Examining children and YA literature manuscripts:
from genetic criticism to didactics.
Call for papers
One-Day conference – May 27, 2016
Mâcon, France
Deadline for proposals : November 30, 2015.
One-day conference organised by the Centre Pluridisciplinaire Textes et Culture (EA 4178) and the Centre Interlangues – Texte, Image, Langage (EA 4182) at the Bourgogne Franche-Comté university, with the support of the research department of the ESPE de Bourgogne.

Since the emergence of genetic criticism in the 70’s with Louis Hay’s work, “geneticists” have never ceased to broaden its scope, from literature, their primary area of study, to philosophy, linguistics and sciences , and from texts, their original object of investigation, to architecture , music  or more recently oral genres  and visual arts  (photography and cinema). Although genetic criticism has begun to take an interest in so-called minor genres, such as detective novels , it has not yet taken up children and YA literature, a category which has only recently started to be considered as worthy of inclusion in literary history and as a valid academic topic. Is this for lack of available drafts and avant textes? Yet we know that French and English archives do exist, such as : 
- the "Babar" (Jean de Brunhoff) archives at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF)  and at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York  ;
- the Agnès Rosenstiehl archives at the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC) in Caen ;
- the Hetzel archives at the IMEC ;
- various collections at Seven Stories, National Centre for Children’s Books, Newcastle upon Tyne,  England : Judith Kerr, Enid Blyton, Philip Pullman, Diana Wynne Jones, etc. ;
- the Roald Dahl archives at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden, England.
Children literature authors themselves, such as Mario Ramos on his website , have also opened their "toolbox", as Philippe Barbeau calls it, to the public, showing the work that goes into the writing of a children's book and potentially making those documents available for study. Is this to be interpreted as an attempt to assert the status of children literature as "proper" literature, or simply as the desire to share one's work in its entirety with one's readers, especially young ones? Or is this to be read in relation to the recent trend initiated by the inclusion of making-of documentaries with cinematic works, which has recently blurred the frontiers between finished works and all their possible states, and which, once published, eventually become part and parcel of the work itself? 
Why children and YA literature genetic materials? 
Still arguably little studied, these avant-textes raise specific questions. Several scenarios exist relative to the genesis of the text and pictures of children and YA books, particularly picture books: some writers are both authors and illustrators of their own works, and some also illustrate other writers' texts; some trust another artist to illustrate their finished text, others start collaborating with an illustrator as they are writing the text. All these combinations offer promising ground for research. Another interesting aspects of the genesis of children literature works is the specificity of its primary readership: at what point in the writing process does the author start taking his young reader into account? Does this affect the genesis of the work?
Moreover, such documents are a wonderful tool to teach reading and writing, both in mother tongue and second language, as it enables the learner to develop his own posture as an author. The experiment we conducted in our "initiation to research" Master MEEF  seminar in 2015 showed that studying writer's drafts and especially children literature genetic documents with schoolchildren allowed one to revisit the question of rewriting and the status of working drafts within the creative process. Following in the footsteps of the "Groupe EVA ", we propose to apply their approach more specifically to children and YA literature, a category which offers drafts accessible to beginners in a language, whether first or second. Indeed, we saw how effective showing one of Flaubert's drafts to ten-year-olds could be, but making them analyze a few working manuscripts of Mario Ramos, an author whose picture books are appropriate for their reading level, had even more of an impact on their conception of writing and the way they related to it. Indeed those documents can reveal to learners of all ages what the writing process consists in, make them realize that writing does not arise from some sort of magical inspiration or from genius alone, but is the result of a slow, painstaking process over a period of time. From this experience, a teacher can lead the pupils/students to think differently about their own work in progress, to give it all the consideration it deserves and above all, by debunking writing, to make it an everyday practice, encouraging trials and errors rather than stigmatising them. Simultaneously, studying genetic materials can contribute to changing the teacher's perception and management of errors and their understanding of their students' writing skills. How does the teacher get the learner to adopt a author's stance? How can rewriting be thought of as a real learning situation rather than a mere exercise in compliance to imposed norms. 
Finally, it might be worth studying those literary manuscripts in the light of the concept of private space (that of the writer's or the artist's workspace) and its interaction with the constraints of writing for a specific readership and publishing within specific editorial policies, as well as taking into consideration the place of the researcher or the teacher who breaks into the private space of literary and artistic creation or the privacy of the learning mind, be it learning a language, learning about oneself or about writing. 
The aim of this one-day conference is to gather geneticists and specialists of the didactics of writing around a common object of study: children and YA literature genetic materials. We invite papers following one or both of the following approaches:
-a genetic criticism approach, concerned with the genesis of literary works: what kind of genetic records have children and YA literature authors left us, how can those materials be studied, is the genetic process of such works different from other types of writing?
-a didactic approach: how can those documents be used in the classroom, whether to teach writing in the mother tongue, for instance at primary school, or in second language teaching (any language), for instance at university.
Please submit 300-500 word proposals by November 30th, 2015, to [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask], with a brief scholarly biography and your academic affiliation. You will notified by January 30, 2016 of the decision of the scientific committee. We welcome papers in French and English. 
Scientific committee : 
Catherine Boré (Université Cergy-Pontoise), Paloma Bravo (Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, TIL), Christine Collière-Whiteside (Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, TIL), Sylvie Crinquand (Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, TIL), Claire Delbard (Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté), Claire Doquet (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3), Daniel Ferrer (ITEM, CNRS), Almuth Grésillon (ITEM, CNRS), Marie-Odile Hidden (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Martine Jacques (Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, CPTC), Olivier Lumbroso (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3), Karine Meshoub-Manière (Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté), Carine Picaud (BNF), Jean-Michel Pottier (Université Champagne-Ardenne, Grei-Lije), Caroline Raulet-Marcel (Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, CPTC), Yves Reuter (Université de Lille 3), Catherine Rovera (Université Paris-Dauphine, ITEM ENS CNRS), Martin Salisbury (Cambridge School of Art), Catherine Tauveron (Université de Bretagne Occidentale), Sophie Van der Linden (auteur-critique).