Author: modernistudies

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CFPs

CFP: Virginia Woolf, Europe and Peace, June 2018

The 28th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf will take place on 21-24 June, 2018 at Woolf College, University of Kent, Canterbury.

About the conference

Marking 100 years since the end of the First World War and 80 years since the publication of Three Guineas, the 28th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf invites papers addressing the dual theme of Europe and Peace. From the ‘prying’, ‘insidious’ ‘fingers of the European War’ that Septimus Warren Smith would never be free of in Mrs Dalloway to Woolf’s call to ‘think peace into existence’ during the Blitz in ‘Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid’, questions of war and peace pervade her writings. They are also central to Woolf’s Bloomsbury circle, exemplified in John Maynard Keynes’The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Clive Bell’s Peace at Once and Leonard Woolf’s Quack, Quack! While seeking proposals that address the European contexts and cultures of modernism between wars, we also encourage exploration of how these writings can help us think through what it might mean to create peace in Europe today amid various political, humanitarian, economic and environmental crises.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Bloomsbury and pacifism
  • Literature of the First and Second World Wars
  • The Spanish Civil War
  • The Armistice and Paris Peace Conference
  • Three Guineas and its legacies
  • International/transnational/cosmopolitan Woolf
  • Bloomsbury and the European avant-garde
  • Feminism, queer studies and LGBT+ politics
  • Empire, race and ethnicity
  • Woolf and continental philosophy/theory
  • European translations of Woolf and Bloomsbury
  • Ecological/environmental/economic crises
  • Violence, trauma and fascism
  • Bloomsbury and classical antiquity
  • Woolf across visual art, film, dance and music
  • Travel writing and European journeys

How to submit

Abstracts of max. 200 words for single papers and 500 words for panels should be sent to vwoolf2018@gmail.com by 1 February, 2018.

Organising Committee: Derek Ryan, Ariane Mildenberg, Peter Adkins, Patricia Novillo-Corvalán

See our website for more information.

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Events

London Cantos Reading Group: October 11, Canto 86 (and more!)

The London Cantos Reading Group will reconvene on October the 11th at 18.00 in room 234, Senate House. We will read Canto 86. As ever, handouts and wine will be provided, and all are welcome.

Future meetings

The provisional schedule for the year is as follows:

  • 11/10/2017, Room 234 (Senate House), Canto 86
  • 08/11/2017, Room 243 (Senate House), Canto 35, Guy Stevenson, Goldsmiths’ College, University of London
  • 13/12/2017, Room 243 (Senate House), Canto 87
  • 10/01/2018, Room 234 (Senate House), Canto 22, Roxana Preda, University of Edinburgh
  • 14/02/2018, Room 246 (Senate House), Canto 88
  • 07/03/2018, Room 234 (Senate House), Cathay, Kent Su, University College London
  • 11/04/2018, Room 243 (Senate House), Canto 89, Helen Carr, Goldsmiths’ College, University of London
  • 09/05/2018, Room 246 (Senate House), Canto 10, Corin Depper, Kingston University
  • 13/06/2018, Room 234 (Senate House), Canto 90, Richard Parker, Birkbeck College, University of London
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CFPs

CFP: Modernist Objects, Paris Sorbonne, 13-16th June 2018

The Third International Conference of the French Society for Modernist Studies (SEM) will be held 13-16th June 2018, Paris Sorbonne University (VALE EA 4085)

