Child Labor in Literature and Film (PAMLA)
San Francisco, CA
Organization: PAMLA
Event: PAMLA
The paperboy and the babysitter, the shepherd lad, the mudlark, the tweeny maid, the little match girl, the underage factory worker, the teenager working fast food or a mall job, the enslaved child, the child bride, the minor sex worker, and the eternally youthful robot-child all have their place in the economy of cultural representation.
Whether these texts sell the image of child labor as scrappy and ennobled or tragic and exploited, whether they package it as a nostalgic symbol of bucolic harmony or a chilling measure of a failed society, the working minor is a particular product in cultural texts. Papers from a wide variety of critical frameworks welcome.
In a time when child labor laws are being relaxed in the United States, a critical examination of underage work and the nostalgic whitewashing it sometimes receives is worth revisiting.
Proposals should engage critically with specific texts and offer analysis focused on the justifications given by those who employ children and/or the effects of that labor on children, society, the economy, and/or the idea of childhood as a protected state.
Kate Watt
