AMSN3: Modernist Work

The Third Biennial Conference of the Australasian Modernist Studies Network

Date: 29-31 March 2016

Venue: University of New South Wales, Sydney

Abstracts due: 1 October 2015

Notification of acceptance: 1 November 2015

This conference aims to explore the manifold intersections of modernist culture and the concept of “work”. Modernism emerged during a moment of rapid transformation in the conditions and meaning of labour. New jobs and professions proliferated with dizzying speed in the wake of the second industrial revolution, along with new techniques of “scientific management”. Under the influence of these and other changes, the kinds of work available to women changed markedly during the modernist period, while legal gender restrictions were abolished in a growing number of professions. At the same time, many strands of modernist culture involved a rethinking of the concept of “work” in literary and aesthetic domains, in often contradictory ways. Modernist writers and artists repeatedly interrogated the nature and function of an artistic career in an age of mass culture, and radical critiques of the notion of the art “work” itself—as organic, as self-contained, as a product of artistic skill—were launched from various sectors of the avant-garde. Numerous subsequent interventions in critical and aesthetic theory can be placed in the lineage of this initial modernist questioning of the work itself.

We are seeking papers on the relationship between modernism and work in any of its myriad configurations—formal, historical, empirical, theoretical, literal, metaphorical, textual, contextual, material and everything in between. We also welcome papers that test the boundaries of the concept of modernism itself, whether by extending its chronological scope, rethinking its traditional canon or questioning its privileged media.

How did modernist artists and writers respond to revolutions in the world of work? How did modernists construe the occupation of the artist and the category of the work of art? Which theoretical perspectives are best suited, today, to understanding the meaning of “work” in modernism? And what kinds of work are we doing, anyway, those of us who “work on modernism”? These and many others are the kinds of question that we will work on, through and over at this conference.

Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:

– the office

– modernists’ day jobs

– networks and networking

– brainwork

– dreamwork

– facework

– women and work

– “Professions for Women”

– alienation/reification/rationalization

– professionalism/specialization

– mechanization/automatization

– the emergence of the concept of unemployment

– Marx and Marxist aesthetics

– trade unionism and Labour politics

– working-class writing and reading

– “the working of the work” (“die Wirklichkeit des Werkes”)

– “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility”

– unworking/worklessness (“désoeuvrement”)

Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Christopher Nealon (Johns Hopkins University); other keynote speakers to be advised.

Proposals are invited for 20 minute papers or panels of three papers examining any aspect of the conference theme. Proposals from postgraduate students are especially encouraged.

Please send 300 word abstracts and a brief biographical note to j.attridge@unsw.edu.au by Thursday 1 October 2015.

Registration and other information will be available through the AMSN website, at http://amsn.org.au/

Call for Papers

Heroes

3-4 October 2015, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), London

Conference Theme

The figure of the hero is a matter of great cultural debate at the present time, in British contexts and beyond. Recent conflicts; natural disasters; ambitious expeditions; Olympic and Paralympic events – all have forged potential hero figures, renewing centuries-old discussions about just who, or what, a hero might be. This two-day conference will draw together academics from a wide variety of disciplines, alongside archivists, curators and librarians, plus colleagues from the commercial and charity sectors. It will foster conversations about hero figures past and present, considering their emergence or creation, their relationship with their fans or ‘worshippers’ in their own communities and/or further afield and, if relevant, the shifting fortunes of their reputations. We ask whether heroes emerge through deeds, character or morality, or whether they are created. We ponder the value of heroes to particular communities in the forging of their group identity. We trace the shaping and maintenance of heroic reputations in texts, art practice, oral culture and curatorship. Across the scope of the conference we seek to ask: who were, or are our heroes, and how/why could or should future heroes be selected or permitted to emerge?

Our conference will include the launch of the exhibition ‘Heroes of Exploration,’ which draws attention to heroic records in the collections of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), with a particular focus on heroism in mountain and Polar environments.

Possible Topics

The organising committee are interested in proposals from across the academic disciplines, the museums, galleries and archives sector, and those engaging with hero figures in their commercial or charity work. Within the academy, we anticipate interest from anthropology, art history, film and television studies, historical geography, history, politics, literature, and sociology. Topics which may be covered in the conference include, but are not limited to:

• Theories of heroism, from ancient times to the present day
• Historical heroes
• Using heroes politically
• Hero figures and brand identities
• Heroes and charitable giving/engagement
• Community identity and hero selection
• Heroism and childhood
• The changing reputation of specific heroes, or groups thereof
• Heroism and imperialism
• The perils of choosing a hero
• Debunking hero figures; the heroic fall
• Issues of gender in the notion of heroism
• Heroism in the archives
• The challenges of curating a heroic reputation
• Curating/archiving heroic ‘things’ – tools, belongings or ‘relics’ of past heroes
• Portraiture or sculpture and the construction of heroic reputation
• Literary heroes
• Heroes on film
• Preserving heroes digitally
• War heroism – soldiers, nurses and beyond
• Race, gender and military heroism in Britain
• Military heroes, veteran organisations and civilian relations
• Civilian heroes; the ‘humble’ hero; heroism and class
• Heroes of sport and/or exploration
• Heroic bodies
• Physical and mental struggle in the heroic life
• Heroism and the history of emotion – how/why to heroes move us?

