[Commlist] CfP: Crip Kid Lit: Critical Approaches to Disability in Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Media

*Crip Kid Lit: *

*Critical Approaches to Disability in Children’s and Young Adult 
Literature and Media*

Date: Friday 19 April 2024

Place: University of Cambridge, United Kingdom and Online


Deadline for Submissions EXTENDED: 15 November 2023

Confirmed Keynotes:

Prof. Dr. Maren Conrad (University of Cologne, Germany)

Dr. Ria Cheyne (Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom)


Children’s and young adult literature plays a powerful role in both 
producing and challenging stereotypes, assumptions, and stigmas about 
disability. As a modern concept, disability is nevertheless fundamental 
to the moralistic cliché of injured and ill characters in ‘classic’ 
children’s literature, such as Tiny Tim, Katy Carr, and Colin Craven. 
Equally, texts for young people constitute a platform to engage with and 
uplift the experiences of disabled people across identities, 
experiences, and diagnoses. To think with “disability” — to think crip — 
is to engage a rhetoric of critique. It is to draw attention to, and 
interrogate, how health and ability operate as symbols in public life.


In 2004, Kathy Saunders suggested that scholarship on children’s 
literature was guilty of perpetuating a punitive model of disability. 
She called for children’s literature scholarship to incorporate the 
epistemological and methodological contributions of disability studies. 
As a field, disability studies is important because it challenges the 
conservative view of ‘disability’ as a “personalised, wholly biological 
and medically mediated characteristic” (n.p). Instead, disability 
studies locates it as “a social construction [which helps to shape] the 
attitudes and circumstances that are commonly found in contemporary 
society.” In the years since 2004, many have followed Saunders’ call: 
Scott Pollard’s special issue on disability in the /Children’s 
Literature Association Quarterly /(vol. 38, no. 3, 2013), Patricia A. 
Dunn’s /Disabling Characters: Representations of Disability in Young 
Adult Literature / (2014), Elizabeth A. Wheeler’s /Handiland: The 
Crippest Place on Earth /(2019), and Abbye E. Meyer’s /From Wallflowers 
to Bulletproof Families: The Power of Disability in Young Adult 
Narratives /(2022).


In this way, the analysis of disability in texts for young people is 
most generative when it embraces conversations occurring across the 
medical humanities, including Crip Theory, a radical concept proposed by 
Robert McRuer (2006), to argue against the dominance of able-bodied 
experience as the norm. We take the name of this conference from McRuer 
to centre the need for provocative, disruptive, and queer-minded 
approaches to disability. Taking place two decades after Saunders’ 
article and McRuer’s introduction of Crip Theory, this small one-day 
symposium will provide fresh space for conversations about the 
representation of disability in texts for young people. We ask: what can 
disability studies do for children’s and young adult literature? And 
what can children’s and young adult literature do for disability studies?


Our symposium understands children’s literature and disability in broad 
terms. Texts for young people may encompass media such as film, 
television, videogames, or theatre, in addition to picturebooks, comics, 
novels, and fanwriting. Disability, like ability, is a politically 
nuanced and socially complex term. We use the terms disability, 
dis/ability, (dis)ability, disability/ability, and crip to encompass 
physical and cognitive disabilities, neurodivergence, mental illness, 
chronic illness/fatigue, temporary disabilities, etc., as well as the 
impact of pandemics and epidemics such as COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. Within 
the disability community, it is both powerful and troublesome to split 
off into distinct categories or identities. Nevertheless, disability 
studies must incorporate diverse lenses. We encourage participants to 
reflect upon how these myriad of approaches to disability materialise in 
texts for young people.

We are excited to receive abstracts on disability in children’s and 
young adult literature from a variety of international cultures and 
perspectives, on topics such as but not limited to:

  *

    Disability across genre and form (speculative storyworlds,
    problem-novels, realism, nonfiction, the canon, etc.)

  *

    Stereotypes, tropes, and and/or counter narratives in children’s
    literature about disability

  *

    Mental health and bibliotherapy

  *

    ‘Cripistemologies’ in texts for young people

  *

    Interrogating didactic and stylistic dimensions of disability

  *

    Children’s and YA literature’s relationship to pan-/epidemics (e.g.
    HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, etc.)

  *

    Fan cultures, social media, and disability

  *

    Reading disability in concert with other critical lenses (including,
    but not limited to, Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory, Gender
    Studies, Intersectionality, Decoloniality, Posthumanism, and
    Ecocriticism)

  *

    Personal experiences of disabled discourse in children’s and YA
    literature, whether among authors, illustrators, editors, other
    producers, or readers


    The list provided is not exhaustive. We recognise that many within
    the disability community are faced with the stigma of not being
    considered – or not considering themselves – ’disabled enough’ or
    ‘disabled in the right way’ to partake. We welcome both scholars who
    identify as disabled or abled to submit proposals engaging with
    disability scholarship in children’s literature.


    We are seeking 15-minute presentations or the option of poster
    submissions to be displayed at the conference. Please send an
    abstract of 250-300 words, including up to five keywords, and an
    author biography of no more than 100 words in a separate document.
    Both documents should be submitted as .DOCX files. The deadline for
    submissions has been extended to 15 November 2023. The email address
    is: (cripkidlit /at/ gmail.com). Please let us know in the email if you
    provisionally plan to attend in-person or online.


    This small, one-day symposium will be a hybrid conference where
    participants can attend in-person at the University of Cambridge, UK
    or online. All events will be synchronously streamed via Zoom and
    recordings made accessible for all participants for a limited period
    after the conference. It is our hope that this conference will be as
    accessible as possible; details regarding this will be provided as
    they are confirmed. If you have further questions about the
    accessibility of the conference, please do reach out.


    For updates, follow us on:

    X (formerly known as Twitter) @cripkidlit Instagram @cripkidlit



---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------