CFP Friendship in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Film and Television (9/17/2026)

This seems relevant to our endeavours:

Friendship in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Film and Television

deadline for submissions:
August 17, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Jade Dillon-Craig, NTNU

contact email:
jade.dillon.craig@ntnu.no

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/06/12/friendship-in-children%E2%80%99s-and-young-adult-literature-film-and-television

Friendship occupies a central place in children’s and young adult literature, film, and television. It functions as a key site through which processes of Bildung, selfhood, community, and belonging are imagined and negotiated. However, despite its centrality to narratives for young audiences, friendship has received comparatively limited sustained attention as a distinct object of study within children's literature and media scholarship.

This edited collection seeks to address this gap by bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives on friendship in children’s and young adult texts. The volume will explore how friendships are represented, experienced, challenged, and transformed across time, place, genres, and media forms. The volume welcomes contributions that engage with friendship through a range of theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches, including (but not limited to) childhood studies, affect studies, queer theory, disability studies, gender studies, race and ethnicity studies, adaptation studies, media studies, posthumanism, and ecocriticism.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• friendship and identity formation
• friendship and care
• friendship across difference
• friendship and community
• friendship in fantasy and speculative fiction
• animal, non-human, and posthuman friendships
• digital friendships
• friendship and activism
• friendship and education
• cross-cultural or transnational perspectives on friendship

Detailed proposals (approx. 400-500 words) and author biography must be submitted by 17 August 2026 to jade.dillon.craig@ntnu.no

Notification of acceptance will be emailed to authors by 17 September 2026

Full chapters of 6,000 – 8,000 words will be due by 17 February 2027

Contact jade.dillon.craig@ntnu.no for more information or if you have any questions.



Last updated June 12, 2026