Author: modernistudies

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Modernist Magazines Research Seminar – Tuesday 24 February

The next session of the Modernist Magazines Research Seminar will take place at 6pm on Tuesday 24 February, in room G35 (ground floor) of Senate House, London.

Laurel Brake, Professor Emerita of Literature and Print Culture at Birkbeck, University of London, will be presenting a paper on Walter Pater titled ‘Pater and the new media: the “child” in the “house”’. Please see below for further details.

The seminar is open to everyone interested in modernism and periodical studies. For more information, please email modernist.magazines.ies@gmail.com or visit http://modmags.wordpress.com

With best wishes,

Charles Dawkins (University of Oxford)

Aimee Gasston (Birkbeck, University of London)

Chris Mourant (King’s College London)

Natasha Periyan (Royal Holloway, University of London)

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Events Postgraduate

Event TODAY: Open University Book History and Bibliography Research Seminar

Speakers
Wim van Mierlo (University of London)
Speakers Abstract:
Dr Wim Van Mierlo is Acting Director of the Institute of English Studies.  His research focuses on literary manuscripts of the period after 1700, particularly their palaeographican and codicological features, as well more generally textual scholarship and book history.  His publications include an edition of W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, Where There is Nothing and the Unicorn from the Stars: Manuscript Materials (issued in the Cornell Yeats Series) and The Reception of James Joyce in Europe (co-edited with Geert Lernout).  He is also the editor-in-chief of Variants: the Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship.

02 February 2015, 17:30 – 19:30

Event Type:
Seminar
Venue:
Room 104 (Senate House, first floor)
Venue Details:
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU

Description

Have We Yet Learnt to Make Manuscripts Speak? Manuscript Culture after 1700

It is now generally accepted that the invention of the printing press did not wipe out the production and distribution of manuscripts. What is often not considered is how long this manuscript culture persisted.  This paper therefore considers aspects of a continuing manuscript culture in the past 300 years. One must acknowledge (following the work of Donald Reiman) that during this period manuscripts are largely, though not exclusively, restricted to the private sphere.  This does not stop manuscripts from belonging to a larger cultural practice, however, that determines how writers use pen and paper. To elucidate these ideas I will draw on a number of examples from mainly literary authors and poets from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

For more information see: http://events.sas.ac.uk/ies/events/view/17426/Open%20University%20Book%20History%20and%20Bibliography%20Research%20Seminar

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CFPs Events Postgraduate

CFP: Re-evaluating Elizabeth von Arnim

Lucy Cavendish College will host a conference on 13 September 2015 to explore and re-evaluate the writing of Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941).

Papers are invited on all aspects of von Armin’s life and work. Suggested topics include:

  • Contexts: understanding von Arnim’s writing in the context of the fin de siècle, the New Woman, middlebrow, modernism, World War 1 and 2, and women’s writing.
  • Literary relationships with other writers such as E. M. Forster, Hugh Walpole, Katherine Mansfield, H. G. Wells and Frank Swinnerton.
  • Intertexts: tracing the influences of writers such as the Brontes and Jane Austen.
  • Forms: gardening, diary and epistolary novels; music; adaptation for film, theatre.
  • International perspective: the importance of Switzerland, France, Germany and the USA in her writing and career.

Von Arnim’s complex, intelligent and witty novels were critically acclaimed and immensely popular during her lifetime. However, until recently they have received little academic attention. This conference aims to shed fresh light on the contemporary contexts of von Arnim’s work and the literary hierarchies and values that have shaped her reputation.

Call for papers

Proposals of 400 words for 20-minute papers should be sent using the form at: http://www.lucy-cav.cam.ac.uk/news-blog/latest-news/call-for-papers-re-evaluating-elizabeth-von-arnim.

The deadline for submisssion 20 February 2015.

Conference organisers: Erica Brown (Sheffield Hallam University), Dr Isobel Maddison (Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University) and Jennifer Walker (Independent Scholar).

