“Nations of childhood”
The emergence of modern nation-states can be seen as coinciding with the historical rise of children’s literature. Similarly, stateless or diasporic nations, have frequently formulated their national consciousness and experience through children’s literature. Nor is the connection between childhood and nation gratuitous. Children’s literature is ‘inherently educational’ (Nodelman) and is – among other things – a vehicle for the instruction of children as future citizens. Conversely, ideas of childhood inform the discourse of nation and citizenship – something of which the etymology of the word ‘nation’ (‘being born’) already reminds us. Less susceptible to ironic or subversive readings, the child-subject may be considered the ideal apprentice in national devotions. These are perhaps reasons why certain children’s literatures have ‘stayed at home’, and remained rooted in a national context. Others have been exported with empire. Against the national character of childhood literatures, recognized as such, today one pits the global reach of Disney’s texts for children and various available export-versions of childhood.
The envisaged collection, Nations of Childhood, addresses both the question of how children’s literature constructs and represents different national experiences, and the challenge presented to the ‘nation-ness’ of children’s literature by the changing/diminishing role of nation-states. In what sense are childhoods national? To what extent does nation in the modern sense depend on the idea of – and the construction of – childhood/s?
The essays in the collection should focus on particular texts, historical or contemporary, on particular authors and their impacts on various national scenes. The volume should also include essays on periods, how childhood is represented in – and the way children are served by – particular children’s texts (books, children’s periodicals, plays, other media). A wide range of approaches to culture and text will be included. Nations of Childhood is an interdisciplinary and intercultural endeavour, transcending both academic and national borders.
Some themes to be canvassed for possible inclusion:
- The childhood of the nation (-state) as represented in children’s literature
- Childhood classics and the classic childhood
- Print culture and childhood
- Childhood and citizenship education
- Individual and collective ‘national’ childhoods
- Crossover books and the death of children’s literature
- International children’s classics
- Translation and reception of children’s books into new national contexts
- Diasporic nations in children’s literature
- National constructions in aboriginal/native/first nations literature for children
- Postcolonial representations of childhood and nation
- The question of gender and national devotions in literature/culture for children
- Racist and exclusionary narratives directed at children as national subjects
The volume will be edited by Christopher Kelen (University of Macau) and Björn Sundmark (University of Malmö).
Proposals (roughly 300 word abstracts) are sought by the end of September 2009. Com-
pleted essays should be submitted by the end of January 2010.
Please send abstracts to both editors:
Christopher Kelen: KitKelen@umac.mo
Björn Sundmark: Bjorn.Sundmark@mah.se
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Nations of Childhood: Call for Authors
Friday, July 10, 2009
Joys Of Parenting Writing Contest: Seeking Vietnamese Parents
The Phu Nu (Women) newspaper in HCM City has launched a writing competition for Vietnamese parents within and outside the country to share their thoughts and experiences on their relationships with children.
The contest "Tro Chuyen Voi Con" (Talking With Your Children), is part of the paper’s activities celebrating the National Family Day (June 28).
Parents of any age and background are invited to write about personal and professional experiences that have shaped their relationships with children.
Sponsored by the Japanese-owned life insurance company, Dai-ichi Life Viet Nam, and supported by Phu Nu’s partners, including local women and youth groups, the competition will be introduced to rural areas around the country.
Nguyen Thi Khanh Tam, Phu Nu’s editor-in-chief and member of the event’s organising board, said: "The competition will provide an open environment for parents to share their happiness, sorrows, difficulties, challenges and other issues that may be hard to talk about with their children."
Parents have less time to spend with children in a modern society as both of them work, and this often leads to the latter feeling alienated, which in turn, has them dropping out of school or leaving their homes at an early age.
Many young married couples lack sufficient knowledge and skills to balance the pressures of professional and family lives, so they are more likely to break up when faced with serious problems.
One of the problems is proper communication, and in this regard, "I believe the competition will be useful for all of us," Tam said.
Takashi Fujii, general director of Dai-ichi Life Viet Nam, said, "By sharing their life and experiences, older participants can help younger parents make the right choices in their family life."
He said the competition also aimed to attract educators, cultural researchers and psychologists who would help participants improve their knowledge and skills in peforming the most important task of being good parents.
Essays of not more than 800 words can be sent to Phu Nu, 311 Dien Bien Phu Street, District 3, or via email to trochuyenvoicon@baophunu.org.vn, before October 15, 2009.
Nine prizes worth a total of VND 32 million (US$1.700) will be awarded to selected essays. Selec entries will also be published in Phu Nu every Tuesday.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Gigantic Agricultural Complex In Brazil's Amazon?: New Book Discusses Ford's Dream
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed just a marginal event — Henry Ford's failed attempt to establish a gigantic agricultural industrial complex in the heart of Brazil's Amazon Basin — and turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry's contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism.
