Deakin University, October 2018
Acknowledging the capacity of literature to reflect and shape significant aspects of human development, this collection of essays takes as its central theme the representation of sexuality and sexual identities in texts for young people. Previous scholarship has established important connections between sexuality and gender, as well as sexuality and queerness, in literature for children and young adults. Investigations have also been made into the way particular genres and individual texts deal with desire, sex and sexuality.
This collection builds upon these individual approaches, while extending out to the analysis of various forms and incarnations of sexuality, across genres, texts and time periods. Keeping sexuality and sexual identities in writing for young people as its core focus, it will include analysis and discussion of representations of heterosexualities, homonormativity, trans subjectivities, asexuality, and the intersections between sexuality and other identity categories such as gender, race and class, across a range of texts and readerships.
The editors therefore welcome abstracts that revisit historical approaches to the study of childhood/adolescence and sexuality in literature, as well as those that provide contemporary and forward-looking models that take account of current and emerging sexual identities. Similarly, they welcome a wide range of theoretical approaches to this subject matter.
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
• Sex and sexuality in historical literature for children
• Same-sex desire in young adult fiction from Stonewall to the AIDS era
• Hetero- and homo-normative families in picture books and junior fiction
• “Straightness” in junior and/or young adult fiction
• Queer spaces and queer geographies in writing for young people
• Trans identities in children’s texts
• Intersections between sexuality and race, class, gender, ability, age and/or nationality
• Transnational approaches to sex and sexuality
• Connections between romance narratives and ideologies around sex and sexuality
• Religion/religious themes and sexual morality
• “Post-gay” identities in millennial writing for young people
• The role of genre in depictions of sex and sexuality for young people
- Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words and a biographical note of up to 150 words to Dr Kristine Moruzi and Dr Paul Venzo by December 1, 2018. Full papers of 6000 words will be due by May 1, 2019.