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CFPs Events Postgraduate

CFP: DENISE LEVERTOV CONFERENCE

Loyola University Chicago’s Joan and Bill Hank Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage is pleased to announce a conference devoted to the life and work of the poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997).

“this need to dance / this need to kneel”: The Poetry and Poetic Life of Denise Levertov, will take place at Loyola’s downtown Chicago campus October 23-25, 2015 and will feature Levertov biographers, scholars, and contemporary poets. We welcome proposals for twenty minute presentations on any aspect of Levertov’s work, but would particularly like to encourage discussion of her spirituality.

Send 250-500 word proposals to Dr. Melissa Bradshaw at mbradshaw@luc.edu by April 15, 2015. See conference website athttp://catheritage.wordpress.com.

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Events

The 2015 First Book Institute

June 7-13, 2015

Hosted by the Center for American Literary Studies (CALS) at PennsylvaniaStateUniversity

Co-Directors

Sean X. Goudie, Director of the Center for American Literary Studies and Winner of the MLA Prize for a First Book

Priscilla Wald, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, DukeUniversity and Editor of American Literature

The stakes of successful publishing by early career professors are more urgent than ever given the current state of higher education promotion and publishing.  Responding to a glaring need in the field, the First Book Institute features workshops and presentations led by institute faculty aimed at assisting participants in transforming their book projects into ones that promise to make the most significant impact possible on the field and thus land them a publishing contract with a top university press.  Eight successful applicants will be awarded $1500 stipends to defray the costs of travel and lodging.

Applications to the First Book Institute are invited from scholars working in any area or time period of American literary studies who hold a PhD and are in the process of writing their first book (whether a revised and expanded dissertation or other project).  Applicants should not have negotiated a formal agreement of any kind with a press to publish their manuscript.

Electronic applications, due by February 16, 2015, should include the following:

  • Application letter describing the project and anticipated timeline for completion
  • C. V.
  • Project abstract, including chapter summaries
  • Introduction or sample chapter

Please send all application materials in a single PDF file (and any queries) to cals@psu.edu.

For more information about the First Book Institute, including video testimony about the inaugural First Book Institute held in June 2013 from the participants and co-directors, please see:

http://cals.la.psu.edu/first-book-institute

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CFPs Events Postgraduate

CFP: MSA 17, Boston

Seminar Proposals: February 27, 2015

Pre-conference Workshop (Thursday) and Post-conference Workshops (Sunday) Proposals: February 27, 2015

Panel, Roundtable, and Poster/Digital Exhibit Proposals: April 17, 2015

“Modernism and Revolution,” the theme of the 2015 MSA annual conference to be held in Boston, invokes characterizations of modernism as a revolutionary movement across the arts, as a revolt against tradition, and as a renovation of literature, performance, visual arts, and culture more generally. But it also asks that we call into question the myth of modernism’s revolutionary nature, its habitual representation as a movement inherently or spontaneously insurrectionary.We encourage attention to aesthetic modernism’s relationship to political uprisings and wars, and to the revolutions in technology that drove munitions factories and automobile engines. Papers might attend to the cultural revolutions tied to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and other identity categories. Or they could examine the technologies transforming people’s experiences of everyday life in ways less violent but equally profound: the turning of film or audio tape reels, innovations in astronomy or transportation, the circular energies of the vortex. The theme also invites considerations of repetition, stasis, or other potentially anti-revolutionary modes.

The conference organizers for “Modernism and Revolution” invite proposals for seminars and pre/post-conference workshops (due Feb. 27), panels, roundtables, poster sessions, multimedia/digital exhibitions (due April 17). We encourage proposals relevant to the conference theme but welcome panel, seminar, and roundtable proposals on all topics related to modernism. The primary criterion for selection will be the quality of the proposal, not its relevance to the conference theme. We ask that proposals provide complete panels and roundtables. Individualsseeking to create or to participate in a panel or roundtable are encouraged to visit the MSA CFP page or the MSA Facebook for guidelines to develop and opportunities to promote a panel or roundtable. All proposals must include requests for AV provisions.

