Author: modernistudies

Modernist Paratexts (CFP for MSA 18, 17-20 November 2016, in Pasadena, California)

Post author By modernistudies
Post date March 8, 2016

In Seuils (1987), Gérard Genette posed a rhetorical question about a canonical modernist text to highlight the functional importance of the then largely ignored paratext: “reduced to its text alone and without the help of any instructions for use, how would we read James Joyce’s Ulysses if it were not called Ulysses?” Genette undertook a synchronic structuralist account of the paratext, the body of productions, such as the title, author’s name, preface, epigraph, footnote, illustration, or dedicatory letter, that constitutes the zone of transition and transaction surrounding a text and presenting it as a text.

This proposed panel, Modernist Paratexts, seeks papers working from the diachronic angle: What was happening to the paratext in the modernist period? Which paratextual forms proliferated, which declined, and why? To what uses was this “privileged site of a pragmatics and a strategy” put? In what ways was the paratext used by authors and their agents “in the service, well or badly understood or accomplished, of a better reception of the text and a more pertinent reading” of it? While Genette’s work productively frames this panel’s inquiries, all theoretical and critical approaches to the paratext are welcome. In keeping with the conference theme “Culture Industries,” papers might consider the new modes of cultural production and consumption announced or invited by the paratext in the modernist period.

Potential paper topics include but are not limited to:
· The fate and/or uses of one or more paratextual forms, such as the preface, epigraph, footnote, illustration, and dedicatory letter; authorial or non-authorial paratexts; original, subsequent, or belated paratexts
· Paratexts mediating different reading publics
· The paratext and new communication or media technologies
· The paratext in periodicals or little magazines
· The paratext and small printing presses
· The paratext in other art forms or media
Please send an abstract of 350-500 words and a brief bio-bibliographical statement by March 15 to Sarah Copland (coplands2@macewan.ca).

Postgraduate Studentships

Funded PhD opportunity: Modernist Cultures and Theories of Affect and Intimacy

Post author By modernistudies
Post date March 8, 2016

PhD studentship 2016 competition

Department of Humanities

Northumbria University

Newcastle upon Tyne

Modernist Cultures and Theories of Affect and Intimacy

The modernist studies research group is part of the Institute of the Humanities and has played an important role in extending scholarship on modern literary and material culture. We invite proposals on any relevant area but are particularly interested in projects that consider the relation between modernist culture and theories of intimacy, affect and the emotions. This may involve an examination of canonical writing by figures such as Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot or James Joyce or an exploration of less well-known modernists such as Djuna Barnes, Lorine Neidecker, Gertrude Stein and Hart Crane. Likewise, we welcome proposals that seek to explore the material cultures of modernism. More specifically, we are interested in projects that consider the relation between modern periodical culture and what has been described as the ‘intimate public sphere’.

The University of Northumbria has a large and lively postgraduate community in the Humanities. Our PhD students benefit from generous research space and resources in the recently expanded Glenamara Centre as well as the new Institute of the Humanities. PhD students develop a portfolio of skills and competencies through the Humanities Training Programme, the Teaching Shadowing Scheme, the annual PhD conference and the Graduate School’s Professional Development and Research Training Programme. In addition,students are provided with a research allowance for conference attendance and travel as well as funding to support the organisation and development of research networks, conferences and seminar series.

English, the international journal of literary studies from the English Association is edited by a team from within Northumbria University, and successful candidates will have the opportunity to contribute to all aspects of the editing process. The journal sits within the new Institute of the Humanities, an initiative that brings together a range of disciplines to foster collaboration, innovation and cross-fertilisation.

Principal Supervisor

Dr Julie Taylor (https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/t/dr-julie-taylor/)

Contact:

Dr Victoria Bazin (victoria.Bazin@northumbria.ac.uk)

Funding Notes

The studentship includes a full stipend, paid for three years at RCUK rates (in 2016/17 this is £14,296 pa) and fees (Home/EU £4,350 / International £13,000).

