Conference proceedings Canon Consitution and Canon Change in Children's Literature
published by Routledge (2017).

Doctoral student Simone Herrmann receives David Almond Fellowship

Simone Herrmann, PhD student and research assistant in English Literature, has been awarded the David Almond Fellowship, a scholarship for research into children's and young adult literature. The fellowship, supported by Newcastle University, UK, and the Seven Stories National Research Centre for Children's Books, will enable her to gain unique insights into the collections of the Seven Stories Archive, which houses manuscripts, letters and original press reviews of acclaimed British children's authors such as M.E. Atkinson and Ursula Moray Williams. During her research visit in early April 2016, she will also have the opportunity to engage with academics and students from Newcastle University about her research project, which focuses on perceptions of individuals and social formation in British children's and young adult novels.

Seminar by Prof. Dr. Anja Müller and Prof. Dr. Matthew Grenby as part of this year's Newcastle Children's Literature Master Class

August 6 - 7, 2015

Prof. Dr. Anja Müller was invited to give a seminar on "What is an archive?" together with Prof. Dr. Matthew Grenby. The seminar took place as part of this year's Newcastle Children's Literature Master Class
on the topic "The Future of the Subject: Archives". The workshops were led by a team of distinguished international scholars in the field of children's literature research. The participants consisted of a number of excellent international Master's students and PhD students alike.

Doctoral Colloquium between Homerton College and the University of Siegen

May 15, 2015 in Cambridge under the direction of Prof. Maria Nikolajeva and Prof. Dr. Anja Müller

Cambridge

Reading with children's book author and comic artist Marcia Williams

November 03, 2014 at 6 pm, Siegen University Library

Exhibition: Between Trenches and Bond Street: The First World War in German and British Literature

October 13 to November 03, 2014, Foyer of the Siegen University Library

Between the Trenches and Bond Street - The First World War in German and British Literature documents the results of a joint project seminar by students of English and German Studies, which took place at the University of Siegen in the winter semester 2013/14. The exhibition explores forms of representation, remembrance and commemoration of the First World War from the early past to the recent present with reference to exemplary moments in British and German literature. One hundred years after the outbreak of war, the exhibition was presented for the first time in February 2014 in the Siegen City Library. The diverse documents of literary and media commemoration are currently on display at Siegen University Library. A central interest of the project is the integration of complex and often neglected perspectives. We are therefore particularly pleased to announce the visit of the British children's book author and illustrator Marcia Williams, whose work focuses on children's views of the war. The author will read passages from her works, with a special focus on her fictional scrapbook Archie's War. The reading marks a highlight and at the same time the conclusion of the project work.

Canon Constitution and Canon Change in Children's Literature

11-13.09.2014; Prof. Dr. Anja Müller together with apl. Prof. Dr. Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (Tübingen); supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation - to the website

Canon Constitution and Canon Change in Children's Literature

While recent literary and cultural theory has increasingly focused on the subject's capacity for action and autonomy (key points would be agency and the ethical turn), the active, creative potential of children and young people as cultural agents has so far only been given rudimentary consideration in children's and young adult literature research. What is more characteristic of current YL research is an argumentation within the literary field. The innovative potential of YL is analyzed, for example, in relation to other literary genres, but not in relation to cultural practices (see Reynolds 2007). Another characteristic of YL research is an individualizing perspective that describes the potential for action or "agency" in terms of the private actions of an individual (usually represented by characters) instead of also understanding them as collective orders or shared social practices.

This inner-literary orientation (often linked to the attempt to enhance the status of children's literature in the literary field) also characterizes discussions on canon formation in children's and young adult literature. Although canonicity was discussed in connection with its cultural functionalization in the course of canon criticism in the 1990s, such a link has not yet been established in YL research. The concept of the imaginary as a social practice, which simultaneously serves the construction of collective identities (see Castoriadis, Anderson, Appadurai or Taylor), can be applied to questions of canon formation: Texts that are considered constitutive of a national or transnational canon have shared ideas not only regarding aesthetic values but also regarding a collective cultural self-image. If we attribute a central role within the enculturation process to YCL, it makes sense to examine YCL texts (or so-called classics) that are considered canonical for their representation of shared social orders that are supposed to determine social action. Accordingly, a historical change in the canon could be explained by the historical contingency of the social imaginary in which a literary canon participates. This perspective of investigation would clearly go beyond the distinction proposed by Hans Heino Ewers between timeless "traditional texts", which are passed on from generation to generation and represent a timeless image of childhood, and time-dependent "key texts", which characterize a particular epoch and serve to understand childhood in that time (cf. Ewers 2007). On the one hand, the texts are not determined solely by their reference to concepts of childhood; on the other hand, the coincidence of epoch and idea/concept implied in Ewers' pair of terms is broken up by the fact that a multidimensional concept of social orders takes the place of a purely temporal orientation.

The state of research outlined so far gives rise to the following desiderata in KJL research, which the planned project seeks to address: What is needed is an expansion of the theoretical spectrum in KJL research, particularly with regard to politically oriented approaches. The extensive focus on the actions of the private individual and the only hesitant inclusion of public and, above all, political questions and theories in YL research can be explained by a lack of dissociation of theoretical-critical reflection on YL from intended concepts of childhood. Here, YL research seems to reproduce patterns of the childhood concept of modern societies (separation of family and public sphere; location of the child in the non-public space of the family; individualization; criterion of 'child-appropriateness'), although as a critical meta-discourse it should not necessarily adopt the mechanisms of its subject, but rather distinguish itself from them.