Participation: Because we wish to involve as many people as possible as active participants, the MSA limits multiple appearances on the program. Thus, you may participate once, but only once, in each of the following categories:

• Seminar, either as leader or as participant • Panel or roundtable, as participant (you may also chair a different panel or roundtable) • “What Are You Reading?” session You may lead a seminar, present a paper on a panel, and participate in a “What Are You Reading” session, but you may not present two papers. MSA rules do not allow panel or roundtable organizers to chair their own session if they are also speaking in the session. The session chair must be someone who is otherwise not participating in the session. Panel organizers are encouraged to identify a moderator and include this information with their proposals; the MSA Program Committee can also ask another conference attendee to serve as a moderator. Participation in a pre-conference workshop or in a digital exhibition does not constrain other forms of participation.

All those who attend the MSA conference must be members of the organization with dues paid for 2015-16 (MSA membership runs from July 1 until June 30 each year.) For information on MSA, please check the website. Participants are expected to present in person.

CALL FOR SEMINAR PROPOSALS

Deadline: February 27, 2015

Seminars are among the most unique features of the MSA conference. Participants write brief “position papers” (5-7 pages) that are circulated and read prior to the conference. Because their size is limited to 15 participants, seminars generate lively exchange and often facilitate future collaborations. The format also allows a larger number of conference attendees to seek financial support from their institutions as they educate themselves and their colleagues on subjects of mutual interest. Seminars are two hours in length. Because seminars led solely by graduate students are not likely to be accepted, we encourage interested graduate students to invite a faculty member to lead the seminar with them. Please note that this is the call for seminar leaders. Sign-up for seminar participants will take place on a first-come, first-served basis coinciding with registration for the conference. Seminar Topics: There are no limits on topics, but past experience has shown that the more clearly defined the topic and the more guidance provided by the leader, the more productive the discussion. “Clearly defined” should not be confused with “narrow,” as extremely narrow seminar topics tend to exclude many potential participants. To scan past seminar topics, go to the Conference Archiveshttp://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/archive.html on the MSA website, click the link to a prior conference, and then click on “Conference Schedule” or “Conference Program.” You’ll find seminars listed along with panels and other events. Topics related to the conference theme are especially welcome and might include, for example, modernism and historical revolutions, modernism and technological revolutions, or modernism and antirevolutionary. Submit proposals by February 27, 2015 by completing the following online form: MSA 17 Seminar Proposal Form.

CALL FOR PRE-CONFERENCE (Thursday) and POST-CONFERENCE (Sunday)

WORKSHOP PROPOSALS

Deadline: February 27, 2015

Pre-conference workshops are held on the Thursday that the conference begins and post-conference workshops are held on Sunday afternoon. They focus on topics related to professional life, such as publishing, teaching, the job market, mid-career challenges and opportunities, research and the liberal arts college, and alternative/non-academic jobs. Pre-conference workshops are likely to be focused on professional concerns for faculty, while post-conference workshops will probably be more relevant to graduate students. Popular workshops in previous years have been on topics including, “What Do Presses Want from a First Book?,” “Digital Approaches to Modernism,” and “Critical Writing.” Workshops should be participatory in format and can be either 90 or 120 minutes in length. They may be entirely led by one person or may include a panel of experts. Please note that this call is for workshop leaders, who should be prepared to arrive at the conference venue early or stay late. Registration for workshops will occur at the same time as conference registration. Submit proposals by February 27, 2015 by completing the following online form: MSA17 Pre/Post-Conference Workshop Proposal Form

CALL FOR PANEL PROPOSALS

Deadline: April 17, 2015

Successful proposals will introduce topics that promise to expand research and debate on a topic, and will present a clear rationale for the papers’ collective goal. Panel proposals that engage recent contentious research, exciting new approaches, or theoretical interventions into the field are encouraged. Topics are not limited to the theme “Modernism and Revolution.” Please bear in mind these guidelines: We encourage interdisciplinary panels and strongly discourage panels on single authors. In order to allow for discussion, preference will be given to panels with three participants, though panels of four will be considered. Panels composed entirely of participants from a single department at a single institution are not likely to be accepted. Graduate students are welcome as panelists, but panels composed entirely of graduate students are less likely to be accepted than panels that include postdoctoral presenters together with graduate students. Submit proposals by completing the following online form by April 17, 2015: MSA 17 Panel Proposal Form.

