The Department of English and Cultural Studies, CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bannerghatta Road Campus, presents an International Conference (online) on "Children and Childhood: Imaginaries in Indian and Other Asian Literature and Film". This conference aims to reorient the locus of debate and discussion towards the Asian perspective with regards to children’s narratives and construct inclusive methodologies for the same. It seeks to explore the diverse as well as local narratives for and about children and childhood within the Asian context, in both theory and practice.

• Conference Dates: 11-12 November, 2021

• Venue: Online

In contemporary times, with a boom in digital media and other forms of convergent spaces and identities, narratives for and about children and childhood are often multilayered, diverse and complex; making it imperative to critically engage with them from a more specific and contextual perspective. In other words, multiple childhoods require multiple narratives for and about children that cover different contexts. However, ever since the inception of childhood studies and children’s literature studies within academia, there has been a dominant imagination and theorization of the ‘child’ and ‘childhoods’ from western and European lenses, despite the notion of the ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ in itself has transformed in practice, imaginings and theorizations across ages and spaces, the field of children’s narrative within media in general, and literature and film in particular.

The scope and understanding of children’s narratives within India and other Asian contexts still remains underrepresented within academic scholarship to a great extent. Considering the multiplicity and contexts of childhoods across cultures, it is imperative that a nuanced and theoretical engagement be initiated in the milieu of non-western or non-European intellectual, educational and creative practices. Above all, it is important and necessary to provide opportunities for multiple engagements and conversations about children and childhoods across narratives.

This international conference aims to reorient the locus of debate and discussion towards the Asian perspective with regards to children’s narratives. It seeks to explore the diverse as well as local narratives of children and childhood within the Asian context, in both theory and practice. It aims to give voice and visibility to the narratives for and about children from an Asian perspective, by understanding and questioning the representations within and outside the narratives. It further attempts to locate and problematize the matrices that polarise representations of children and childhoods, providing a pathway to engage with Indian and other Asian narratives for children and to radicalize the representation of children and childhoods in narrative imaginings and retellings.

In this process, we hope to decolonize the theorizations on practice, education, creativity and publishing that centre around children from the western and European lenses and attempt to establish a voice specifically of our own. And in doing so develop a narrative practice that acknowledges regional and indigenous specificities and nuances in the production, dissemination and consumption of the child and narratives of the child and childhood within the larger Asian contexts.

• Disability

• Environment

• Writing for Children

• Morals vs Neutral narratives

• Ideology and Politics in Children’s narratives

• Visual Politics in Children’s narratives

• The Child in Children’s narratives

• The Adult in Children’s narratives

• Gender in Children’s narratives

• Narrativising the child

• Narrativising Morality

• Narrativising the Self

• Memoirs by children and for children

• Comics for children

• Anime

• Historicizing children’s narratives in specific Asian contexts

The important dates relating to the conference are:

1. Abstract Submission: 15 September 2021

2. Approvals of Abstract: 20 September 2021

3. Full Paper Submission: 30 October 2021

4. Email submissions to: synthesize.english@conference.christuniversity.in

• E-conference (No physical presence or traveling required)

• Interaction with established academicians and practitioners in the field

*Cartoon Image and Website courtesy: Tess Mariam Jose and Darshanbir Singh Narula