Eligibility and How to Apply

Please note eligibility requirement:

Undergraduate qualification of at least 2:1 (or equivalent GPA from non-UK universities [preference for 1st class honours]); or a Masters with distinction.
Appropriate IELTS score for international applicants whose first language is not English.

For further details of how to apply, entry requirements and the application form, see

https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research-degrees/how-to-apply/

‘The Auden Generation and After’: Conference at Sheffield Hallam University, June 17, 2016

Post author By modernistudies
Post date March 8, 2016

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

2016 marks 40 years since the publication of Samuel Hynes’s seminal account of the literature of the thirties: The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s. This one-day conference takes the 40th anniversary of its publication as occasion to consider the shifts which have taken place in our attitudes towards the decade’s writings and view of ‘the thirties’ as a literary-historical period. Among the questions the conference aims to explore are:

How far do existing accounts reflect the diversity of the period’s writing?

In what ways are the reputations of such major figures as Auden, MacNeice, Isherwood or Orwell enhanced or compromised by their continued associations with the period?
Why do other important twentieth-century figures (such as Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Graham Greene and Rebecca West, among others) remain under-represented within accounts of the period’s writing?

To what extent is 30s literature still marginalized within accounts of twentieth-century literary history?
How are 30s literatures positioned against the broader literary tradition?

Our keynote speakers are Professor Michael O’Neill (Durham University) and Professor Jan Montefiore (University of Kent).

The conference fee is £45.00 (£25.00 for students/unwaged delegates). For further information and registration details please contact Dr Neil Miles (n.miles@shu.ac.uk)

Past Events PG Training Day Postgraduate

BAMS Postgraduate Training Day 2016

Post author By modernistudies
Post date March 7, 2016

Thank you for registering for the British Association for Modernist Studies Postgraduate Training Day in Oxford this Friday. We’re very much looking forward to seeing you.

Here are the documents you’ll need to download for the day, including four articles that you’ll want to read in advance in preparation for our first session, ‘Modernism Across the Disciplines’. We’ll be discussing different constructions of modernism in the various academic disciplines, focusing in particular on the distinctions between English, Modern Languages and Art History. Please come armed with thoughts on the four articles!

BAMS research training day programme

University buildings map

Articles:

As you’ll see from the programme, the sessions begin at 11:30, but we’ll be ready for you with coffee and tea from 11. The day’s events will take place in the Senior Common Room (SCR) of the Faculty of English. A map of Oxford’s buildings is available to download with the other documents, and further information is here:

http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/contact-us/directions-map.html

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at bamsresearchskills@gmail.com

With best wishes

Rebecca Beasley and Jamie Callison

for the BAMS Executive Committee

Registration open

Announcement 2nd Conference of the Samuel Beckett Society (Beckett and Modernism) at the University of Antwerp (27-30 April 2016)

Post author By modernistudies
Post date February 27, 2016

The Samuel Beckett Society is pleased to announce that registration is open for their second international conference entitled ‘Beckett and Modernism’. The event will take place at the University of Antwep from 27-30 April 2016. Papers will explore such diverse topics as language, humour, the novel form, performativity and space, dance, music, art, politics, technology, the literary market, the mind, the body, philosophy, ethics, the literary tradition, affect, psychology and pedagogy. In addition to fifty speakers, arranged in plenary and parallel sessions, there will be keynotes by James Knowlson (University of Reading), John Pilling (University of Reading) and Jean-Michel Rabaté (University of Pennsylvania), as well as a screening of Beckett’s ‘Film’ and Ross Lipman’s documentary ‘Notfilm’, the launch of Samuel Beckett’s library in the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (www.beckettarchive.org), and the presentation of the Journal of Beckett Studies special issue on ‘Beckett and the Middle Ages’ marking the 40th anniversary of the journal. For the full programme and further news please refer to the conference website: http://uahost.uantwerpen.be/BeckettAndModernism/