CALL FOR ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS

Deadline: April 17, 2015

All topics will be considered for roundtables, but we encourage proposals that develop the theme of the conference. Unlike panels, which generally feature a sequence of 15-20 minute talks followed by discussion, roundtables gather a group of participants around a shared concern in order to generate discussion among the participants and with the audience. To this end, instead of delivering full-length papers, participants are asked to deliver short position statements in response to questions distributed in advance by the organizer or to take turns responding to prompts from the moderator. The bulk of the session should be devoted to discussion. No paper titles are listed in the program, only the names of participants. Please bear in mind these guidelines: Roundtables may feature as many as 6 speakers. We particularly welcome roundtables featuring participants from multiple disciplines, and we discourage roundtables on single authors. Roundtables composed entirely of participants from a single department at a single institution are not likely to be accepted. Graduate students are welcome as speakers, but roundtables composed entirely of graduate students are less likely to be accepted than those that include postdoctoral presenters together with graduate students. Submit proposals by completing the following online form by April 17, 2015: MSA 17 Roundtable Proposal Form

CALL FOR POSTER SESSIONS AND DIGITAL EXHIBITS

Deadline: April 17, 2015

Reflecting the growing role of the digital humanities in modernist studies and the proliferation of work that does not lend itself to presentation in the form of a scholarly paper, we invite proposals that provide a short overview (including web links) of 1) the nature, design, and purpose of a digital project; 2) how the project advances modernist studies; and 3) how the presenters would want to exhibit and explain the project at the conference. Be sure to list all participants and institutions involved in the project, and specify who among these would attend the conference. Submit proposals by completing the following online form by April 17, 2015: Poster Session and Digital Exhibit Form.

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Events Postgraduate

The Voyage Out (1915): A Centenary Event 

King’s College London, Department of English and Centre for Modern Literature and Culture

Date: Wednesday 18 March 2015

Time: 6 – 9 pm

Location: S-3.20, Strand Building, King’s College London, Strand, WC2R 2LS

Described in a contemporary review as ‘a wild swan among good grey geese’ Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, was published a hundred years ago. This novel eschews the romance plot, satirises Brits abroad in colonial South America and challenges Edwardian social mores. Combining literary and political experiment, The Voyage Out sets the course for Woolf’s later fiction. Here distinguished Woolf scholars Michèle Barrett, Elleke Boehmer, Rachel Bowlby, Anna Snaith and Emma Sutton will reflect on the novel’s social and political contexts and its critical reception.

The talks will be followed by a drinks reception.

Tickets are free to book at the link below:

http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-voyage-out-1915-a-centenary-event-tickets-15515026863

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Events Postgraduate

Event: Clive Bush and Allen Fisher, 19 February

We are excited to announce that Clive Bush and Allen Fisher will join us at the Literature and Visual Cultures Research Seminar to discuss their collaborative works and explore the process behind their creations.

Thursday 19th Feb, 6-8pm, Senate House, London, room 261

For more information, please our website: https://literatureandvisualcultures.wordpress.com

We look forward to seeing you there.

Sarah Chadfield and Sophie Oliver, Royal Holloway, University of London

ABSTRACTS

Clive Bush‘s talk will mainly concentrate on Pictures after Poussin, and deal with some or all of the following points:

1) The circumstances which prompted the book.

2) The question of ekphrasis and the history of the relation between poetry and painting.

3) Why the issue of ekphrasis is only sometimes relevant to Pictures After Poussin.

4) Some of the poetic influences which assist the formal aspects of the book, in European and American modernism, including William Carlos Williams and Pictures from Brueghel.

