Oz Convention in Kansas, 2009

The Program in Children’s Literature at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, will host the International Wizard of Oz Club’s Annual Convention on 2-4 October 2009.

The convention will run conjunction with OZtoberFest in near-by Wamego, Kansas. The thumbnail photo here shows the annual Yellow Brick Road bicycle ride through Pottawatomie County, one of the OZtoberFest events. Other sponsoring organizations include the Children’s and Adolescent Literature Community (ChALC) and Hale Library at Kansas State University.

The event's featured speaker will be Prof. Mark West of University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who compiled Before Oz: Juvenile Fantasy Stories from Nineteenth-Century America.

Eventually, this webpage will contain information about the convention--including events, registration, housing, and transportation.

For now, the program committee has issued a call for submissions for fifteen-minute presentations on “Recreating Oz.” Possible topics include:

• Adapting Oz for stage and screen
• Marketing and commemorating the Oz books
• Assembling the histories of Oz creators
• Teaching Oz
• Archiving Oz
• Re-reading the Oz books and earlier critical interpretations
• Re-imagining the world of Oz for contemporary audiences (Maguire’s Wicked, Stauffacher’s Harry Sue, the mini-series Tin Man, comics and graphic novels)

Send abstracts of 300-500 words as attachments to conference organizers by 20 April 2009.