The conference will link the international, critical approaches of individual researchers to address the complex questions of representation strategies and intersectional identity constructions in Blyton's work, which also encompass cultural translation processes and the constructions of alterity. At the same time, the establishment of the "Blyton Brand" in the action and production system of literature will be investigated, as Enid Blyton is one of the most popular authors of children's and young adult literature. Her work is present in numerous translations, adaptations, and sequels in different languages worldwide.

Registration for the conference is now open:

To register for the conference, please click here.

 

Conference Venue

Universität Potsdam
Neues Palais
Haus 8
Audimax, Room 0.64 + Room 0.59

Keynote speakers

  • Emer O'Sullivan (Leuphana University Lüneburg) 
  • Kimberley Reynolds (Professor Emerita Newcastle University)
  • Young Researcher Keynote: Siobhán Morrissey (University of Galway)  

Conference programme

25.09.2024

  • 13:00 Arrival, Registration, and Coffee
  • 13:30 Conference Welcome
  • 14:00 Keynote: Prof. Dr. Emer O’Sullivan: Blyton’s Island(s)
  • 15:00 Panel I: Writing Englishness in a Global Context
    • Prof. Dr. Rose-May Pham Dinh: The Englishness of Blyton’s school stories: a long-lasting puzzle for French readers?
    • Sofia Skeva: “Only toys are allowed to stay in Toy Village”: Thinking the Nation and (Dis)Locating Postwar Englishness in Enid Blyton’s Noddy Goes to Toyland (1949)
  • 16:30 Coffee Break
  • 16:45 Panel II: Ideology and Postcolonial Desire in Blyton
    • Prof. Dr. Rainer Emig: Ideological Desire in Enid Blyton
    • Dr. Deepti Ruth Azaria: Writing the caravan adventure: Examining traveller culture and holiday experience in the carnivalesque spaces of Blyton’s fiction
  • 18:15 Break
  • 19:00 Conference Dinner 

26.09.2024

  • 09:00 Keynote: Prof. Dr. Kimberley Reynolds: "The house was crazy with the sound of Blyton": managing crises with Blyton’s Adventure books
  • 10:00 Coffee Break
  • 10:15 Panel III: Comparative Readings of Blyton: From England to Nigeria and India
    • Judith Simon: Childhoodnature in Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree Series and Ben Okri’s Every Leaf a Hallelujah
    • Abiral Kumar: Imported Mysteries and Abandoned Childhood: Reading Enid Blyton and Ruskin Bond in postcolonial children’s fiction.  
  • 11:45 Coffee Break
  • 12:00 Panel IV: Intersectional Approaches to Blyton's Oeuvre
    • Dr. Hadassah Stichnothe: Clothing, Class, and the Body in Enid Blyton's Fiction
    • Dr. Athira Mohan: Food and the Female: A Reading of Selected Blytonian Narratives
  • 13:30 Lunch Break
  • 14:30 Panel V: Blyton2: The Twins at St.' Clares series and its reception
    • Stefanie Holanik: The role of sports in Enid Blyton’s St. Clare’s series: The disciplined body, physical desires, and power dynamics
    • Benita Berthman: The Twins at Lindenhof? Radio Plays as a Transnational and Transmedial Adaptation of Enid Blyton
  • 16:00 Panel VI: Blyton as a Brand? Of Adaptations and Author Representation
    • Prof. Dr. Lena Hoffmann: Famous, infamous, ignored: Enid Blyton as an invisible star author 
    • Dr. Stefanie Jakobi: Blyton is Blobel is Caspari – The Re-Writes and Sequels and their influence on the Blyton brand
  • 17:30 Student Exhibition 
  • 18:30 Break
  • 19:30 An Enid Blyton Evening 
    • Chair: Dr. Aileen Behrendt
      • Guest Lecturer: Jonathan Köhler Enid Blyton in the Theatre
      • Guest Speech by Mithu Sanyal

27.09.2024

  • 10:00 Young Researcher Keynote: Dr. Siobhán Morrissey: The Failure of a Colour-Blind Approach to Remove the Racism from Enid Blyton’s Fiction
  • 10:45 Panel VII: Revisiting the Legacy of Enid Blyton in Germany, Russia, and Poland: Gender, Class, and Crime in a New World
    • Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Hélène Mélat  
      • Prof. Dr. Marina Balina: Reading Early Russian Children's Detectives through Enid Blyton's Literary Matrix
      • Prof. Dr. Larissa Rudova: The Rise of the Detective Genre in Post-Soviet Children’s Literature: Enid Blyton and Middle-Class Values
  • 11:15 Coffee Break
  • 11:30
      • Dr. Ada Bieber: Ambivalent Girlhood in German Film Adaptations of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and St. Clare’s
      • Dr. Mateusz Świetlicki: Enid Blyton and the Changing Polish Canon of Children’s Literature
  • 13:00 Conference Closing and Famous Five Picknick 
  • 14:00 Departure

Organisation team

Dr Aileen Behrendt is a researcher and lecturer of British Literary and Cultural Studies and a coordinator of the DGF research training group ‘minor cosmopolitanisms’ at the University of Potsdam. She is currently working on a book about the politics of kindness in TV comedies.
 
Dr Stefanie Jakobi is a lecturer at the Department for Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University of Bremen. Her publications and research focus on transmedia phenomena in children's and youth media, gender, experiences of alterity, and intersectional issues.
 
Dr. Hadassah Stichnothe is a researcher and lecturer on children's and YA literature currently teaching at the University of Bremen. Her research focuses on adolescence and gender constructions as well as on Jewish children's literature and translatory aspects of children's literature.