Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb
Faculty of Teacher Education, Zagreb
Croatian Association of Researchers in Children's Literature
Zagreb City Libraries - Croatian Center for Children's Book - Croatian Section of IBBY

announce an International academic conference

THE GREAT HEALER - A CENTURY OF GRIGOR VITEZ

This conference marks the centennial of the birth of Grigor Vitez (1911-1966), a writer whose work established and communicated high aesthetic norms, and whose cultural (critical, editorial) and pedagogical efforts redefined and redirected the existing editorial and educational practices. Generations of children grew up reading his poetry and he remains appealing and significant to today's readers, children and adults alike. His poetry, covering a broad expressive range in terms of genre and ludic linguistic ingenuity founded on the interplay of phonetic expressiveness and semantic defamiliarization, influenced a host of children's literature authors: G. Krklec, S. Femenić, V. Parun, T. Bilopavlović, Z. Balog, and D. Ivanišević among others. With its predominantly lyrical expression, Vitez's poetry does not exhaust itself in formal and semantic wordplay, even when it comes to nonsense; it preserves the implicit confidence in basic humanism and meaningfulness of human existence, affirming the optimism of "joyfulness and fearlessness in the face of what we call the future".

Moreover, in his representative body of prose writings Vitez modernized the form of the popular fantastic short story. In whole, Vitez's insufficiently researched literary, cultural and pedagogical work opens up numerous topics for the conference. Some are directly related to his work and the ways in which he redefined cultural, literary and educational practices; others provide an insight into differentiated discursive constructions of knowledge about children's literature throughout a period that, in his honor, we call a Century of Grigor Vitez.

The aim of this conference is to provide a forum for local and international scholars who, working together, can help rearticulate Vitez's work and analyze the ways in which he redefined familiar concepts of childhood and children. Furthermore, it provides an opportunity to reevaluate the institutional, discursive and social conditions of the study of children's literature as well as the related, civilizationally and culturally conditioned, concepts of children and childhood.

Conference topics:

1. Literary, cultural and pedagogical work of Grigor Vitez
   1. New readings, interpretations and revalorizations of Vitez's literary work and of his reception in other artistic media (music, theatre, film, radio, TV, internet)
   2. Concepts of child and childhood in Vitez's work
   3. Subversiveness and polemicity of Vitez's discourse
   4. Popular and oral culture and literature in Vitez's work
   5. Perception and representation of Vitez's work in contemporary popular culture and pedagogical practices
   6. Analysis of the status of his work within the canon of national literature, especially children's literature (representation in normative, critical and historical overviews, scholarly publications, textbooks, anthologies and journals)
   7. Comparative analysis of his original and translated works in the context of world literature and South Slavic literatures
   8. Editorial and critical work of Grigor Vitez and his correspondence
   9. Analysis of the graphic, editorial and art design of his illustrated works and picture-books
   10. Pedagogical work of Grigor Vitez and the perception of his work in pedagogical practices
   11. Honors and awards Grigor Vitez received
2. Institutions, genres and discourses of children's literature
   1. Contemporary concepts of children and childhood in the 20th century: identity, otherness and difference
   2. Affirmation of scholarly and academic analysis of children's literature in Croatia and throughout the world
   3. Formation and evaluation of the genre system of children's literature
   4. Institutional and social aspects of the national and children's literature canon, specifically in relation to high and popular culture
   5. Autonomy and heteronomy of children's literature - its relation to other fields and practices: pedagogy, economcis and politics
   6. Political, aesthetical and educational normativity of children's literature
   7. TV, internet and multimedia - recontextualizaton of the writing, reading and publishing of children's literature in the media

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