Conference Proceedings - 1st International Conference on Children’s and Youth Literature in the Context of War and Displacement: Comparative Perspectives between the 20th and the 21st Centuries : 28-30 April 2025, Bergische Universität Wuppertal

These proceedings bring together some of the papers presented at the international and multilingual conference Children’s and Youth Literature in the Contexts of War and Displacement: Comparative Perspectives between the 20th and the 21st Centuries, held in hybrid format at Bergische Universität Wuppertal (Wuppertal, Germany) from 28 to 30 April 2025. Like the conference itself, the volume is multilingual and includes contributions in English, German, French, and Spanish. The conference was organised by Prof. Dr. Matei Chihaia and Dr. Silvia Núñez-Vivar, in collaboration with Peter Hammer Verlag and the Stadtbibliothek Wuppertal. As part of the programme, the award-winning children’s author Andrea Karimé gave a reading of her book King kommt noch for children at the Stadtbibliothek Wuppertal on 29 April. The contributions in this volume, authored by researchers from universities and institutions across different countries, offer multiple perspectives on the representation of war, displacement, and memory in children’s and young adult literature. They examine a wide range of literary traditions, historical periods, genres, and geopolitical contexts, exploring how literature for young readers engages with armed conflict, forced migration, cultural identity, trauma, resilience, and the construction and transmission of historical and cultural memory. Collectively, the chapters reflect the richness and diversity of current international scholarship in these areas.