Phenomena and Practices Related to Children’s and Youth Contemporary Literary Culture /3^rd edition of the conference Contemporary Literary Culture

We are excited to invite you to participate in the third Contemporary Literary Culture academic conference. This year its main focus will be phenomena and practices related to children’s and young people’s literary culture. Contemporary literary culture—understood as a dynamic system of relationships and communication practices between creators, texts, institutions, and readers¹—in the case of young audiences takes on particularly complex and multidimensional forms. This is why we are especially interested in discussing the following questions: 1. what, when, and how do young people read? 2. what, when, and how do they write/create? We will also be interested in differences in the engagement with literature in young people/children today compared to previous generations, as well as the relationships between literary texts and other texts of culture in the young audience's everyday experience. A significant role in shaping young readers' preferences is played by school with its reading lists (do school reading practices encourage/discourage reading?). Another problem area concerns the influence of the internet on youth/children's literary culture - the role played by new technologies, algorithms, digital platforms, social media, and influencers. Can children's and adolescents' reading practices be described in terms of communality, cooperation, and participation—and if so, what type of communities are we dealing with?

We welcome proposals for presentations taking up the issues listed below (and others related to them) within the following research areas:

• literature as a tool for forming (or contesting) identities, values, social and political stances;

• the canon and youth literary culture - tensions, negotiations, alternatives;

• communality and participation in literary culture: booktubing, bookstagram, fanfiction, reading platforms;

• digital forms of storytelling and reception (audiobooks, apps, interactive books, narrative games);

• literary and media education: new methods of working with texts, e.g. in schools and libraries;

• young authors and their publication paths (self-publishing, online platforms, competitions);

• artificial intelligence and digital tools in creative and educational processes;

• literary culture in the school environment – ​​between coercion and grassroots involvement;

• ideological, aesthetic, and worldview-related tensions surrounding children's and youth literature;

• literature/literary culture of children and young people versus literature/literary culture of young adults.

Just like last year, the conference will include a debate on contemporary literary culture and the main topics of the conference, as well as meetings with authors of publications.

The publication of post-conference texts is planned in scholarly journal.

The conference will be held on site (although online participation is also an option). We will be delighted if you accept our invitation to visit our beautiful city in person. The conference fee is 250 pln (60 euro for on-site participation), 150 zł (35 euro for online participation), to be made after receiving confirmation of acceptance. The languages of the conference are Polish and English.

Please submit your proposal (presentation topic and abstract of up to 1000 characters) by February 23, 2026, to: kult_liter@ubb.edu.pl. Current practical information and the conference program will be available at https://whs.ubb.edu.pl/projekty/wspolczesna-kultura-literacka.

We are looking forward to meeting you on the campus of the University of Bielsko-Biała, situated at the foot of the Silesian Beskids – and from there, it's just a short walk to the mountains...