MyAV·¶

In March 2005, University College London held its third annual postgraduate conference on 'Coming of Age: Childhood and Adolescence in Literature and Film'. We're delighted to say that it was extremely well attended and just as interesting as the paper proposals suggested it would be.

Professor John Sutherland opened the conference with a lecture on 'The Construction of Adolescence in Late Victorian and Early Edwardian Fiction'. Setting the tone for the day by briefly surveying the representations of adolescence - or lack of them - in Victorian literature, he proposed some explanations for why nineteenth- and twentieth-century anxieties about this transitional age manifested themselves in the ways they did and do. Professor Sutherland (who says that he 'throws away his lecture notes as a kindness to posterity'), has kindly recreated part of his keynote address for us here and has additionally added a few thoughts on conference culture, so we hope you'll take a look at it.

Our paper presenters came from all over the world - from Britain, Germany, the United States, and United Arab Emirates - to tell us something about the construction of adolescence and childhood in the arts. Their papers covered such varied topics as childhood memoirs strained through the lens of postcolonialism, to youth culture representations in German film of the 50s, to the teenagers of comic book adaptations. They addressed an enormously varied body of work - from Dickens to Tsitsi Dangarembga, William Empson to W.G. Sebald, Saki to Jean Rhys, and Audre Lourde to Jeffrey Eugenides.

That cornucopia was followed by our concluding keynote address by Professor Sally Shuttleworth who gave us her thoughts on 'Child Development and Education in Victorian Fiction and Science'.

In our first issue of issue of Moveable Type, we've included a 'best of' collection of the papers presented at the conference, though it was difficult indeed to choose among them. Each year, in conjunction with the MyAV·¶ postgraduate conference, Moveable Type will do a similar conference proceedings issue.

It is our goal to show how varied and interesting the work of our peers is - here in Britain and around the world - and to provide a forum for postgraduate publication and discussion. Moveable Type will have a review section on recently published texts and other sorts of narratives, and we invite you to submit a review to us. The review section will tell you how to do that. It is our hope that with each issue, we will be able to present you with fascinating, well-researched articles on topics from varied genres, historical ages, and media. And, if you are a postgraduate, we invite you to consider submitting to Moveable Type.

In the meanwhile, enjoy our inaugural issue on the conference proceedings for MyAV·¶'s 2005 postgraduate conference on Childhood and Adolescence.

Elizabeth Rosen