[Commlist] cfp Queer Children's Film and Television

Queer Children’s Film and Television

Online One-Day Symposium, 17th November 2023

Individual papers are welcomed for ‘Queer Children’s Film and 
Television,’ an online, one-day symposium to be held on 17th November 
2023. The symposium explores depictions of queerness /in /children’s 
film and television, and the queerness /of /children’s films and TV. 
This symposium precedes an opportunity to contribute to a proposed 
edited collection, 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, related 
both to oddness and eccentricity, and to anormative genders and 
sexualities, the term /queer /is in fact 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.

Several 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. In showcasing emergent research in 
the field, this symposium aims to open up a discussion about queerness 
in children’s film and TV, facilitating crucial conversations around the 
‘taboo’ relationships between queerness and childhood in relation to 
film and television studies and practice.

The symposium will be interdisciplinary in nature, in line with the 
broad understandings of queerness, childhood, and, indeed, film and TV. 
Papers are welcomed from a range of different disciplinary and 
methodological backgrounds, and may be based in any geographical 
location or historical period. Papers 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. Possible topics 
for chapters might include, but are by no means limited to:

·Representations of nonnormative sexualities in children’s film

·Intersectionality: queerness and its relationship to other markers of 
identity (e.g., age, race, culture, disability, neurodiversity, class, 
wealth,…)

·Representations of nonnormative gender expressions in children’s film

·Queer models of kinship in children’s film

·Queer time and/or space in children’s film

·Geotemporality and expressions of queerness in children’s film

·The queer potentiality of children’s film

·Queer aesthetics and/or politics in children’s film

·Children’s filmmaking and/as queer practice

·Queer adaptations of children’s texts / texts for children

·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”

Please submit abstracts (of up to 250 words) and a short bio (of up to 
100 words) by Monday, 18th September to (queerchildrensfilmtv /at/ gmail.com). 
Notifications of acceptance can be expected by the beginning of October 
2023. We look forward to receiving your submissions! Please feel free to 
contact (queerchildrensfilmtv /at/ gmail.com) with any questions about the 
event. You can also follow @queerkidsfilmtv on twitter to stay up to 
date with event information.



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