In 1927, Ford was America's richest man and (in most "respectable" circles) one of its most admired. He was also in a protean sense our first industrial celebrity, forerunner of such figures as David Packard, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who would be celebrated for organizing transforming technologies. The assembly line obviously was Ford's greatest innovation, but his ambitions hardly stopped there.
At Ford Motor, he created a system of educational, health and other benefits and set up a vast network of spies and home visitors to ensure the new wages were spent on "a wholesome life" rather than on "gambling, drinking or whoring." The mogul "understood that high wages and decent benefits would do more than create a dependable and thus more productive workforce; they would also stabilize and stimulate demand for industrial products by turning workers into consumers."
Thus was born "Fordism," which many at the time embraced as a kind of "third way" between unrestrained capitalism and Marxism. Grandin has given us a bracing new angle on this strange man's biography. He was a lifelong admirer of Emerson, firm in the "Transcendentalists' belief in human perfectibility," yet he instinctively distrusted every individual's choice but his own. He was a pacifist and opponent of capital punishment who ultimately unleashed brutal thugs to terrorize his own workers. He was a bitter, vulgar, lifelong anti-Semite.
Read the rest of the review here, or grab a copy of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City now!
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Adventures on a Small Greek Island: Barbara Bonfigli's Book Cafe Tempest
Today I'm excited to host Barbara Bonfigli as part of her tour promoting her new book Café Tempest: Adventures On a Small Greek Island
About Café Tempest: Adventures on a Small Greek Island
What is it about Greece that makes it so exotic, so romantic, so tantalizing that it’s right at the top of everybody’s bucket list – the one foreign land they’re longing to visit? Our dreams are made on Never on Sunday, Zorba the Greek, and more recently My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Mama Mia.
Café Tempest: Adventures On a Small Greek Island
“Welcome to Pharos. Laugh and dance in the hammock—not the cradle—of Western civilization,” says author, lyricist, and theatrical producer Barbara Bonfigli. “I’ve been falling in love with Greece since I was old enough to drink retsina. But if Sarah hadn’t captured my imagination you’d never know how I feel about friendship, feta, and the abundance of grace that turns friends into lovers and fishermen into kings.”
[from Chapter 22. edited for length. Sarah, the novel’s main character, is an American theater producer spending several weeks on Pharos, a rustic idyllic Greek island. Her house sits on a mountaintop beneath an ancient monastery. She’s writing a magazine article on mantra, but let’s herself be recruited to direct the islanders in their summer play. She chooses Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This morning she’s meeting with Tina, a summer neighbor, who works in Athens as a costume designer.]
A fog drifts in at sunrise, shrouding the fields and hillside houses below us, the circling sea, even the distant coast of Turkey. I’m alone in the world except for the monk whose window in the monastery atop Kastro is always lit. I imagine he’s been sitting at his desk since the fourteenth century and nothing has changed but his light source. No family ties, no telegrams, no flourless chocolate cake to distract him. He’ll have read thousands of books by now.
The salt air is trapped and settles over me, the perfect atmosphere to contemplate mantras. But I have a date with Tina to discuss costumes. The lack of a phone makes me deceptively reliable.
I fall in behind the garbage donkeys tapping their way up the lane without their master. Is Pendis lost in the fog? Turned into a donkey himself?
Eventually we pass the basket weaver’s door, and I see Pendis having a coffee with old Antipas, the basket weaver. Antipas has turned into a bundle of reeds, but Pendis is still in human form.
“Kalimera, kyrios—good morning gentlemen.”
“Kalimera, Sarahki,” they reply. “Thelis café?—would you like coffee?”
“I’m so sorry I can’t,” I say sincerely. Drinking and talking with an old basket weaver and his lifelong friend, the donkey-driving garbage collector is, after all, why I’m here.
But now my mind is running ahead to its next appointment. Tina greets me at her door wearing a gossamer djellaba the colors of sunset.
“Wouldn’t Miranda—Prospero’s daughter—look great in that?”
“That’s just what I thought,” says Tina. “I’ve been re-reading The Tempest. Too bad she’s the only female part; my costume department has so much great stuff for women. Can’t we change the plot? Maybe the ship that gets wrecked on Arcadia is coming from Delphi and is full of priestesses?”
“Sure. And Prospero retires to a monastery and Caliban is left to destroy Western civilization.”
“OK,” she shrugs, “that is a small problem. But if Prospero redeems everybody, why is it still a man’s world?”
“Shakespeare was a guy, wasn’t he?”
“Sosto.—right.” I’ve made fresh orange juice since I can’t compete with your coffee.”
“That’s fine.”
