[ecrea] Call for papers - Devils and Dolls: Dichotomous Depictions of 'The Child'

CALL FOR PAPERS - Devils and Dolls: Dichotomous Depictions of ‘The 
Child’ (deadline for abstracts Friday 31st August)

Conference details:
Wednesday 27 March 2013
University of Bristol, Graduate School of Arts and Humanities



Confirmed plenary speaker:
Professor George Rousseau, (Magdalen College, University of Oxford) 
Co-Director of the Oxford University Centre for the History of Childhood.

Second plenary to be confirmed.



An inter-disciplinary conference open to both postgraduates and 
academics at any stage of their career, seeking to examine the 
contrasting images and representations of children as angels or devils, 
innocent or evil, light or dark in fiction and culture and within the 
humanities. Why are children offered little dimension in 
representations? What is the significance of representing the child 
either as innocent or evil – to both the originating discourse and in a 
wider context? Is such polarization detrimental to our understanding of 
what it means to be a child and how we respond to real children?

The “humanities” is intended as a fluid term; depictions from any period 
of history, any social or cultural context, fictional or media 
representations are encompassed. In light of this, submissions are 
invited from a range of disciplines and topics may include, but are 
certainly not limited to, depictions of the child as:

·         A devil, demon, monster, wicked/sinful (for instance 
Heathcliff, Damien from The Omen, the child Sir Gowther)

·         As angelic, child-saints or martyrs, innocent (paintings of 
putti, Romantic child figures, Little Nell)

·         Contrasting images of the two in various fields; e.g. 
philosophical thought, religious doctrine

·         The child as “uncanny”

·         The child in art (Blake’s illustrations, Millett’s Bubbles, 
the Virgin and child)

·         Televisual, cinematic or dramatic depictions.

·         The Freudian child as depicted by psychoanalysts or 
psychoanalytic readings of figures.

·         The child in horror/gothic fiction

·         Monstrous births

·         Supernatural children; vampires, werewolves, ghosts, zombies

·         Contrasting images as represented in adult fiction and/or 
children’s literature

·         Children in Victorian chapbooks – models of religious virtue?

·         The sexualised child – innocent or corrupt?

·         The child in myths, fairy and folk tales

·         The “foreign”, tribal, refugee or postcolonial child

·         Media representations of children.

We invite abstracts of 250-300 words for 20 minute (previously 
unpublished) papers, sent in Word format to (devils_dolls /at/ live.co.uk) by 
Friday 31st August 2012 with the “subject” of the email as ‘Devils and 
Dolls abstract’.

Please ensure your abstract appears in the following format:

v  Paper title

v  250 – 300 word abstract in plain text

v  Name of author and affiliation

v  Email address

v  Up to ten keywords (these can be compound terms)

v  Please also indicate whether, if required, you would be happy to 
chair a panel.

All abstracts will be acknowledged by email receipt, and you should 
therefore receive an acknowledgement within 5 working days.

Once the deadline has passed, a panel will review the abstracts 
anonymously and a draft conference plan will be constructed. We will 
reply to all submissions to offer both a decision and some feedback. If 
your paper is not selected at this time, we hope you are still able to 
attend the conference and contribute to the discussion.

Some papers may be selected to comprise a collection of essays in the 
first edition of the Bristol Journal of HARTS following the conference.



We look forward to reading your abstracts and hopefully meeting you at 
the conference!


Kind regards


Jen Baker
Daniel Bowers
Liz Renes

(University of Bristol, Graduate School of Arts and Humanities)

contact email: (devils_dolls /at/ bristol.ac.uk)

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