No(bodies): Ghost Children in Juvenile Literature
ChLA-Sponsored Session for 2012 MLA Convention (Seattle, Jan 5-8)v
Panel Organizer: Elizabeth Talafuse
Email: talafuse@tamu.edu
This panel seeks to explore the figure of the ghost child in children’s and young adult literature. Trapped in a permanent state of childhood/adolescence, the ghost child, through its lack of body, does not physically mature, thereby experiencing a stasis that is both tragic and frightening; however, in many texts the ghost child undergoes some type of transformation that allows it to “grow up” in perhaps alternative ways. Papers might consider, but are not limited to, what the ghost child suggests about the following:
- identity development (or lack thereof)
- stasis and transition
- permanent childhood/adolescence
- notions of “growing up”
- the categories of child and adolescent as they relate to the body
- the status of the outsider
- death
Submit 500-word abstracts by 15 March 2011 to Elizabeth Talafuse, Texas A&M University: talafuse@tamu.edu.