5) A short reading from a poem, together with a brief comment on the three books in which Allen Fisher and Clive Bush have presented their work together, including Lingerings of the Large Day (Five Seasons, 2014).

Allen Fisher’s talk is mainly a review of three approaches to responding and providing pictures for three books of poetry by Clive Bush. The illustrated talk endeavours to unpick the different ways in which decisions about how to facture each sequence of works takes place and then how choices are arrived at in each book considered. The seminar will conclude with brief attention to an image and a text factured by Allen Fisher as part of a single artefact.

BIOS 

 Clive Bush is Emeritus Professor of American Literature at King’s College London and the author of some ten books, including four monographs on American literature and culture. The latest, The Century’s Midnight: dissenting European and American Intellectuals in the Era of the Second World War, was published in 2010. He has also written a book on contemporary English poets: Out of Dissent: five contemporary English poets, covering the work of Thomas A. Clark, Allen Fisher, Bill Griffiths, Barry MacSweeney and Eric Mottram, together with an edited anthology of their work. He has five books of poetry, the latest of which, Lingerings of the Large Day, came out less than two months ago with Five Seasons Press. He has been associated with the British Poetry Revival since the late 1960s. At the University of Warwick he helped organize the first Arts Festival of Contemporary Art, which included Basil Bunting, Roy Fisher, Tom Philips, and Carolee Schneeman’s experimentalist feminist movies. From the Sixties to the Eighties he organised a weekly series of poetry readings with Paul Merchant that included not only the then young poets of the British Poetry revival, and Basil Bunting, but also American poets including Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Creeley, Jerome Rothenberg, Jonathan Williams, and Allen Ginsberg.

He pioneered American and Film Studies at the University of Warwick, where he taught for twenty-four years, and was Chair of the English Department at King’s College. He has done most of his scholarly work at Yale University, where he has been in receipt of a number of American Council of Learned Society and Beinecke Rare Book Library fellowships.

Allen Fisher, is a poet, painter and art historian. His website is: www.allenfisher.co.uk. He is the author of 150 publications of poetry, graphic work and commentary; his Fluxus performance and conceptual work of the 1970s developed into new visual work, now in many international collections including the Tate. He is publisher of SPANNER and co-publisher of Aloes Books. He is Emeritus Professor of Poetry and Art at Manchester Metropolitan University. Most recent books: SPUTTOR, Veer Books 2014, Proposals, Spanner Editions 2012 and LEANS, Salt Publications 2007. Forthcoming books for 2015 include a collection of essays on aesthetics from the University of Alabama Press; the Allen Fisher Reader edited by Drew Milne and Redell Olsen from Shearsman Publishing; a Companion to the work of Allen Fisher, edited by Robert Hampson, also from Shearsman.

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CFPs Events Postgraduate

CFP: George Meredith and His Circle: Intellectual Communities and Literary Networks

