CFP

American Antiquarian Society Roundtable at ASECS 2022

Due September 25, 2022.

The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) will sponsor a roundtable “Historic Children’s Voices” at this year’s American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Interested panelists should email Ashley Cataldo acataldo@mwa.org.

This panel looks at the variety of children’s voices throughout the long eighteenth century, when it is commonly accepted that children’s literature was first published as a distinct genre. And while children’s literature has long received the attention of scholars, children’s archives have not. As literary historian Karen Sanchez-Eppler writes, “There are now library collections of ‘children’s literature,’ things written for a child audience. But there are as yet no archives of children’s writing.” From diaries to artwork to printed books and pamphlets produced by young people, works by children are present in existing archives but are often understudied. This panel seeks to engage panelists in discussing work produced by, but not necessarily for, children in the eighteenth century to shed light on the larger historical or literary significances of those works.

Please send a short abstract (250-300 words) and brief biography to Ashley Cataldo acataldo@mwa.org by September 25, 2022.

Ashley Cataldo 
Curator of Manuscripts
American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury St.
Worcester, MA 01609
acataldo@mwa.org
she/hers
508-471-2174
http://www.americanantiquarian.org