Uncategorized

MSA 18: Deadline extended for seminar and workshop proposals

Post author By modernistudies
Post date February 27, 2016

The seminars and workshops deadline for MSA Pasadena has been extended to next Friday, March 4, 2016. We welcome your seminar and workshop proposals and encourage you to look ahead to the April 15 deadline for panels and roundtables. Please share this call for papers with colleagues who may not already be members of the MSA–we are eager to make Pasadena our most inclusive and interdisciplinary conference to date, as befits its California location! Find the cfp at the link and please direct any questions to MSAPasadena@gmail.com

https://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa18/cfp/CFP.html

CFPs

Modernism’s Planets (CFP for MSA18, 17-20 November 2016)

Post author By modernistudies
Post date February 27, 2016

Planets colliding: Spivak, Friedman, Dimock. The ‘planet’, as metaphor, object, method, problem, and more, has made multiple entries into the discipline of literary studies, all of which bear on the study of modernism, broadly conceived. Ecocritical, postcolonial, and comparative methods have been at the forefront of the planetary conversation, but, as the word ‘planet’ suggests, there is more than enough room for more planetary interventions.

This panel will convene scholars of modernism with planetary interests, broadly conceived, and welcomes papers that touch on any aspect of the planetary turn in literary studies. I welcome all submissions, but particularly those dealing with astronomy and planetary scale, the history of astronomical research, and those that bring together the two terms of the theme of the conference—culture and industry (i.e. industrial manufacture of astronomical telescopes, global flows of manufactured goods, cultures of science and astronomy and more). Papers that address the material history of planetary formations, or the disciplinary implications of planetary thinking for modernism are also welcome.

Please send a 250-word proposal, along with a brief bio, by March 15, 2016, to Cóilín Parsons (coilin.parsons@georgetown.edu).

CFPs

Modernist Paratexts (MSA 18)

Post author By modernistudies
Post date February 27, 2016

Modernist Paratexts (CFP for MSA 18, 17-20 November 2016, in Pasadena, California)

Potential paper topics include but are not limited to:
–The fate and/or uses of one or more paratextual forms, such as the preface, epigraph, footnote, illustration, and dedicatory letter; authorial or non-authorial paratexts; original, subsequent, or belated parataxis
–Paratexts mediating different reading publics
–The paratext and new communication or media technologies
–The paratext in periodicals or little magazines
–The paratext and small printing presses
–The paratext in other art forms or media
Please send an abstract of 350-500 words and a brief bio-bibliographical statement by March 15 to Sarah Copland (coplands2@macewan.ca).

CFPs

B*tch Modernism: The Bette Davis Roundtable (MSA 18)

Post author By modernistudies
Post date February 27, 2016

CFP for MSA 18 (November 17-20, Pasadena, CA)

B*tch Modernism: The Bette Davis Roundtable

This roundtable takes advantage of MSA 18’s Southern California location and its theme of Culture Industries to explore this iconic film star as a modernist artist. We are looking for contributors to join us in talking about all things Davis, from the industries that created her, to the actress herself as an industry, one that remains emblematic of both the historical moment and the aesthetic practices we describe as modernist. What would it mean to read Bette Davis as modernist? How does Davis operate as a node that allows us to think about the reach of mass culture in shaping (and historicizing) early twentieth century conceptions of femininity, sexuality, embodiment, and agency?

While there is a significant body of work on Davis in film and media studies, she has only made a few appearances in literary and cultural studies, primarily in feminist and queer discussions of this period, as in Lauren Berlant and Teresa de Lauretis’s readings of Now, Voyager. But Davis continues to be significant for her centrality in the film industry during Hollywood’s Golden Age, not only as an actress unafraid to play unlikeable women, but also as a woman who regularly wrested directorial and production power away from men.