Note: We use ‘hero’ as ‘actor’ is used presently, i.e. in a gender-neutral way.

Submitting Paper and Panel Proposals

To propose a paper: Please send an abstract (max. 400 words), and a biographical note (max. 200 words)

To propose a panel: Please send abstracts and biographical notes (word limits as above) for each speaker, along with their contact details and institutional affiliation, plus a rationale for the panel as a whole (max. 600 words)

These should be sent to Dr. Abbie Garrington (Durham University): abbie.garrington@durham.ac.uk no later than Monday 20 July 2015. Abbie is also happy to answer any informal enquiries regarding papers, panels, and conference arrangements.

The Team

This conference forms part of The Hero Project, an AHRC-funded, year-long research initiative which looks at the historical contingency of the hero figure, and its role in the formation of community and national identity.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Abbie Garrington (MA PhD FRGS), English Studies, Durham University

Co-Investigator: Dr. Natasha Danilova (BA MA PhD), Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen

Co-Investigator: Dr. Berny Sèbe (Maîtrise DPhil FRHistS FRGS FHEA), Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham

Collaborator: Ms. Imogen Gibbon, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Collaborator: Dr. Catherine Souch, Head of Research and Higher Education, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)

Keep up with and comment upon the conference on Twitter: #heroesconf15

Thursday, 14 January 2016

Universita` Roma 3 Facolta` di Lettere e Filosofia

This is a Call for papers for Writing the Rising, an international conference organised by CRISIS – Centro di Ricerca Interdipartimentale per gli Crisis – Centro Ricerca Studi Irlandesi e Scozzesi – at the Università Roma Tre in association with the Irish Embassy to Italy and the College of Saint Isidore in Rome. This interdisciplinary conference will particularly welcome contributions from historians, literary critics, and political scientists. The conference will examine the central importance of the written word both before, during and after the 1916 Rising, firstly as a source of inspiration, then as the container of the main political message of the Rising itself (the Proclamation of the Irish Republic) and finally as the principal means of reportage, witness, and critique.

Paper topics can relate to any aspect of the Revolutionary period of Irish history, from 1913 to 1923. However, participants are encouraged to examine various written forms from letters to journalism, propaganda to poetry, theatre to the novel, produced before, during and in the aftermath of the tumultuous historical events of 1916. Papers dealing with modern literary reappraisals of the Rising are also welcome as are contributions dealing with European aspects of the Rising, the connections with World War One, and journalistic and popular coverage of the Rising both in the Europe of the time and the Europe of today. Discussions of coverage of the Rising in Italy will be particularly encouraged. Papers which investigate the Catholic Church’s response to the Rising will also be welcome.

CONFIRMED PLENARY SPEAKERS: Professor Roy Foster (Oxford University), Dr Ben Levitas (Goldsmiths, University of London). Further plenary speakers will be announced shortly. Other speakers will include Ronan McDonald (University of Sydney) and Derek Hand (St Patrick’s College, DCU).

Proposals should be sent by 10 September 2015 to: john.mccourt@uniroma3.it

International Young Researchers’ Conference – Cultures et littératures du monde anglo-saxon(CLIMAS) EA 4196, Université Bordeaux Montaigne
Bordeaux, March 11th – 12th 2016
An enclave is a portion of territory within or surrounded by a larger territory belonging to someone else. Access to this territory is difficult due to moral or social laws being different from those of the territory which it is isolated from. “Enclave” comes from the Latin root “to lock with a key.” This etymology conveys the idea that access is possible, albeit extremely restricted. Thus, the enclave provides its totally hermetic condition while simultaneously allowing for possibilities to enter. By virtue of its isolation from the rest of the world, the enclave is thus the privileged venue for particular phenomena that may only exist in this confined territory.
When the hermetic character of the enclave is exacerbated, whether or not the surrounding world has any influence on it, it is still possible to consider it an absolute alternative to the outside world. Thus, the enclave becomes the place for all fantasies; for all exaggerations. Since it is separated, sealed off, the enclave can serve as a place for experimentation — the radiant city or the laboratory of horrors; a utopia or dystopia. In any case, thanks to its isolation, the enclave has been able to claim the possibility of providing a new start. However, finding refuge in a utopian enclave brings up the question of escape or resistance. Behind this question lies another profound problem specific to the enclave: is the enclave a place in its own right, a removed place or a non-place? What relation links the enclave and the surrounding territory? Making a case of the enclave, taking into consideration a minority which takes its strength from opposing the surrounding majority is to acknowledge a territory in which its integration to a larger whole is problematic. Thus, the Enclave questions the notions of integration and rejection, especially if we consider ethnic enclaves which, due not only to their geopolitical but their social nature as well, have fluid borders which articulate these contradictory notions in a complicated way.
We have seen that enclaves create a gap between interior and exterior, and thus the possibility of a contrast which allows for magnifying certain aspects by comparison. The Enclave thus could act as a magnifying mirror. A paradox thus appears: is the Enclave the space of absolute difference, or does it simply reproduce societal phenomena in a finer and clearer manner, exacerbating these phenomena by smoothing out the surface of an exterior reality which is far too complex to be represented? The enclave does not only just bring about territorial ruptures, but above all it brings about a network of complex relations with its surroundings. Is it a privileged tool for representation or, on the contrary, a difficult place to chart due to its hermetic nature? Is it a refuge or a prison? What does it actually tell us on the concept of borders and affiliations? How does it develop its status of exception and claim its status as a minor territory in a larger and more united world? These geopolitical, ontological, and esthetic motifs of the enclave are what will be explored and developed at this conference.
Fields of Study :
Civilization: ethnic enclaves, reservations and concentration camps, transcendentalist societies; literature: enclaves in the adventure novel/lost worlds, esthetic experience as enclaves, linguistics: morphological and syntactical specificities, morphological specificities of dialects, mental spaces

