects that tell us something about childhood and youth around the world, from all periods of history. Each object or image has been chosen by a historian, curator or artist – sometimes from public museums and archives, and sometimes from their own lives and personal collections.

The Interview feature is an opportunity to hear more about the people and process behind articles in the JHCY. They discuss how authors discovered their topics, their frustrations and joys in writing, and hear their tips for researchers.

The Reviews section casts a considered eye onto works of contemporary public history, art, literature, podcasts, and more that deal with themes of youth and childhood.

Please do share the link to Digital Childhoods with others and consider contributing.

The Society for the History of Children and Youth cannot wait to hear your ideas!

Contact Information: Alice Sage and Hannah Stamler (<joomla-hidden-mail is-link="1" is-email="1" first="ZGlnaXRhbGNoaWxkaG9vZHM=" last="c2hjeS5vcmc=" text="ZGlnaXRhbGNoaWxkaG9vZHNAc2hjeS5vcmc=" base="">digitalchildhoods@shcy.org)</joomla-hidden-mail> 
https://shcydigitalchildhoods.org/dir/

 

(Quelle: Homepage kinderundjugendmedien)

CfP: Encyclopedia Entries – Canonical Children's Texts and Authors

The Children’s Literature Group is currently interested in proposals for entries on texts, authors, illustrators, editors, and librarians often considered canonical, crucial to historical study of children’s literature, and taught in college courses.

Possible Topics:

  • Beverly Cleary
  • Arnold Lobel
  • Augusta Baker
  • Beatrix Potter
  • Dr. Seuss
  • Eric Carle
  • Mildred D. Taylor
  • Eric Kimmel
  • Robert Munsch
  • Margaret Wise Brown
  • Ezra Jack Keats
  • Jon Scieszka
  • Jane Yolen

For more information or to propose an entry, email Dainy Bernstein at dainybernstein@gmail.com.
Include: person or text of proposed entry, your CV a writing sample.

The Literary Encyclopedia publishes biographies of writers, illustrators, editors, librarians, etc.; scholarly descriptions of significant texts; and essays on literary, cultural, historical, and social contexts in which this writing was produced.

(Quelle: kinderundjugendmedien.de)