19/21 November 2020
1st International ONLINE Conference
University of Padua – Department FISPPA – Piazza Capitaniato – Padua (Italy)
Much has been written about the historical undervaluing of children’s literature and research. While there is considerable scholarly work concerning the teaching of children’s literature in primary and secondary classrooms, there has been relative silence about how and what we teach in this field at university level. This conference will break this silence by providing a forum for perspectives on teaching children’s literature at tertiary institutions from around the world.
This conference reflects the importance of the growing discipline of children’s literature in tertiary contexts, both benchmarking and supporting the development of effective pedagogical practices.
This conference builds on the IRSCL 2019 panel “Breaking the silence: Teaching children’s literature at tertiary level” which was held in Stockholm on 16th August 2019. During that panel, scholars from around the world shared approaches to teaching children’s literature and it was clear that there was strong interest in the topic, and a thirst for further discussion. This conference creates a space for wider and deeper discussion about how we teach children’s literature in university settings. It aims to foster dialogue and collaborations among children’s literature scholars from different disciplines and contexts.
Call for papers
Please send an abstract of 300 words maximum and a short biography of 100 words as a single Word document to Nicola Daly at fosteringdialogue@waikato.ac.nz. E-mails should have the subject line: Teaching children’s literature conference
Abstracts should include the following information:
- Author(s)
- Affiliation as you would like to appear in the programme
- E-mail address
- Title of proposal
- Text of proposal (including research question, methodology, research context)
- Selected bibliography with academic sources (3-5 references)
- Areas of interest referring to the topics listed above (1-11)
- Five keywords

All submissions are reviewed by the members of the Reading Committee.
All abstracts and papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and copyedited. Papers will be 20 minutes maximum followed by a 10 minutes discussion.
Illustrations by Noemi Vola

