EVENTFULNESS AS A FACTOR OF INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE (IV INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE-FORUM “CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AS AN EVENT”)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the 4th international forum conference “Children’s Literature as a Phenomenon” that took place in Moscow. The authors, however, took a step away from the traditionally informational review of the conference’s scientific and methodologic tracks, and, based on the material of the presentations and on the lectures and panel discussions that were all carried out during the conference, they provide their answer for the following question: what are the conditions under which certain texts, that are addressed to children/teenagers, are “transforming” into a single field of children’s literature. The description of what was taking place at the conference becomes a fixation of how all involved subjects of various “event” reader communications and practices (authors, publishers, researchers, teachers, and librarians) are united by them. It is also fixating the process of how the reader content created by those subjects is changing both the structure and constitution of children’s literature. The authors while being “inside of the situation” are essentially fixating on what exactly is becoming a factor of institutionalization of children’s literature under modern socio-cultural conditions.

Keywords: children’s literature, reading contexts, reader communications, institutionality