With regard to the question of canon formation, a cultural functionalization of the concept of canon is a desideratum that the present project aims to address. By situating YL in a broader cultural field, the restriction of YL to a purely aesthetic-literary space is simultaneously counteracted. If, within the framework of educational science considerations, a significant share of enculturation processes is conceded to YL, the critical analysis of YL in broader cultural contexts and with the aid of cultural studies methods is logically necessary.

The project's linking of questions of canonicity and canon formation with theoretical considerations on the so-called 'social imaginary' from political theory pursues several objectives of a substantive, theoretical, methodological and structural nature. The most important aim is to locate questions of canonicity and canon formation in a broader cultural or cultural-political context than has been discussed to date in YA research in the context of aesthetic value discussions or reception- and market-oriented studies. The extent to which the chosen approach is suitable for describing and justifying historical canon developments will be tested. In addition, synchronous cross-sections will help to position the exemplarily selected British KJL within European KJL. Through the comparative approaches envisaged in the project via cooperation, a first step will also be taken towards a comparative appreciation of cultural work, especially British YCL, in the context of the construction of European cultural identities.

Specifically, these aims will be elaborated on the basis of three exemplary concepts that Charles Taylor identified as fundamental to the social imaginary of modern Western European societies: Democracy, secularism and Europe. This gives rise to the internal structure of the project with three sub-projects, each of which initially examines the question of which social orders are negotiated in the texts and to what extent Young Adult literature can be said to participate in the social imaginary. While the historical analysis will primarily look for relationships between the development of the cannon and historical change in the social imaginary, the analyses of contemporary literature will focus on the positioning of Great Britain in the European context and the question of how corresponding social practices are negotiated in British YA.

• Müller, Anja and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, eds. Canon Constitution and Canon Change in European Children's Literature. Oxon: Routledge, 2017.

  ---. ed. Adapting Canonical Texts in Children's Literature. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

  ---. "The Child is Father of the Man... and the Author: Screening the Lives of Children's Authors." Adaptation, Intermediality and the British Celebrity Biopic (1990-2010). Eds. Marta Minier and Maddalena Pennacchhia. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. 179-194.

  ---. "The First World War through the eyes of a horse - Michael Morpurgo's War Horse." The First World War in History Lessons: Borders - Crossing Borders - Medializations of Borders. Ed. Bärbel Kuhn and Astrid Windus. HISTORICA ET DIDACTICA. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2014. 125-128.

  ---. "Shakespeare Comic Books - Adapting the Bard for a Young Audience." Adapting Canonical Texts in Children's Literature. Ed. Anja Müller. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 95-111.

  ---. "'Sweet Pictures' - Raising the Tasteful Child in Eighteenth-Century Children's Literature." Taste and the Senses in the Eighteenth Century. Eds. Peter Wagner and Frédéric Ogée. LAPASEC. 3. Trier: WVT, 2012. 345-358.

  ---. "Identifying an Age-Specific English Literature for Children." Mediating Identities in Eighteenth-Century England. Eds. Isabel Karremann and Anja Müller. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. 17-30.

  ---. "From Robinson the Younger to Inkheart: Tracing German Children's Fiction between Realism and Fantasy." Brave New Worlds: Old and New Classics of Children's Literature. Ed. Elena Paruolo. Frankfurt/M. et al.: Lang, 2011. 67-88.

  ---. "Redeeming through Storytelling in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials." Redeemers and Healers: The Reception and Transformation of their Medieval and Late Antique Representations in Literature, Film and Music. Ed. Dina de Rentiis and Christoph Houswitschka. Trier: WVT, 2010. 53-66.

• Burstyn, Franziska. "The Northern Imagination in Russell Hoban's Soonchild and Other Children's Books." Bleak Prospects: Margaret Atwood's imaginative expeditions into the uninhabitable. Yearbook for Literature and Aesthetics 32. ed. Dieter Petzold. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015. 107-119.

  ---. "Wishing Tables and Magic Puddings: Never-ending Edibles in Children's Literature. Feast or Famine? Food in Children's Literature. Eds. Bridget Carrington and Jennifer Harding. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014. 213-227.

  ---. "Of the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up: The Peter Pan Myth as an Allegory of Eternal Childhood." Mythos Kind: A mythical and literary search for traces. Ed. Günter Gentsch, Maren Uhlig and Reiner Tetzner. Leipzig: Edition Vulcanus, 2013. 181-200.

  ---. "Alice and Mowgli Revisited: Neil Gaiman's Coraline and The Graveyard Book." The Inheritance of the Inklings. Yearbook for Literature and Aesthetics 30. ed. Dieter Petzold. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013. 72-86.

  ---. The Myth of Cokaygne in Children's Literature - The Consuming and the Consumed Child. Ed. Alexandra Lembert and Elmar Schenkel. Works on Literary Fantasy. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011.

• Herrmann, Simone. "Food Supply and Sustenance in Victorian Robinsonades for Children." Feast or Famine? Food in Children's Literature. Eds. Bridget Carrington and Jennifer Harding. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014. 152-164.