Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne, published at the University of New Brunswick since 1975, invites submissions to a special issue focusing on depictions of adolescence in Canadian literature, to be edited by Jennifer Andrews, John Clement Ball, Heidi Butler, and Benjamin Lefebvre.
As a transitional stage between childhood and adulthood, adolescence has been deployed as a complex metaphor in the literature of numerous countries, including Canada, which has often been depicted as an adolescent (or emerging) nation. The editors welcome original submissions on Canadian texts from pre-Confederation to the contemporary moment for and/or about adolescents, including literatures from all regions, time periods, and types, including depictions of adolescence that extend the range of thirteen to nineteen in either direction. Interdisciplinary approaches are also welcomed.
Possible topics include:
- Generic and ideological distinctions between literature for adolescents (the “YA novel”) and literature about adolescents
- Adolescent perspectives and family dynamics, including narration/focalization
- Adolescent voices and the shaping of cultural memory
- Adolescent rebellion and cultural citizenship
- Adolescence and war, crisis, risk, politics/activism, nationhood/nation-building
- Peer groups’ effects on adolescent maturity
- Colonial and postcolonial discourses of adolescence
- The contemporary bildüngsroman and künstlerroman
- Global vs. local, rural vs. urban adolescences
- Adolescence and/as performance
- First Nations, racialized, gendered, queer, and trans adolescences
- Adolescence in English and French Canadas
Submissions should not be longer than 7,000 words and should conform to the MLA Handbook, 6th edition. Please submit electronically via Word attachment to scl@unb.ca. Deadline for submissions is 30 April 2010, with publication scheduled for late 2010 or early 2011. We welcome submissions in English and in French. For more information, visit the journal’s website at http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/SCL/ or contact Heidi Butler at Heidi.Butler@unb.ca.