Conference Schedule and Panel

Valparaiso University, April 16-18, 2026

About the Conference

WEDNESDAY

April 15

Registration

6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Registration Table

Harre Union, Ballroom B

Thursday

April 16

Schedule and Panel

8:00 – 10:00 a.m.

Registration Table

Harre Union, Ballroom B

9:00 – 10:30 a.m. Panel 1
Brown and Gold Room

Placemaking (90 minutes)

Anna Merz (Ph.D. Candidate, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
“Entirely our own sonce or consultation”: A Young Writer Shaping Africa
Rina Teske (Librarian & Research Assistant, Scotland’s Early Literature for Children Initiative, University of Edinburgh)
Children Narrating Orkney: Scottish Youth Authorship and the Making of Place
Karah Mitchell (Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Missouri–Columbia)
Imagining Other Worlds, Writing in This One
Lesley Peterson (Editor, Journal of Juvenilia Studies)
“A Treue mirour of…inconstancy”: Elizabeth Tanfield’s Subversive Chorography

10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Coffee Break

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Panel 2
Brown and Gold Room

Global Romanticism (90 minutes)

David C. Hanson (Professor and Department Head, English and World Languages, Southeastern Louisiana University)
Lessons in Astronomy and Sentiment: Youth Writing and the Worlds of Astronomy Instruction in the 19th Century
Sarah Schaefer-Walton (Assistant Professor of English, Marshall University)
A Young Writer’s Way of Seeing: the Beginnings of Murray’s Handbooks for Travellers
Jeffrey R. Bibbee (Dean and Professor of History, University of Tennessee at Martin)
& Aidan Newberry (Independent Scholar)
Russian Romanticism in Turgenev’s “Steno”
Eric Bontempo (Assistant Professor of English, Abilene Christian University)
Romances and Riddles in Grace Aguilar’s Early Writing

12:15 – 1:15 p.m. Lunch Excursions

1:15 – 2:45 p.m. Panel 3
Brown and Gold Room

Genre and Mediation (90 minutes)

Laurie Langbauer (Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The World of the Middlebrow
Dimitrius Goulis (Assistant Professor in Children’s Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
Voices Under Constraint: Girlhood, Embodiment, and Mediated Authorship in Juvenile Writing
Victoria Ford Smith (Associate Professor of English, University of Connecticut)
The Royal Drawing Society’s Snapshot Soldiers: Child Art, World War I, and the Crisis of Representation

2:45 – 3:00 p.m. Afternoon Break

3:00 – 4:00 p.m. Panel 4
Brown and Gold Room

Creativity and Constraint (60 minutes)

Carmen Hernandez (English Major, Valparaiso University)
Alcott’s Suppressed Anger and Its Expression in Comic Tragedies
Jovana Trajanoska (Criminology Major, Valparaiso University)
Caged Creativity: The Silenced Tragedy of Consuelo Clark
Pam Nutt (Former Head of English, Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Sydney; Mentor Editor, Juvenilia Press)
Young Writers at School

Friday

April 17

Schedule and Panel

All panels will be held in the Brown and Gold Room, and the keynote lecture on Friday will be held in Ballroom C.

9:00 – 10:00 a.m. Panel 5
Brown and Gold Room

21st-Century Forms (60 minutes)

Cheeno Marlo M. Sayuno (Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Associate Professor, University of the Philippines Los Baños)
Children’s Creativity Through Technology: The Process of Crafting Play Among Child Filipino Mobile Gamers
Saghar Leslie Naghib-Seidel (English Language Arts Teacher, Westminster Christian School)
The Devotional Project: Fostering Community with Lived Experiences and Shared Faith

10:00 – 10:15 a.m. Coffee Break

10:15 a.m. – 11:15 p.m. Panel 6
Brown and Gold Room

20th-Century Conversations (60 minutes)

Amy Fish (Assistant Director, Kilachand Honors College, Boston University)
Mosaic: Boston High Schoolers on the American 1980s
Sara Lindey (Professor of English, Saint Vincent College)
“Don’t Do Just Anything You Want”: Children’s Letters to Mister Rogers

11:30 – 1:15 p.m. Community Luncheon with Panel

Panel 7 – Publishing Youth: The Futures of Editorial Practice in Juvenilia Studies (90 minutes)

Laurie Langbauer (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Lesley Peterson (Journal of Juvenilia Studies)
Karen Sánchez-Eppler (L. Stanton Williams 1941 Professor of American Studies and English; Chair, American Studies, Amherst College)
Eric Bontempo (Abilene Christian University)
Victoria Ford Smith (University of Connecticut)

1:30 – 3:45 p.m. Excursion to the Indiana Dunes

4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Ballroom C

Keynote Address by Karen Sánchez-Eppler

L. Stanton Williams 1941 Professor of American Studies and English, Amherst College

“Historians of their World: The Nelson Brothers’ Library and the Paracosm of Childhood.”

5:00 – 6:15 p.m. Keynote Reception

Saturday

April 18

Schedule and Panel

9:00 – 10:00 a.m. Panel 8
Brown and Gold Room

Recent Archival Initiatives (60 minutes)

Andrea Immel (Curator, Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University)
Laura Wasowicz (Curator of Children’s Literature, American Antiquarian Society)

10:00 a.m.-10:15 a.m. Break

10:15 a.m.-11:45 a.m. Panel 9
Brown and Gold Room

The Edges of Adolescence (90 min)

Maggie Morris Davis (Assistant Professor, Illinois State University) “I think it was a very harsh way to treat a child”: School Essays from Wisconsin Children in the Federal Writers Project Archive
Mary Eileen Fouratt (Independent Scholar) & Maureen Egan (Independent Scholar) The Edge of Seventeen: Ruthy Henshaw’s Early Diary
Elissa Myers (Visiting Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University) “Consuelo’s Corner”: The Space-Making of Young Black Women Amateur Journalists
Sebastian Williams (Assistant Professor, Tiffin University) Rachel Carson’s Early Work: Biography as a Blessing and a Curse