[H-verkko] CFP: Fragile Subjects: Childhood in Literature, Arts and Medicine. August, 19-20, 2015, University of Turku, Finland

[agricola at utu.fi]

Agricolan artikkelipyyntöihin on lähetetty uusi ilmoitus:
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Fragile Subjects: Childhood in Literature, Arts and Medicine. August, 19-20,
2015, University of Turku, Finland
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Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to invite you to the international conference:

Fragile Subjects: Childhood in Literature, Arts and Medicine
August, 19-20, 2015, University of Turku, Finland

http://congress.utu.fi/fragile2015/cfp.php

Keynote speakers:

Maria Nikolajeva, Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
Sally Shuttleworth, Professor, Faculty of English Language and Literature and St
Anne's College University of Oxford
Valerie Walkerdine, Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University

Organizers:
Research project "Fragile Subjects: Childhood in Finnish Literature and
Medicine, 1850s-2000s" (Academy of Finland) & Finnish Literature, University of
Turku
http://www.utu.fi/en/units/hum/units/finnishliterature/research/fragile_subjects/Pages/home.aspx

CALL FOR PAPERS

We warmly welcome you to this international and multidisciplinary conference on
childhood in literature, arts and medicine, particularly the "psy" sciences. The
conference addresses the idea and historicity of childhood; its changing
meanings and notions in modernity and postmodernity. It aims at tracing
discourses and representations that construct particular norms and ideals of
childhood, as well as counter-images of normative notions of childhood. We
warmly invite scholars from a broad range of disciplines and fields of research,
who are interested in the cultural and medical production of childhood(s).

Scientists and writers have been riddling the mystery of the child, and an
increasing army of child professionals keep producing knowledge on children and
childhood today. Children have become valuable and fragile subjects of the
modern era, and childhood can be understood as an essential node of modernity.
Childhood has also established itself as a part of our modern understandings of
ourselves – our autobiographies. In postmodernity, childhood has not lost its
fragile nature, but perhaps its freedom. After the Second World War, new
psychological theories, safety consciousness, and anxiety about sexual danger
have led to an emphasis on the safety of the home, limiting particularly
children’s physical freedom, at least in some contexts. In the contemporary
world, the child is seen as knowing rather than ignorant, yet children are under
constant surveillance from the day they are born. Twentieth-century cultural,
societal and medical obsession with children, tend to focus on problems (e.g.
eating disorders, behavioral/mental problems, substance abuse, violence),
reflecting discourses of protection and innocence but also control and moral
panics. Nevertheless, the imaginative world of fiction and arts may offer an
escape from social expectations in providing alternative representations of
children and childhood.

Papers (20 minutes presentation, 10 minutes discussion) may be historically
oriented or look at contemporary settings, taking up the following or related
questions:

How has modern childhood been constructed in different cultural and scientific
discourses? What are the changes and continuities?
What kind of child figures can be found in fiction, visual culture, media, and
life narratives?
In what ways has the mind of the child gained attention in both medicine,
particularly the “psy” disciplines, and in arts?
How are intersections of gender, class, race, and ethnicity played out in
constructions of childhood?
Fears and threats, joys and pleasures connected to contemporary or past
childhoods?
How should we understand the role of the child sciences?
What is the role of childhood in constructions of adulthood?

For more information about the conference, please visit our webpage:
http://congress.utu.fi/fragile2015/cfp.php

Submission of abstracts (max. 300 words) by November, 30, 2014, online: 
http://congress.utu.fi/abyss/

Registration and the payment of conference fee 70 EUR by April 30, 2015. After
April 30, the conference fee is 100 EUR.

To contact organizers: fragile2015 at utu.fi
In general matters (like registration and payment of the congress fees), please
contact: congress-office at utu.fi

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Ilmoituksen lähetti: Kirsi Tuohela <kirsi.tuohela at utu.fi>
Ilmoitus vanhentuu: 15.12.2014
Lisätietoja WWW-osoitteesta: http://congress.utu.fi/fragile2015/cfp.php