*CFP* "TV, LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE", HORRIFYING CHILDREN CONFERENCE

We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting a symposium on 13th June 2020 at the York Centre for Writing, York St John University.

The daytime Horrifying Symposium event is free to attend (lunch is provided). There will be a ticketed event in the evening with very special guests, Scarred for Life.

Our symposium is intended to span academic and popular responses and we would welcome contributions from academics, practitioners, broadcasters, writers and fans. Proposals can be for critical papers and other mixed-mode presentations and submissions that blur the boundaries.

We also want to hear your stories. There will be a section of the symposium dedicated to readings of your creative fiction, non-fiction and original stories.

We are very excited that we will be joined by Scarred for Life (@ScarredForLife2) who will be presenting their live show.

More details and updates to follow including an Eventbrite link for booking.

Children’s television programmes will be at the heart of the symposium, but we are interested in the relationship between television and:

• Literature 
• Heritage 
• Popular culture (such as board games) 
• Magazines 
• Popular music 
• Theatre

We would also be interested in proposals for papers on texts such as Scarfolk Council, which seek to represent this period now.

Abstracts for critical papers should be 200-250 words. Papers will be 20 minutes in length.

(Abstracts for the Horrifying Children book will be automatically eligible for the conference).

Abstracts for creative proposal should be 100-150 words. The length of the finished piece to be negotiated.

Themes could include:

• Heritage: an Edwardian childhood in the 1970 & 1980s 
• National identity/identities 
• Adaptation and the interplay between text and image 
• The threat of … 
• Impending war and destruction 
• Watching what we shouldn’t have seen 
• The weird amongst the ordinary 
• The wiccan and supernatural 
• Hauntology and the haunted 
• The pagan and sacrifice 
• The folk horror revival 
• Other dimensions 
• The rural vs the urban 
• The legacy of post-war urban landscapes 
• Science-fiction futures and dystopia 
• Signals of ecological breakdown 
• Adults as failures and the collapse of authority 
• Adult fear to children’s fiction 
• Innocence and the adult world 
• The alien within

Submit proposals to HorrifyingChildrenBook@outlook.com by noon on 30th March 2020