We will consider the proposals in French and English from doctoral students and young researchers from all disciplines of English studies. Talks will discuss enclaves in the Anglophone world. Certain proposals will be selected to be published in Leaves: A Journal, Climas’s online review.
Please send all propositions (around 3000 signs including punctuation marks) along with a short CV to: remy.arab-fuentes@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr, james.doughty@u-bordeaux.fr and isabelle_gras@yahoo.com by November 1st, 2015.
Organizing Committee
Remy Arab-Fuentes (CLIMAS, Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Isabelle Gras (CLIMAS, Université Bordeaux Montaigne), James Perosi-Doughty (CLIMAS, Université Bordeaux Montaigne).

A workshop I have proposed for MSA 17 has been accepted, and I’m looking for panel participants. The workshop is on surviving the tenure track and is directed at assistant professors on tenure track or those who envision themselves in that position in the future. The panel participants would be current or former department chairs who can talk about the successes and missteps they’ve observed from those who have successfully or unsuccessfully negotiated the tenure track. Since different kinds of institutions have different expectations, I’d like to include around half a dozen panelist, each from a different kind of institution (comprehensive university, top-flight research university, liberal arts college, and so on), to speak briefly (5 to 10 minutes) and answer questions from those attending. If you’re interested in being a panelist, please contact me at jgpeters@unt.edu with a little about yourself and your institution and the kind of advice you might offer.

Sincerely,

John G. Peters

University Distinguished Research Professor,

General Editor of Conradiana, and Interim Chair of English

1155 Union Circle, 311307

Department of English

University of North Texas

Denton, TX 76203-5017

(940) 565-2050

The First Conference of the International Yeats Society

Scoil an Chultúir agus na Cumarsáide, Ollscoil Luimnigh

School of Culture and Communication, University of Limerick

15–18 October 2015

It has been a century and a half since the birth of W. B. Yeats. With the completion of major biographies and textual series, and in the context of technological and economic changes to global literary studies, Yeats studies finds itself at a critical juncture. This conference will gather scholars, critics, and creative artists from around the world to engage with Yeats as a figure of world literature, European and global modernisms, and Irish culture and politics; and Yeats’s work as poet, dramatist, autobiographer, and writer of fiction, critical and reflective essays, and philosophy. The larger questions to be addressed concern the field of Yeats studies itself, and the role of Yeats in literary and cultural studies. Where are we now? whence have we come? where are we going?

Topics may include:

• thematic concerns such as youth and age or aging
• formal considerations including rhythm, music, dance, drama, and the spoken word
• Yeats in contemporary politics, media, and cultural studies
• Yeats in and in relation to space, including Ireland, over time
• translation and adaptation
• history and the past, including mythology
• futurity, including prophecy time and temporality

Plenary speakers: Matthew Campbell (U of York), Marjorie Howes (Boston College), Alexandra Poulain (U of Lille)

Presentations should be no more than twenty minutes. Please submit a proposal including your title and an abstract of 250 words. Indicate your name, email, and institutional affiliation clearly.

If you would like to organize a panel, plan for three twenty-minute talks or four fifteen-minute talks. Panel proposals should be 500-600 words and should clarify what each speaker will contribute to the conversation. Provide a title for the proposed session as well as titles for each talk. Please list all panelists’ names, email addresses, and institutional affiliations at the top of the proposal. If you would like help in locating potential co-panelists for your proposal, please send a brief description of the topic to Marion Quirici at marionqu@buffalo.edu.

Please send abstracts by 1 June 2015 and any queries to:

Margaret Mills Harper at Margaret.Harper@ul.ie

Download a flyer in A4 Format or US Letter Format