Call for chapters: “Children, Youth, and International Television”. Deadline: June 30, 2018.

CFP:  (UPDATE) Children, Youth, and International Television

Calls for submissions to a collection that critically examines programs that prominently feature children in international (i.e. non-American) television. Programs may include those targeted to children, or those programs targeted to adults but contain significant child characters. We seek specific submissions that examine television programs from Canada, the UK, Africa, and the Middle East.

The chapters should explore how non-US television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children and childhood, and will connect relevant events, attitudes, or anxieties within their respective countries of origin to an analysis of children or childhood in international television programs. This volume will function as a companion to our collection Children, Youth, and American Television (Routledge, June 2018). We welcome submissions from a range of disciplines and theoretical perspectives, including television studies, cultural studies, childhood studies, critical race studies, gender studies, sociology, and social history.

Please submit an abstract (not to exceed 500 words), current contact information along with a brief biography as attachments in Word to both Dr. Debbie Olson at debbieo@okstate.edu and Dr. Adrian Schober at beatles9@optusnet.com.au  by 30 June 2018. The deadline for finished essays (which should not exceed 9,000 words, inclusive of references, using Chicago notes style) is 30 January 2019.

Debbie Olson has a PhD in English: Screen Studies from Oklahoma State University and is Assistant Professor of English at Missouri Valley College. She is the author of Black Children in Hollywood Cinema and has edited or co-edited several collections on children and media, including The Child in World Cinema (2018), Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg (2016), The Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema (2015) and Children, Youth, and American Television (Routledge, forthcoming).  She is the founder/editor-in-chief of Red Feather: An International Journal of Children in Popular Culture and Series Editor for Lexington’s Children and Youth in Popular Culture Series.

Adrian Schober, who has a PhD in English from Monash University, Australia, has published widely on the child figure in cinema and literature. He is the author of Possessed Child Narratives in Literature and Film: Contrary States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and co-editor (with Debbie Olson) of Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg (Lexington Books, 2016) and Children, Youth, and American Television (Routledge, forthcoming).  He is also Senior Editor on the board of Red Feather: An International Journal of Children in Popular Culture and an advisory board member for Lexington’s Children and Youth in Popular Culture Series.