Call for Papers
Saturday 7th July 2012 – Monday 9th July 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
After a hiatus of one year, the Childhood Project is
returning. This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference
project seeks to investigate and explore all aspects of childhood. The
period of life prior to adulthood is one of dramatic change and
development of physical, intellectual, psychological, and many other
types of characteristics. The nature of childhood and its significance
as a separate phase of life, however, is viewed quite differently in
different cultures and in different historical eras. This conference
will look at all aspects of the experience of childhood as well as the
social and cultural perceptions of children and childhood. We encourage
submissions on any theme to do with the nature of childhood, including,
but not limited to the ones listed below.
1. Definitions of Childhood
- How has the concept of childhood developed over time?
- How is childhood viewed differently across different cultures and eras?
- What are the boundaries of childhood? (Are children made to grow up
too fast? Are mature people infantilized by definitions of the
boundaries of childhood?)
- Is ‘childhood’ a singular category or is it composed of quite
distinct multiple categories? How does defining childhood also define
adulthood and vice versa?
2. Childhood and Development
- What are the important aspects of physical, psychological,
emotional, intellectual, moral, social, etc. development in childhood?
- How do institutions (like schools, medical centres, and even legal
systems) effectively nurture the unique developmental needs of children?
- How has our understanding of childhood as a period of development
changed over time? Are there ways we are still getting it significantly
wrong?
3. Children and Relationships
- What are the dynamics of children’s relationships with their family, peers, and their community?
- How are children’s social relationships either experienced positively or negatively?
- What are the dynamics of children’s relationships with social institutions (like schools and religious organizations)?
- What is the nature of children’s relationships with animals and nature?
4. Perceptions and Depictions of Childhood
- How do adults perceive children and childhood?
- How do they perceive the capabilities, responsibilities, and privileges of childhood?
- How do they perceive their own experiences of childhood? (With nostalgia? embarrassment? amusement?)
- How do children perceive themselves?
- How are children and childhood depicted in academia and in the media
such as art, literature, film, television, advertising, etc.?
5. Other Issues of Childhood
- Children and education: What issues are the concerning how children are educated?
- Children and leisure: How is involvement in recreational activities (including sports) either beneficial or harmful to children?
- Children and the law: Does the criminal justice system effectively
deal with children both as victims of crime and as perpetrators of
crime?
- Children and rights: What rights do children have in virtue of being
children? To what extent must the choices of children be respected?
- Children and gender: How are children socialized into
gender-specific roles? What are the issues and concerns connected to how
children form gender and sexual identities?
- What is the nature of children’s relationship to the world of work?
- Childhood in transition: how does adolescence bridge the child/adult
world and to what extent are adolescents caught in a double-bind of
being children and being adults?
The Steering Group welcomes the
submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts should be
submitted by Friday 13th January 2012. If an abstract is accepted for
the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th
May 2012.
300 word abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this
order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 key words
E-mails should be entitled: CHILD2 Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12)
and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters
or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a
Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted
abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt
and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a
reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your
proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for
an alternative electronic route or resend.
Joint Organising Chairs:
Wendy Turgeon
Project Leader
St. Joseph’s College,
New York,
USA
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
The conference is part of the Probing the Boundaries
programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various
discussions which are innovative and exciting.
All papers accepted for and presented at
this conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.
Selected papers maybe invited for development for publication in a
themed hard copy volume(s)
Style Sheets
In preparing your papers, please pay strict attention to the following style sheets