Possible topics include

Smoking (as an industry/as an aesthetic/as a politic)

Theatricality/Realism

Psychoanalysis

Modern femininity

Bitchiness

Davis and/as drag

Davis and literary/theatrical adaptations (Wharton, von Arnim, Maugham, Strachey, Prouty, Ferber, Hellman, du Maurier, etc.)

Davis on Broadway (Ibsen, Williams, Sandburg)

The artist vs. the contract system

Gay iconicity

Melodrama and the woman’s film

Material artifacts—publicity materials, costumes

Immaterial artifacts: the persistence of Davis in the internet age

Davis’s make up artists/costume designers (Edith Head, Orry-Kelly, Perc Westmore, etc.)

Davis’s directors (William Wyler, King Vidor, Irving Rapper, Joseph Mankiewicz, etc.)

Send proposals of approximately 150 words to Melissa Bradshaw (mbradshaw@luc.edu) and Allan Pero (apero@uwo.ca) by March 25, 2016.

Job opportunities

Tenure-track vacancy in Anglophone Literature; deadline 30 March 2016

Post author By modernistudies
Post date February 27, 2016

Professor of English and Anglophone Literatures (tenure-track)

The Faculty of Arts & Philosophy of Ghent University (Belgium) announces a vacancy for a full-time professorial post in the rank of assistant professor (tenure track), starting October 1, 2016 at the earliest. The appointment is in the field of Anglophone literature or Italian literature. The position is the equivalent of Lecturer in the UK system and Assistant Professor in the US system and has a focus on academic research. The successful candidate will play a role in coordinating research collaborations across the language groups and research periods within the department and in establishing bridges between the department and other research units both at the University and beyond. Collaborations could include the development of new course offerings or programmes of study or larger research projects.

Candidates should have earned their PhD at least two years prior to the date of appointment (1 October 2016). They should be developing a strong publication profile in their field and should be able to contribute appropriately to the periodical research evaluation of the department. The university values highly research published in international, peer-reviewed venues, such as in journals included in the Web of Science or in monographs and volumes published by internationally renowned publishing companies. The successful candidate will be expected to take an active role in research and have an interest in putting together collaborative projects capable of attracting external funding at both the regional and European level.

This is a tenure-track position. At the time of appointment, the assistant professor and the university will agree upon a set of personalized goals, which will be laid out in an addendum to the tenure-track contract. After a five-year trial period, the assistant professor will be granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) provided that s/he has met these goals.

Candidates are encouraged to clarify in their applications not only their past research and publications but also their future research plans and how they might collaborate with research groups and with colleagues both inside and outside the department. It is recommended that candidates give as much detail as possible about future projects and plans including possible sources of funding and the venues to which research will be submitted.

The Department of Literary Studies at UGent (http://tinyurl.com/d4c34nb) is a vibrant community of 175 people, including some 50 fully funded PhD-students and 20 postdocs; the professor will join 27 colleagues specialising in nine languages (Dutch, French, English, German, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Swedish) as well as General and Comparative Literature. Tenure-track and tenured faculty at Ghent University enjoy an autonomous status, competitive salaries, stimulating teaching loads and a wealth of funding opportunities at the local, regional and European levels. Ghent is an attractive medieval town, with a strong economic base and lively cultural scene. Just 30 minutes by train from Brussels, two hours from Paris and Amsterdam and two and a half hours from London, it is moreover ideally situated at the heart of European intellectual life. Ghent University is committed to internationalization and welcomes applications from foreign scholars. Knowledge of Dutch is not necessary to apply, but candidates should be willing to learn the language during their tenure track. The International Staff Office assists with the transition and orientation of foreign employees.

The deadline for application is 30 March 2016, but candidates are welcome to get in touch with the contact persons. Formal information on how to apply and the official announcement of the position are available at:http://www.ugent.be/en/work/vacancies/professorial-staff/20160219anglophoneliteratureitalianliterature.htm).