[Commlist] CfP: Queer Children's Film and TV

*Call for Papers*
/Queer Children's Film and TV: Gender, Sexuality and Childhood in Youth 
Screen Cultures/
Edinburgh University Press, Children's Film and Television Series
Rachel Milne and Abigail Jenkins (eds.)

Rachel Milne and Abigail Jenkins are still looking for a couple of 
chapter proposals to fill some gaps in our forthcoming edited 
collection, /Queer Children's Film and TV/. The collection explores 
depictions of queerness /in /and the queerness /of /children’s film and 
television. This volume is intended as a part of Edinburgh University 
Press’ new ‘Children’s Film and Television’ book series.

In bringing to mind anormative sexual practices, the term /queer /may 
initially appear divorced from the realm of childhood. However, in 
falling down a certain rabbit-hole, one discovers the complex 
multiplicities of the term, whose ambivalence is necessitated by a 
shaping and reshaping of its meaning throughout the centuries. Related 
both to oddness and eccentricity, and to anormative genders and 
sexualities, the term /queer /is often used to butt against normalising 
regimes more broadly. Counter to narratives of fear that inflect 
discourses around childhood and sexuality, children’s screen cultures 
routinely celebrate alterity and thus queerness, equating nonnormativity 
with pleasure and play and opposing dominant cultural perceptions of 
deviance.

Scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds have addressed the topic 
of queerness and childhood, from the famous works of Michel Foucault to 
more recent explorations such as Bruhm and Hurley’s polarizing 
/Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children /(2004), and Stockton’s /The 
Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century /(2009). In 
the field of Children’s Literature, queerness has become a recent topic 
of discussion, with ground-breaking texts such as Abate and Kidd’s /Over 
the Rainbow: Queer Children’s and Young Adult Literature, /and Tison 
Pugh’s /Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s 
Literature, /both published in 2011. Much less attention has been paid 
to queerness in children’s film and TV, despite the clear alignments 
between the two. This volume aims to address this gap, bringing together 
a collection that opens up a discussion around the ‘taboo’ relationships 
between queerness and childhood in relation to screen studies and practice.

The volume will be interdisciplinary in nature, in line with the broad 
understandings of queerness, childhood, and, indeed, film and TV. 
Chapters are welcomed from a range of different disciplinary and 
methodological backgrounds, and may be based in any geographical 
location or historical period. Chapters from and about various global 
contexts are encouraged, alongside research that privileges 
intersectional topics. The conceptualisations of ‘queerness,’ 
‘childhood,’ and ‘film’ remain very broad, as demonstrated in the 
suggested topics below. Notions of ‘the child’ may include other 
categories such as the tween, teen, and/or young adult. We are still 
welcoming chapter proposals on the following topics:

  *

    Queer children's film and TV in Latin America

  *

    Children’s filmmaking and/as queer practice

  *

    Queer disability/communities of care in children's film/TV

  *

    Queer children as film audiences

  *

    Film festivals and queer children’s film / children’s film festivals
    and queerness

  *

    Queer fandoms and children’s film

  *

    Queerness and the “kidult"

Having discussed timelines with the series editor, we are looking to 
publish the book at the beginning of 2026. We would hope to have initial 
abstracts (around 150-250 words) and bionotes (max 150 words) by *15^th 
 June 2024*, so that we can put together the full proposal for EUP. 
Following this, we would really love to have first drafts by *December 
2024, *second drafts by *June 2025, and *final drafts to be sent to EUP 
by *September 2025 *(exact dates TBC). Please feel free to contact 
(queerchildrensfilmtv /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(queerchildrensfilmtv /at/ gmail.com)> with your proposal and/or any 
queries.


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