In recent years, exceptional children from all over the world have made it into our news media. Young people like Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Thandiwe Abdullah, and Bana Alabed have captured our attention because they manage to perform eloquent speeches to crowds, inspire and mobilise huge protest marches, and address violations that had remained hidden. Adults mostly celebrate these young people’s extraordinary achievements. In children’s literature studies, their prominence has inspired several discussions about the possibility of political childhoods.  

However, by basing our understanding of childhood on the examples of these extraordinary children, we run the risk of making it a limited – even exclusionary – concept. By way of alternative, we propose to explore the politics of childhood from the vantagepoint of not just the exceptional but of the everyday as well. Children Shaping The(ir) World: Between the Exceptional and the Everyday invites its participants to consider if we can only recognise power in children who stand out from the crowd or if there is a political dimension to children’s daily lives that we have yet to recognise. Further investigations may address the nature of the power of children who do not necessarily change society at large but do shape the world immediately surrounding them, impacting not just their own lives, but also the life of family members or friends on a more intimate scale. 

We aim to explore children’s impact on the(ir) world in a broader context, ranging from the exceptional to the everyday. We invite discussions on what a quotidian citizenship for children can look like and how that relates to the impressive achievements of extraordinary children featured on the news. We propose to examine what effect celebrations of exceptionalism and concomitant individualism have on constructions of childhood and readers’ agency. Other possible questions include: What is the impact of celebrations of exceptionalism that are one-dimensional and hyperbolically positive? How do everyday actions of children shape society and/or the world around them? What forms of heroism or exceptionalism bears the everyday? We encourage participants to be wary of exceptionalist narratives that eschew systemic forms of marginalisation and oppression and to be aware of the limited extent to which they may resonate with young audiences.

Contributions might include: 

• Theoretical explorations of the ordinary and the exceptional in children’s literature and media  

• Individual and collective expressions of the ordinary and the exceptional 

• Minoritised children between ordinary and exceptional 

• Children’s share in and access to equality, diversity, and inclusion   

• Children’s figures of identification between super-heroism and super-ordinariness 

• Exceptionalism in children’s everyday life; quotidian heroism 

• The everyday of heroic characters 

• Refusal of exceptionalism in children’s narratives  

• Children’s responses to and (non-)engagement with stories of exceptionalism 

• Forms and genres of the ordinary or the exceptional (e.g. hero trope, novel, diary) 

• Children’s writing and textual productions as exceptional or everyday (schoolwork, life writing, juvenilia)  

• Children’s citizenship in both its exceptional and its everyday manifestations 

• Democracy, culture, and nationhood in children’s everyday lives

• Representations of everyday and/or exceptional emotions and affect

Practicalities 

The conference will be hybrid and held in English. 

The organising committee is inviting proposals for 20-minute individual papers. Each paper will be followed by a 10-minute plenary discussion. We specifically encourage PhD researchers and other early-career scholars to apply.

Submission Instructions  

Both the papers and the abstracts should be in English. Abstracts can be between 300 and 500 words (excluding bibliography). They should be anonymised. Please submit your abstract along with a 100-word biography, each in a separate document, using the submission like above.

Abstracts should include the following components:

• Title of the paper
• Paper proposal
• Bibliography

Submission timeline

• Deadline for submission: 31 October 2024
• Notification of acceptance: December 2024

Contact

For any additional questions, please write to cbc2025@tilburguniversity.edu

We look forward to receiving your abstracts!