Proposals are sought for a collection of essays entitled Anne for Everyone: Green Gables, Children of Color, and Global Childhoods, to be edited by Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen.
Across children’s literature, there are heroines that transcend eras, cultures, and generations. One of the most beloved globally is Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne Shirley—the protagonist of Anne of Green Gables whom Mark Twain famously called “the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice.” Since the initial publication of Anne by L.C. Page & Company in 1908, there have been a multitude of editions, multiple adaptations for screen and stage, and a rich material culture that feature Montgomery’s irrepressible heroine. Anne has become a major figure in Canadian and world youth literature, and continues to have an impact on readers and audience today.
Multiple scholars have engaged Anne of Green Gables in various ways, but what we seek to do in this volume is to consider Anne from the perspective of those who are most underrepresented in children’s literature and children’s literature studies—Indigenous people and people of color, adopted persons, and other people on the margins. In “The Pleasure of Dreaming: How L.M. Montgomery Shaped My Lifeworlds,” Ebony Elizabeth Thomas writes about how though Anne of Green Gables was “removed from [her] by by race, ethnicity, nationality, denomination, and time, there is no other author so important, no body of work so seminal, and no personal philosophy so integral to the woman and scholar [she] is becoming” (The Narrative Compass, 2009, p. 80). Like Thomas, how do other Black girls engage with Anne? How do children in countries outside of the west (Japan? Korea?) read and consume Anne? How do adopted persons relate to Anne as orphan-adoptees? Given that Anne of Green Gables remains such an enduring, worldwide phenomenon, we intend to interrogate what Anne and the inhabitants of Prince Edward Island mean to these other and othered populations.
Inspired by the stories in A Narrative Compass: Stories That Guide Women’s Lives (edited by Betsy Hearne and Roberta Seelinger Trites), we seek for possible inclusion critical essays, criticism, and stories from readers, scholars, and creators whose lives have been influenced by Anne of Green Gables, but whose stories and perspectives remain outside the canon of children’s literature studies. We wish to include essays from multiple perspectives (English, education, library science, media and communication studies, childhood studies, etc.) and from scholars around the globe.
Essays may include topics such as:
- Reader/viewer response to race-related aspects of Anne of Green Gables in various media
- Critical readings of Anne through the lenses of
- Critical Adoption Studies
- Critical Disability Studies
- Critical Race Theory
- Critical Indigenous Studies
- Gender and Women’s Studies
- Third World Feminisms
- LGBTQ Studies and/or Queer Theory
- Other theoretical perspectives
- Fan studies (fanfiction, fanart, cosplay, conference attendance, etc.) by and about BIPOC and/or LGBTQ fans
- Anne within a multicultural Canada – First Nations, immigrant communities, etc.
- Anne within a global context—readers and audiences around the world
- Presences and absences across the series
- And more!
350-500 word chapter proposals are due by December 1, 2024. Proposals should be for original essays that have not been published previously (including in conference proceedings) and that are not currently under consideration for another edited collection or journal. Send your proposal and CV to both Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Sarah Park Dahlen.
Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Associate Professor, Marsal Family School of Education, University of Michigan (ebonyt@umich.edu).
Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen, Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (spdahlen@illinois.edu).