About the conference

In a line which seems pre-emptively levelled at Aaron Jaffe’s The Way Things Go exactly one century later, Richard Aldington wrote in The Egoist that “one of the problems of modern art” is that “to drag smells of petrol, refrigerators, ocean greyhounds, President Wilson and analine [sic] dyes into a work of art will not compensate for lack of talent and technique.” This was December 1914. In the next few decades, psychoanalysis sought to make sense of the trivial, thinkers inquired into the status of the mass-produced object, and the rise of feminist and Labour movements posed the prosaic and essential question of material comforts. Modernist art and literature focused on the mundane, as emblematized by the everyday object, which now crystallized our changing relation to the world. The anachronistic frigidaire patent in Ezra Pound’s “Homage to Sextus Propertius,” ordinariness in William Carlos Williams’s famous “red wheelbarrow,” defamiliarization in Gertrude Stein’s “Roastbeef” are but a few possible variations on the object, its importance becoming central to the British neo-empiricists and the American Objectivists. Papers could examine the claim that the poetry and prose, the visual and performing arts, and the music of the Modernist era accounted for a shift in object relations with an intensity of observation in proportion with the changes which so profoundly affected the experience of living in industrial times. This SEM conference invites English-language contributions that cover the widest range of reflections on Modernist objects.

Keynote speakers

Rachel Bowlby (University College London); Douglas Mao (Johns Hopkins University).

How to submit

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

–       the object vs the thing

–       instruments and tools, technology, the machine

–       the object as mass-produced commodity; resistance to consumption

–       waste, junk, obsolescence, recycling

–       the material presence of the book or the magazine in everyday life

–       architecture, machines for living

–       the Utopian potential of the crafted object

–       the gift and the unalienable object

–       objects, social identities and intimacy

–       the object and/in space

–       the object in/of science

–       non-human agency

–       the object in the Anthropocene

 

Scientific Committee:

Hélène Aji, Rachel Bowlby, Vincent Bucher, Noëlle Cuny, Xavier Kalck, Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec, Douglas Mao, Scott McCracken, Caroline Pollentier, Naomi Toth

Please send proposals (300 words) and short biographies to Hélène Aji, Université Paris Nanterre (helene.aji@parisnanterre.fr), Noëlle Cuny, Université de Haute Alsace (noelle.cuny@gmail.com), and Xavier Kalck, Université Paris Sorbonne (xkalck@gmail.com) no later than November 15th, 2017. Notification of decision: December 15th, 2017.

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Call for submissions

Modernism/modernity: submit to a cluster on collaboration in modernist arts!

Contributions are sought for a prospective peer-reviewed cluster on the Modernism/modernity Print Plus platform (modernismmodernity.org) treating collaboration in modernist arts of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

About the cluster

Collaborative efforts pervade the arts and always have – to the degree that Howard Becker has called artistic production a ‘collective activity’ in his Art Worlds. In cinema studies, a lively debate on the meanings and possibilities of contribution, co-authorship, and collaboration has set the pace for rethinking twentieth-century creativity (Sondra Bacharach, Deborah Tollefsen, Paisley Livingston). But research into other twentieth-century arts frequently concentrates on particular modernist artefacts as the products of great men or women. This roundtable is intended to address this gap, and to propose, define, theorise, and criticise concepts and limits of collaboration in modernism.

We invite proposals examining and challenging collaboration as a concept in modernist cultures. While starting points can be case studies, we seek papers that contribute explicitly to a theoretical and methodological enrichment of modernist art forms. The focus on modernist collaborations raises additional urgent questions for our research, for example about the balance of power in collaborative activity, or the need to move beyond a traditionally monolithic, highbrow, or, in some areas still simply masculine, idea of modernism.

How to submit

Within this broad area, topics of interest include, but are not limited to

  • notions of ‘genius’ and ‘muse’,
  • Collaboration between intimate or romantic partners/spouses,
  • Relationships between mentors or supervisors and mentees or supervisees,
  • LGBT+ perspectives of collaboration,
  • Postcolonial aspects and issues,
  • Collaborative media,
  • Performance as a collaborative strategy.

The proposed cluster aims to address these, and other interrelated topics through a multi-disciplinary “roundtable.” Contributions will be conference-paper length (approximately 3,000 words) and peer-reviewed as a unit.

Please send your proposal of 250 words length to Annika Forkert, af15976@bristol.ac.uk, by Friday, 5 January 2018.

