CALL. 01.11.2019: Children and Youth Speaking Up and Speaking Out - Manchester (England)
FECHA LÍMITE/DEADLINE/SCADENZA: 01/11/2019
FECHA CONGRESO/CONGRESS DATE/DATA CONGRESSO: 24-25-26/06/2020
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: Manchester Centre for Youth Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University (Manchester, England)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Professor Melanie Tebbutt; Dr Mary Clare Martin; Dr Simon Sleight; Dr Jenny Cromwell; Dr Shirin Hirsch; Dr Marie Molloy; Dr April Pudsey.
INFO: call - childrenandyouth@mmu.ac.uk
CALL:
The last two years have seen some of the most powerful youth protest movements in decades. Greta Thunberg’s school strike calling for climate action inspired a global campaign among millions of school children. In the United States, March for Our Lives saw hundreds of thousands of young people demonstrating against gun violence in one of the largest youth protests in U.S. history. From possessed and prophetic children, to young people participating in industrial disputes and school strikes, to violent gangs imposing themselves on their peers, the young have endeavoured to convey their own feelings and views, while adults have tried to explain and interpret them. Young people speaking up and speaking out raise questions about how the youthful voice has been conceptualized in qualitative historical research and what is meant by children’s rights. ‘Speaking up and speaking out’ has not necessarily taken a verbal form and not all children and young people have been able either to speak up or speak out, given a variety of constraining forces. Conversely, collective action has taken many forms, from the Children’s Crusade (1212), to traditions of “misrule” and role-reversal. This third biennial conference of the Children’s History Society consequently seeks to explore the challenges and possibilities of researching how children and young people have resisted, confronted or acceded in societies that have rarely valued their voices, in the face of adults who have tried to restrain them and enforce silence in different historical settings and eras. We welcome papers from established and upcoming historians of children, childhood and youth, and also contributions from school-age scholars and youth in their teens to showcase their work on children and young people in history. Contributions which take a creative arts approach to the conference topic and from collaborative community engagement history projects are also encouraged. We invite panel contributions (especially long chronological and/or geographically diverse in collective scope) as well as individual papers on topics related to the conference theme, which might include:
· Protest and demonstration · Subversive behaviour · Speaking out in work and play · Young people in political spaces and places · Having their say: children’s rights · The ethics of representing youthful voices (past and contemporary) in qualitative research · Representing young people’s voices in museums and heritage sites · Adult memories of their youthful voice · Young people’s writing and art · Young people in visual and narrative culture · Conflicting and conflicted childhoods · Voices from the margins · Unequal voices: inequalities and growing up · Narratives of the vulnerable and marginalized · The emotional voice and spirit of resistance · Bodies, emotions and transitions: non-verbal communication · Autonomy, dependence, interdependence: relations between children, adults, and the state · Mental health, illness and mortality: developing resilience · Possessed and prophetic children and young people: speaking out with supernatural voices · The citizen child: belonging and patriotism · ‘In the best interests of the child’: children and their experts · Youth under threat, youth in danger · Youthful voices in conflict · Racialised upbringings · Youthful peer relationships · Youth as producers and consumers
· Experiences of school and higher education · Transnational comparisons and contrasts · Youthful viewpoints as misrepresented · Critiques of youthful voices · The challenges of children’s voices · Agency and beyond
Please note that our definitions of children and youth are flexible, reflecting the multiple constructions through time of these social categories. For individual papers, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, together with a 2-page CV, to childrenandyouth@mmu.ac.uk by 1 November 2019. Panel submissions featuring three papers of 15-20 minutes apiece are also encouraged, and should be submitted collectively by the panel organiser. Please state your contact email address on the abstract. Applicants will be notified of the outcome in January 2020. We expect the selection process to be competitive, and hence we will prioritise panels and papers directly addressing the overall conference theme as well as one or more sub-themes.