I would like to draw your attention to interjuli’s current call for papers on “(New) Media in Children’s Literature”. interjuli is a scholarly journal for international research into children’s literature — you can find more information on our website www.interjuli.de.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I would be very grateful if you could pass the call on to any colleagues you think might be interested.

Best wishes from Germany,

Marion

interjuli

www.interjuli.de

www.facebook.com/interjuli.magazine

International Journal of Play: Call for papers for forthcoming Special Issue
Lifework and Legacy
Reviewing Iona and Peter Opie’s Contribution to the Study of Play

The work of Iona (1923– ) and Peter Opie (1918–1982) on the play and games of school-aged children will be familiar to many who study the social and cultural aspects of children’s lives. Working as independent and unfunded scholars, the Opies published five books on this topic: The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959), Children’s Games in Street and Playground (1969),The Singing Game (1985), Children’s Games with Things (1997), and Iona Opie’s solo volume, The People in the Playground (1993). Distilled from data collected principally from schoolchildren during the period 1950–80 (now held at the British Library Sound Archive, the Folklore Society Archives, and the Bodleian Libraries), as well as pioneering historical research, these publications have been widely read and extremely influential.
2013 marks the year of Iona Opie’s 90th birthday and what would have been Peter Opie’s 95th. To mark this event, a special issue of the International Journal of Play in 2014 is planned, devoted to the Opies, their research and their spheres of influence. The guest editors of this special issue (no. 3 in 2014) will be June Factor and Julia Bishop who warmly encourage contributions. Possible topics include (but are not restricted to):
·      Critical evaluations of Iona and Peter Opie’s lives and work, collaborations with others, scholarly influences, predecessors, contemporaries.
·      Critical considerations of the Opies’ data, such as its wider social and demographic context, the relationship between their archival data and their books.
·      The extent and nature of the Opies’ influence in the UK and in other countries among those interested in children’s folklore, especially play.
·      Forms of play; classification of games.
·      The historical and comparative study of play.
·      The ethnographic study of play, including research methods.
·      Themes and issues exemplified in the Opies’ work, such as the relationships between media, commerce and play; risk; place, space and play.
Submissions of up to 7000 words are welcomed, as well as shorter articles (up to 2000 words) of memoir and reflection.  Please check the International Journal of Play website for details regarding presentation of material.
Deadline:  1 April, 2014
Email contact:

June Factor: j.factor@unimelb.edu.au

Julia Bishop: Julia.bishop@blueyonder.co.uk

CALL FOR PAPERS: Childhood and Gender in Time, a special issue of the journal «Genesis. Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche»

The journal «Genesis. Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche» calls for papers for a special issue dedicated to “childhood and gender in time”. The nature of childhood and its significance as a separate phase of life are at the centre of a process of critical rethinking, which is generating new and challenging interdisciplinary research. We would like to explore the social construction of gender in childhood, from a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective, giving particular attention to the role of play, toys, and children’s literature. Our aim is to examine how gender norms and gender models have been formulated and propagated in different historical, geographical and cultural contexts, but also how those models have been appropriated, contested and possibly subverted. We are interested in the relationship between the effort of regulating children and the “agency” that children are able to express, particularly in the context of a children’s peer culture, in which play (broadly understood) has a central role.

The main questions explored in the issue are:

• How have ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ been understood and socially constructed through time?
• How have toys, games, and children’s books contributed to construct specific gender roles for children?
• What role have they played in different pedagogical approaches and in political interventions towards children?
• How have gender models been played out, appropriated and resisted in different social and historical contexts?
  

We are also interested in exploring historiographical and methodological questions related to the topic. Is it possible to identify continuities and fractures, contaminations and cultural transfers in the way notions of gender have informed approaches to childhood and education through time? What kind of sources and approaches are most suitable to the investigation of the role of play, toys and games in the construction of gender in childhood? What kinds of sources allow studying how children have appropriated and transformed (perhaps even subverted) gender norms through play? (What is, for instance, the role of oral history, ego-history and ethnological approaches in the study of childhood and gender?) We encourage proposals exploring childhood and gender in history, through the perspective of play, toys and children’s books. We welcome proposals, which will allow us to adopt a long historical perspective, to explore different historical contexts and to discuss diverse approaches to sources.

Proposals should include: title of the article, abstract (300 words maximum) and a short biographical profile of the author. Submissions must be received by the 20th of January 2014; all proposals should be sent by email to the editors of the special issue, Stefania Bernini (s.bernini@unsw.edu.au) and Adelisa Malena (adelisa.malena@unive.it). The articles selected for publications (up to 50,000 characters, including spaces and notes) must be submitted in final form by the 15th of May 2014. All articles will be subject to double-blind review prior to publication. Will be considered for publication articles in Italian, French, English and Spanish.