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CFPs Events NWIMS Past Events Postgraduate

CFP: New Work in Modernist Studies, 15th December 2017

BAMS_GREEN (1)About the conference

The seventh one-day Graduate Conference on New Work in Modernist Studies will take place on Friday 15th December at the University of Leeds (School of English), in conjunction with the Modernist Network Cymru (MONC), the London Modernism Seminar, the Scottish Network of Modernist Studies, the Northern Modernism Seminar, the Midlands Modernist Network and the British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS).

As in previous years, this conference will take the form of an interdisciplinary programme reflecting the full diversity of current graduate work in modernist studies; it encourages contributions both from those already involved in the existing networks and from students new to modernist students who are eager to share their work.

The day will close with a plenary lecture by Dr Hope Wolf, Lecturer in British Modernism, and Co-Director of the Centre for Modernist Studies at the University of Sussex. Previously she worked at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London. In 2017 she curated an exhibition on Sussex Modernism at Two Temple Place, London. She continues to work on this project, which explores the lives and works of diverse artists and writers including Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Eric Gill, David Jones, Edward James, Serge Chermayeff, Roland Penrose, Lee Miller, Edward Burra, and many more. She is also working on a further project and exhibition to be held at the 1930s modernist venue, the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, on the Surrealist artists Grace Pailthorpe and Reuben Mednikoff. Hope enjoys working with museums and galleries. She held a Collaborative Doctoral Award with the Imperial War Museum, and ran a course with curators at the Museum of London. She has compiled an anthology of First World War writing for Hutchinson/Vintage, and has published in Textual Practice, Life Writing and A Cambridge History of English Autobiography; publications in press include an article on David Jones, measurement and poetic calibration for a British Academy/Oxford University Press collection.

Proposals

Proposals are invited, from PhD research students registered at British universities, for short (10 minutes maximum) research position papers. Your proposal should be no longer than 250 words, and please include with it a short (50 words) biography. If you wish to apply for a contribution to your travel expenses you should also include an estimation of travel costs with your proposal (see below for details). Proposals should be sent to nwims2017@gmail.com to which any other enquiries about the conference should also be addressed.

Deadline:  5pm Saturday 4 November 2017. Acceptance decisions will be communicated within ten days.

Registration

Conference registration will open soon. Registration must be completed by 1 December at the latest. The conference fee is £25 (£15 for BAMS members) and includes lunch, coffee and a wine reception. The day will run 10am – 6pm.

Bursaries

Travel costs: It is anticipated that a subsidized contribution to all travel costs over £20 will be offered to all postgraduates who contribute to the conference. This means that we will aim to pay the amount that remains after the first £20 for which you will be responsible. If your travel expenses are less than £20 we will not be able to contribute. Please note that funds are limited and our ability to contribute depends on your co-operation in finding the cheapest fares. To apply for a travel bursary please include a separate indication of your estimated travel costs with your proposal. This will not be taken into account when assessing your proposal.

Conference Organizers

Ruth Clemens and Anne Reus, Leeds Trinity University, and Jivitesh Vashisht, University of Leeds

 

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Uncategorized

English Postgraduate Essay Prize

The editors of English: the Journal of the English Association are pleased to initiate in 2017 the opening of an annual essay competition exclusive to postgraduates. The competition provides an ideal opportunity for students to enhance their CV through the publication of their work in an excellent high-profile journal that caters to a very wide range of genres, periods, and critical approaches.

We are looking for essays that provide new perspectives on canonical and/or non-canonical Anglophone literatures, and therefore welcome submissions that focus on single authors/texts or a range, and which develop original arguments beyond simple close reading, while engaging with recent scholarship in relevant fields. The competition is open to any postgraduate student who is registered on a doctoral programme at any institution anywhere in the world, by, or within three months of, the submission deadline: September 30th 2017 (Winner announced December 2017).

All essays are subject to an anonymous peer review by a panel of established experts in literary studies and all will be considered for publication in English: the Journal of the English Association. The award of £250 and publication in the journal will be made to the winner. There will also be a runner up prize of £100. Each will receive a year’s subscription to English.

