On 5thMarch 2026, the first day of the conference, held in Bordeaux, will question the theme of encounter through the prism of the digitalization of the world, heightened by the pandemic, and which has popularised online communication strategies, and particularly social media. 

We wish to discuss intercultural changes linked to this technological evolution and to the evolving relation to distance. In a world where geographical distance may seem a thing of the past through a growing access to the internet, can the same be said of cultural distance? 

This first half of the conference aims to be a time for reflective, conceptual and scientific discussions as well as a pragmatic perspective on means and practical strategies. It will therefore be open toacademics as well as professionals in the field(s) and it could be articulated around both research papers and workshops or round tables. We welcome researchers at any stage of their career, along with professionals creating tools for the education sector, teachers, editors and publishers interested in these topics, as well as educational charity workers and activists. Proposals can fit into one of the two following approaches, but also offer alternative leads tied to the general theme of the conference. 

Topic 1: Encounter and Social Media in Literature  

The multiplicity of digital media – from websites to blogs and then to digital social networks – has redefined the relationship between author and reader. The author’s stance is now less top-down and is moving towards a horizontal and participative dynamics (Jenkins, 2006), thus fostering emerging literary online communities in which the readers’ views become more visible and legitimate (Paveau, 2017). Within this framework, social platforms play a key role: do hashtags such as #Bookstagram or #BookTok for instance massively enhance the visibility of literary works? Do recommendation, mediation and viral buzz, which are inherent characteristics of social media, allow us to better come to grips with otherness by giving us access to narratives from cultures away from our own, both geographically and chronologically? Does the wider circulation of texts enable a shift towards a better understanding and acceptance of the other, or does it replicate new forms of cultural normativity and homogenization? 

In this context, children’s literature is a particularly fertile terrain: the way in which it moves into these new digital spaces questions the representation and transmission of the notion of otherness to young readers (Serafini & Gee, 2017). Many picture books and novels deal with themes like exile, borders, and hospitality, and their digital circulation (through blogs, pedagogical YouTube channels or dedicated hashtags) increases their role of cultural mediators (Colomer, 2002). There are novels which feature or have featured in school curricula and/or which have run for literary prizes aimed towards young people, such as the prix Goncourt des lycéens and Gael Faye’s novel Petit Pays (2016). One may also think of young adult literature, with works such as A(ni)malby Cécile Alix (2022), Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin and Giovanni Rigano’s graphic novel Illegal (2017) or the poetry collection by Michael Rosen, OnThe Move (2020), as well as picture books such as Comme un million de papillons noirsby Laura Nsafou (2018). 

Topic 2: Pedagogy and Intercultural Digital Practices 

Springer (2008), following Pretceille (1999), posits that young people and adults now form multiple practice and learning communities on the web, through which plurilingual social identities are (co)constructed, and which enable new developing intercultural practices. At a pedagogical level, Porcher has highlighted as early as 2003 the necessity to speak of interculturality, in that a world is built through mutual enrichment and cultural intermingling. 

Since the birth of the internet, new forms of communication have developed and the current generations of pupils are continually directly in touch with the world. 

Within another framework, as identity can be understood as being built in a double process of identification and differentiation, we question the effect direct access to globalized information has on identity formation, and therefore on the construction of representations of the other. 

For this chapter, papers and presentations may focus on the following questions:  

Within Topic 1:  

Within Topic 2:  

Chapter II. Through the Looking-Glass 

On 6thMarch 2026, in Toulouse, the second day of the conference will focus on the notion of the other as a mirror in children’s literature. 

Identity construction is a social process which begins at birthand which is built upon throughout one’s lifetime. Marc claims that identity “mainly has a subjective meaning: it calls upon one’s sense of individuality (‘I am me’), of singularity (‘I am different from others and I have such and such characteristics’) and of a space and time continuity (‘I am still the same person’)” (2016, p. 28).Henchoz-Reymond reminds us that “social identity is articulated around two transactions: one transaction ‘internal’ to the individual and one ‘external’ transaction between the individual and the institutions with which they interact” (2011, p. 38). With regards to children in the school context, children’s literature is an old didactic tool, whose first recorded uses date back to the 17th century and to which official recommendations put forth a regular exposure (Devanne, 2006; Morin & Montésinos-Gelet, 2007). School curricula have thus given a key place to children’s literature right from the beginning of a pupil’s schooling and as early as 2002 in France. In 1999, Perrot had underlined the necessity to recognize literature as a “cultural product of complete expression […], a tool to fight against a child’s cultural handicaps” (page number). 

Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, who uses the mirror as a “metacognitive space that helps us look beyond representation”(López-Varela Azcárate, 2019, p. 79), teachers and educators use children’s literature as a mirror to the other, as a crossing place, a bridge towards the discovery of otherness and therefore of oneself, through the relation to the other. Is the “analogic fracture” which features in Alice’s adventures in Wonderland(López-Varela Azcárate, 2019) characteristic of children’s migration literature? Or, on the contrary, does this type of children’s literature strengthen analogical, even symmetrical, links? Picture books like Mirror by Jeannie Baker (2010) or the bilingual publications by editors such as Le Port a jauni highlight the parallels between self and other. It is within this tentative framework that the second day of the conference will question children’s literature’s impact on intercultural identity formation, particularly through two approaches: 

Topic 3: Pedagogies of Encounter 

Philippe Meirieunotes, in his preface to Horemans and Schmidt’s work (2013), that “teaching is an encounter if it enables sharing, if transmission is simultaneously emancipation, if the protagonists experience an adventure whose result, quite unpredictable, creates moments of humanity.” How can children’s literature be a vector for such a process? Mélanie Champoux (2024) puts forward a pedagogy of encounter at the heart of which is the notion of reciprocity, already mentioned by Meirieu. Cultural and artistic creation is central to this pedagogy, articulated in three steps: presentation/introduction, representation, and expression. Besides, Casey Ford points out the notion of interity, liminal meeting place that leads to confrontation as well as to affinities, both necessary in teaching (Ford 2020, p. 37). 

Moreover, Meirieu (2013) also remarks that “there is, in a true encounter, a subversion of all entrapments and categorizations.” One may thus wonder how to create these moments of encounter and of subversion that redefine the typologies of an educational system. 

Narrative 4 is a charity, notably founded by writers and artists in the United States of America, that advocates for story exchanges in order to set up dialogue and mutual understanding between communities, in order to find oneself in the story of another. We may then also examine collaborative or participative strategies to implement such activist initiatives around the issue(s) of otherness in children’s literature. 

Topic 4: Children’s Literature and Languages 

Beyond the matter of the translation of children’s literature works, we wish to focus on the manner in which children’s literature considers questions of plurilingualism, but also those tied to regional and/or minority languages. One may wonder how language, as a cultural tool, is used in children’s literature, with such picture books as Little Treasuresby Jacqueline Ogburn and Chris Raschka (2012) orLe livre qui parlaittoutes les languesby Alain Serres and Fred Sochard (2013). 

Through language and children’s literature, figures of the other are sketched that mirror a certain representation of the self. In Illegal by Colfer, Donkin and Rigano, Libyan Arabic, Yoruba and Italian are the languages of the other, who is in turn a stranger to be wary of and who provides much-needed help, thus leading readers to wonder where they place themselves within this network of “othernesses”. 

The other is sometimes also the self through a minority language, which represents a heritage at the heart of educational concerns. Editors like Le port a jauni or Onoko thus suggest an attempt to situate one’s own regional/minority culture alongside others on a map of the world that is redrawn through the prism of the self. Music at times comes as an intercultural bridge, to take up the title of Auger and Le Pichon-Vorstman’s book (2021), between diverse languages and geographical areas, as in the books published by Bannoù-heol (Kan ar Bed, Ur Veaj war gantro-drod’ar bed/ Un Voyage musical autour du monde, 2018). 

These works, as well as plurilingual writing workshops such as those set up by Isabelle Audras, Sidonie Brouwer, Anne Descamps, Elsa Valentin (La Page Educ’, s.d.), and as the language diamond (Auger, 2025), are as many tools and strategies to create encounters in a multilingual classroom, which becomes a place of hospitality and “babelity” (Paquot, 2019, p. 64). 

In this chapter, proposals may focus on the following questions:  

Within Topic3:  

Within Topic 4:  

***** 

We thus invite proposals on the following themes: