The Mind of the Child Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

This call for papers for a session at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting caught my eye:

“The Mind of the Child in the Eighteenth Century”

This panel hopes to explore intersections between two major emerging fields of eighteenth-century studies: children’s literature and cognitive literary studies.

Papers might address the extent to which pedagogical theorists considered the minds of children; if and how children’s texts envision the material brain; how the emerging field of child psychology shaped literary and cultural notions of childhood; scientific experiments on children; the place of the child’s mind in eighteenth-century poetry; children and the Royal Society; or a range of other topics. Papers with an interdisciplinary focus are especially encouraged.

Patrick C. Fleming of the University of Virginia is organizing the session. The submission deadline is 15 September, and the conference will be in San Antonio, Texas, on 22-25 March 2012.