Submissions
Submissions should be made through the journal’s submission portal: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/english

Please include EPEP in the submission title to indicate it is to be considered for the prize.

Submissions should meet the journal’s criteria for publication outlined on the journal webpages: https://academic.oup.com/english/pages/General_Instructions

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Uncategorized

Call for essays on “Embodiment” at the Journal of Modern Literature

The Journal of Modern Literature invites submissions for a special cluster on “Embodiment in 20th and 21st-century literature and literary culture”

Topics addressed may include disability and diverse forms of corporeality and mindedness; pain and pleasure; sensory experience and mentation; new materialist approaches to embodiment; bodies and literary form.

How to submit

Submissions should conform to MLA 8th edition style for documentation and manuscript formatting, and should include a 100-150 word abstract and 3-5 keywords. Submissions must be under 9,000 words for the entire submission package, including the abstract, notes and works cited. No simultaneous submissions or previously published material.

Deadline February 1, 2018. Submit manuscripts as a Word or RTF attachment to jml.editorial@gmail.com. We accept only electronic submissions.

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Uncategorized

The Call for Papers is now live for Decorating Dissidence: Modernism, Feminism & the Arts, Nov 2017

‘FOR ME, THERE IS NO GAP BETWEEN MY PAINTING AND MY SO-CALLED ‘DECORATIVE’ WORK. I NEVER CONSIDERED THE ‘MINOR ARTS’ TO BE ARTISTICALLY FRUSTRATING; ON THE CONTRARY, IT WAS AN EXTENSION OF MY ART.’
    SONIA DELAUNAY
The call for papers is now open for “Decorating Dissidence”, to be held at Queen Mary, University of London from 3-4 November, 2017.

About the conference

Decorating Dissidence takes an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to the work of female artists, designers, and writers to reassess the place of domestic art, craft, and the decorative in modernism.

Building on recent scholarship and exhibitions that have highlighted the work of women such as Sonia Delaunay, Eileen Grey, Hannah Höch, and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, this conference offers new approaches to marginalized female modernists and their intermedia art practice.

It invites discussion of the ways that modernist experimentation with domestic arts and the decorative influence contemporary art; it is interested in exploring the political, aesthetic, conceptual and material qualities of craft and the decorative in modernism’s longue durée. We are reminded of: the negative space in Kara Walker’s paper cuttings, the embroidered experience of Agnes Richter’s jacket, narrative threads woven by Faith Ringgold and set designs by Es Devlin…

Bringing together different perspectives on the intersections between modernist female craft, domestic arts, visual arts, and literature, this conference will have a broad impact on contemporary modernist studies. As the conference seeks to redefine the spatial and temporal boundaries of modernism, we particularly encourage papers that address non-European modernists and intersectional speakers in relation to dissident craft-making from across the C20th and C21st.

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

 

  • Fashioning & refashioning the self
  • Weaving text(iles)
  • Craft as political protest
  • Women of the Bauhaus
  • Craft as self-care
  • The Interwar Period / ‘Domestic Modernism’
  • Functional decoration
  • Costuming
  • Modernist makers and modernist objects
  • Little Magazines / DIY publishing / Zine-making
  • Decorative texts
  • Queer crafting
  • Recrafting / redrafting
  • Craft collaborations
  • Domestic interiors / interior design
  • Socialism & craft
  • Representations of craft in novels
  • Intertextual Relationships

 

How to submit

 

CfP closes September 8th 2017. Individual papers should be 20 minutes in length. Please submit abstracts of 300-500 words and a short bio to: decoratingdissidence@gmail.com 

Find more information at: www.decoratingdissidence.wordpress.com 

And get the latest updated on twitter: @decomodfem 
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CFPs Postgraduate

The British Association for Modernist Studies Essay Prize 2017

The British Association for Modernist Studies invites submissions for its annual essay prize for early career scholars. The winning essay will be published in Modernist Cultures, and the winner will also receive £250 of books.