Bishop Grosseteste University
24th & 25th July 2015
Organised by Dr Claudia Capancioni and Dr Alice Crossley
meredithconference@bishopg.ac.uk
Keynote Speaker: Professor Sally Shuttleworth, University of Oxford
This will be the first international conference on George Meredith’s work and critical reputation, and therefore a landmark event in Meredith studies. The conference also highlights debates about the circulation and exchange of ideas between Meredith and his contemporaries, encompassing the wider resonances of legacy and literary community in the circulation of ideas in the second half of the long nineteenth century.
The conference will firstly bring together both established and emerging scholars working on Meredith, and will therefore provide a forum for critical discussion of his work and his place in the literary history of both the Victorian and Modern periods. While his work has not been popularly embraced, he still remains consistently at the forefront of nineteenth century literary studies, albeit as an author and poet who has received inadequately sustained critical attention.
Secondly, expanding on this close focus on various aspects of his work, the conference will consider more broadly Meredith’s position at the centre of a wider network of nineteenth-century connections with and intersections between other prominent figures of his day, on both professional and personal levels. Meredith’s longevity and literary reputation made for prolific associations with other public figures, so that throughout his life Meredith generated a wide circle of acquaintance, many of whom made a productive impact on his work and vice versa.
As a part of the conference, delegates will be able to visit the archives of the Tennyson Research Centre in Lincoln, and Collections Access Officer Grace Timmins will be curating a mini-exhibition specifically for the event. The conference organisers aim to provide a limited number of bursaries for postgraduates and early career researchers to assist with their attendance at the conference.
We are inviting papers of 20 minutes, and topics might include (but are not limited to):
  • Meredith and influence: James Joyce, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Siegfried Sassoon, and others.
  • Legacy and critical reception: the history and development of Meredith scholarship.
  • Meredith and celebrity culture: literary reputation and recognition/(un)popularity.
  • Meredith and publishing: authorship, peer/publisher reviewing, and his role as literary mentor.
  • Meredith and the archive: correspondence, publication history, manuscript revision, book collection, marginalia.
  • Meredith and politics: journalism, the Risorgimento, the Boer war, anti-fascism, and National/European politics.
  • Meredith’s intellectual networks and  peers: Thomas Hardy, Alfred Tennyson, Leslie Stephen, D. G. and W. M. Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne, Olive Schreiner, Thomas Love Peacock, George Eliot, G. H. Lewes, Lucie Duff Gordon, Janet Ross, Caroline Norton,  Robert Louis Stevenson, George Gissing, J. M. Barrie, W. T. Stead, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others.
  • Meredith and prose: genre, narratology, aphorism, the bildungsroman, the psychological novel and stream of consciousness, storytelling, comedy, dialogism, intertextuality and other aspects.
  • Meredith and poetry.
  • Meredith the Victorian and/or Meredith the Modernist.
  • Meredith and contemporary debates: age and education, medicine and science, class and gender, ethnicity and the environment.
  • Meredith and sexuality: fictional masculinity, queer criticism and feminist readings.
  • Meredith and travel: war correspondence, cosmopolitanism, foreign journeys, walking, topographical space and location
  • Meredith biography: Meredith as father/husband/friend/neighbour, notorious personal life, anecdote and hearsay, ancestry and inheritance.
Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words to meredithconference@bishopg.ac.uk, together with a brief paragraph of relevant biographical information. The deadline for abstracts is 15th March 2015. Please contact Dr Claudia Capancioni and Dr Alice Crossley for further information.
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CFP: Finite, Singular, Exposed: New Perspectives on the Modernist Subject

The editors of the volume Finite, Singular, Exposed: New Perspectives on the Modernist Subject are seeking for contributions to complete this ongoing book project. The editors are part of a research team currently involved in a project entitled “Individual and Community in Modernist Fiction in English”. Our most recent publication as a team has been the volume Community in Twentieth-Century Fiction (Palgrave, 2013).

We are looking for papers offering new insights on the modernist subject. We welcome proposals for 6000 word essays in English on canonical modernist authors (Conrad, James, Joyce, Woolf, Ford, Lawrence, Mansfield, Stein…) as well as on non-canonical and late modernists. While we don’t expect participants to adopt our own theoretical framework (Nancy, Blanchot, Agamben on individual and community), we are specially interested in theoretically informed approaches that offer innovative takes on the representation of the subject in modernist fiction. In the context of the recent wave of dialectico-metaphysical approaches to subjectivity and individuality encouraged by thinkers like Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Zizek, Jean-Luc Nancy and Alain Badiou, a fresh re-definition of the modernist individual is manifestly in order, a re-definition that is likely to enrich the field of “new Modernist studies”. We thus propose a tentative return to the theoretical articulation of Modernist individuality. This return is not to be conceived as an antagonistic response to community-oriented approaches to modernist fiction, but rather as an attempt to complement it through a dialectical counterweight.

If you are interested in this project, please submit proposals of no more than 800 words and a short bio-bibliography to the editors: paula.martin@uco.es, gerardor@ugr.es. Deadline for submissions: March 2nd 2015. Notification of acceptance: March 20th. The authors selected will be asked to submit their complete 6,000 word-long essays by August 1st 2015.