We walk through her blossom-laden courtyard into a grotto living space sparsely furnished with antiques and filled with ancient sculpture and amphorae, each in its own niche beneath a skylight.
“I collect Hellenic and Etruscan. These simple island houses are the perfect setting, don’t you think?”
“I do. Maybe because they belong here.”
“Exactly.”
“Shall we go to my desk? I’ve got some photos to show you.”
The small triangles of light falling on her amphorae have shifted ninety degrees before we’re interrupted. A slight older woman with white hair pulled back and deep dancing eyes comes in with a platter of zucchini, baby artichokes, and deep-fried kalamari.
“I hope you’ll stay for lunch; my cook’s prepared something very simple. Lukia, this is Kyria Sarah.”
“Harika,-- pleased to meet you” we overlap.
We eat in silence. Lukia’s food is sublime. I begin to feel the mystery of Tina’s tiny figure overruning the other mysteries in my mind.
To learn about Barbara Bonfigli and Café Tempest, feel free to visit any of these sites.
Barbara Bonfigli’s website – www.cafetempest.com
Order Café Tempest directly from the publisher - http://www.tellmepress.com/pub_ct.php or from Amazon.
To see the complete tour schedule visit http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2009/05/cafe-tempest-by-barbara-bonfigli-summer.html
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Real Simple's Second Annual Life Lessons Essay Contest
I’m writing today to announce Real Simple’s second annual Life Lessons Essay Contest and to ask that you publicize this opportunity widely within your community. The Life Lessons column, which reaches more than two million readers monthly, has featured noted authors such as Mary Gordon, Jane Smiley, Ann Patchett, and many others. We invite all non-fiction writers to submit their work for consideration and potential publication in Real Simple, in the company of these distinguished authors.
The topic of this year’s essay is: When did you first realize that you had become a grown-up? Whether the experience was difficult, funny, easy, or bittersweet, share your lesson and you could win.
The winning essay is scheduled to appear in the April 2010 issue of Real Simple magazine. The winner will also receive a $3,000 cash prize; roundtrip tickets for two to New York City, hotel accommodations for two nights, and tickets to a Broadway play; and lunch with Real Simple editors.
To enter, please send a typed, double-spaced submission of no more than 1,500 words, preferably as a Microsoft Word attachment, to lifelessons@realsimple.com. The contest is open to legal residents of the U.S. who are 19 or older at the time of entry. It began at 12:01AM this past May 1 and runs through 11:50PM on September 7, 2009. For complete contest rules, please visit realsimple.com/lifelessonscontest.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Thomas Cook's New Thriller: The Fate of Katherine Carr
The Fate of Katherine Carr
The main characters in this fine new novel are obsessed with serial killers, from 16th-century fiend Countess Bathory to more recent psychopaths such as Ed Gein.
One character, for example, shares "every meal with them, every moment of enforced leisure. They trail behind him in a leering throng, rippers and night stalkers. Their scrawled notes are his literature, words written in blood or pieced together crudely from magazine cutouts. For him, Bach is the final gurgling of a strangled child, Renoir what murderers splatter on mirrors, walls and doors.”
Some of these monsters, including Gein, were caught and punished for their crimes, but others got clean away. Or did they? That’s one of the questions Cook asks us to ponder in this disturbing, psychologically complex book.
Cook, author of 21 novels, has been one of our finest writers for years, as readers of "Red Leaves” (2005) and "Master of the Delta” (2008) already know. But Cook’s fan base remains small.
Perhaps that’s because you can’t breeze through his books the way you can with, say, one of Robert Parker’s Spencer novels, enjoying the story and then forgetting it the moment you finish the last page. Cook requires more of readers; he forces you to read thoughtfully, and when you finish his stories, they haunt your dreams.
Read the rest of the review here, or grab a copy of The Fate of Katherine Carr now!
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Hint Fiction Anthology: Call for Submissions
Hint Fiction Anthology: Call for Submissions
Hint Fiction: A story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story.
Publisher W.W. Norton had approached Robert Swartwood and his agent about publishing an anthology of Hint Fiction, starting with the Top 20 stories from the contest. Swartwood will edit the anthology.
Lancaster Online interviewed Swartwood, where he revealed that Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stephen Dunn and best selling authors Joyce Carol Oates and James Frey had sent in their hint fiction stories to be included in the anthology.
Swartwood has just announced the submission period to consider more stories for inclusion in the anthology (further details found here).
The submission period is between August 1 - August 31, 2009. Writers interested in submitting up to two stories can do so via an email address to be announced on Robert Swartwood’s web site on August 1, 2009. Once he designates the email address, I’ll post it, along with a reminder to send stories in.
The anthology will include between 100-150 stories.
Payment is $25 per story for World and Audio rights.
Extracted from http://www.womenofmystery.net
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