[Cancelled] Reading Shaun Tan: Literature, Pedagogy and Community

[Call For Papers]

Reading Shaun Tan in Hong Kong:

Literature, Pedagogy, and Community

6-7 DECEMBER 2019 / Education University of Hong Kong

Abstracts due 31 July 2019

Abstracts are invited for a two-day conference centered on the work of author, illustrator, and artist Shaun Tan. We invite contributions that focus on Tan’s work from the point of view of literary and visual studies, on teaching Tan’s work across disciplines and curricula, and on Tan’s work in the context of community reading. Proposals for academic presentations, teacher talks or workshops, and panel discussions in any of these interrelated areas are very welcome.

Participants might consider:

• Any aspect of Tan’s work, including the media and genres Tan has favored, his major themes, and the ways in which his works have been read. Contributors might explore how Tan’s distinctive vision can be understood alongside other forms of graphic narrative, children’s literature, or visual art.
• Any aspect of how Tan’s work has been taught, including its usefulness in language, literacy, literature, drama, history or arts education and other social science education. Tan’s work also foregrounds the power of visual language, and might be discussed in terms of education for visual literacy, multimedia literacy, or other emerging domains.
• Any aspect of how Tan has been read and discussed in communities. Tan’s graphic novel The Arrival was chosen as the book for the first year of 我城我書 / One City One Book Hong Kong, a community reading project initiated by the Centre for Popular Culture in the Humanities at The Education University of Hong Kong. Events related to the book have been held in the literary, artistic, and education communities, and the book has been widely discussed and enjoyed throughout the city in 2019. We invite analysis or discussion of this community reading project, the place of Shaun Tan’s work within it, or wider considerations of community reading and literacy promotion.

Call for Grant Applications

我城我書 / One City One Book Hong Kong would like to foster the development of city-based community reading projects in Asia. If you would like to found a “One City One Book” or “Big Read” project in a city in Asia, please consider applying for a stipend to attend this conference. The stipend, in the amount of HK10,000, is intended to facilitate the attendance of one or two persons who are in a position to develop a community reading project, so academics, educators, and librarians are particularly invited to apply. Please send a CV or resume, along with a one-page description of your vision for your project, to onecityonebook@eduhk.hk, by 31 July 2019.

Abstracts are due to conference organizers by 31 July 2019. Please send your proposal title, a 200-word abstract, and a brief biographical statement to onecityonebook@eduhk.hk.