 

The BAMS Essay Prize is open to any member of the British Association for Modernist Studies who is studying for a doctoral degree, or is within five years of receiving their doctoral award. You can join BAMS by following the link on our membership pages: https://bams.ac.uk/membership

 

Essays are to be 7-9,000 words, inclusive of footnotes and references.

 

The closing date for entries is 31 October 2017. The winner will be announced by 31 January 2018.

 

Essays can be on any subject in modernist studies (including anthropology, art history, cultural studies, ethnography, film studies, history, literature, musicology, philosophy, sociology, urban studies, and visual culture). Please see the editorial statement of Modernist Cultures for further information: http://www.euppublishing.com/journal/mod.

 

In the event that, in the judges’ opinion, the material submitted is not of a suitable standard for publication, no prize will be awarded.

 

Instructions to Entrants

  • Entries must be submitted electronically in Word or rtf format to modernistcultures@gmail.com and conform  to Chicago style.
  • Entrants should include a title page detailing their name, affiliation, e-mail address, and their doctoral status/ date of award; they should also make clear that the essay is a submission for the BAMS Essay Prize.
  • It is the responsibility of the entrant to secure permission for the reproduction of illustrations and quotation from copyrighted material.
  • Essays must not be under consideration elsewhere.
  • Enquiries about the prize may be directed to Suzanne Hobson, Chair of the British Association for Modernist Studies, at s.hobson@qmul.ac.uk
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Postgraduate Registration open

“Under the Volcano, 70 Years On”: The registration is now open for the Malcolm Lowry conference

The registration is now open for Under the Volcano, 70 Years On, an international conference to be held at Liverpool John Moores University and Bluecoat, Liverpool from the 28-29 of July, 2017. 

About the conference

2017 marks the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Malcolm Lowry’s great modernist novel Under the Volcano, and the sixtieth anniversary of Lowry’s death. This two-day international conference will explore the legacy of Lowry’s work, his literary status today and his ongoing role as source of inspiration to creative writers and artists across various disciplines.

The conference appropriately takes place in Liverpool, across the Mersey from Lowry’s birthplace on the Wirral. Since 2009, Bluecoat (Liverpool’s contemporary arts centre) has worked with the Firminists, an informal collective of Lowry enthusiasts and academics, to stage an annual ‘Lowry Lounge’ to celebrate the writer in the place of his birth. This programme has included guided walks, film screenings, talks and discussions, archival displays, music and other creative responses to Lowry, and book launches of the University of Ottawa Press critical editions of Swinging the Maelstrom (2013), In Ballast to the White Sea (2014) and the 1940 Under the Volcano (2015). The 2017 Lowry Lounge will take place on Saturday 29 July at Bluecoat and conference delegates will have the opportunity to participate in the programme.

Find out more and register here.

Regular tickets are £40, with students and unwaged attendees paying £10.

Confirmed speakers

Sherrill Grace (Professor Emerita, University of British Columbia); Michael Schmidt OBE FRSL; Paul Tiessen (Professor Emeritus, Wilfred Laurier University); Vik Doyen (Professor Emeritus, KU Leuven); Miguel Mota (University of British Columbia); Chris Ackerley (Professor Emeritus, University of Otago); David Large (University of Otago); Patrick A. McCarthy (University of Miami)

 

Further information

Organising committee

Helen Tookey (Liverpool John Moores University)

Bryan Biggs (Artistic Director, Bluecoat)

Robert Sheppard (Edge Hill University)

Ailsa Cox (Edge Hill University)

Mark Goodall (University of Bradford)

Colin Dilnot (Merseyside-based artist and researcher)

Liverpool is on the north-west coast of England and has airport connections via Liverpool John Lennon Airport (20 min from city centre) or Manchester Airport (30 miles) as well as excellent road and rail links (2 hours 15 min from London by train). A former European Capital of Culture, the city has a superb cultural offer of galleries, museums, theatres and other attractions, excellent restaurants, affordable hotels and a vibrant nightlife. It is also within easy reach of coastal walks, the Wirral peninsula and north Wales.