“DAVID JONES: CHRISTIAN MODERNIST?”
A conference in Regent’s Park College and St Anne’s College, Oxford
10–13 September 2014

David Jones’s (1895-1974) rich career as visual artist, poet and critic yokes together two terms, ‘Christian’ and ‘modernist’, which are sometimes considered incompatible. This conference examines the paradoxes of a Catholic artist committed to ‘making it new’ through formal experiment and a large-scale theory of sign, sacrament and civilization. Jones’s case demands an interdisciplinary approach drawing on theology, philosophy and history, as well as a wider rethinking of the critical vocabulary of Modernist Studies. We specially welcome a broad range of contributions from fields beyond Jones Studies, to widen the conversation about his work.

Full CFP and registration: http://modernismchristianity.org/david-jones-conference/
(Please note: Only those registering for college accommodation are guaranteed a place at the conference at this stage. If you need to register without accommodation please contact erik.tonning@if.uib.no in advance.)

The final deadline for registration is 15 June, but early registration is strongly encouraged. Please contact the organisers as soon as possible if you intend to register.

Papers are 20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion.

Keynote speakers:
Thomas Dilworth (University of Windsor)
Paul Fiddes (University of Oxford)
Alison Milbank (University of Nottingham)
Micheal O’Siadhail (Poet, critic and linguist)
Anne Price-Owen (University of Wales)

Organised by the Centre for Christianity and Culture, Regent’s Park College, Oxford and the ‘Modernism and Christianity’ project, University of Bergen, Norway.
Organisers: Paul Fiddes, Anna Johnson and Erik Tonning.
Contact: erik.tonning@if.uib.no

INFORMATION OVERLOAD – Call for Papers / Workshop Leaders
Conference Date: 4th-5th September 2014, University of Edinburgh
Deadline for Proposals: Friday 16 June 2014
www.infoload.co.uk | @infoload2014 | cfp@infoload.co.uk

In recent years, information overload has become a popular term to describe the psychological, emotional and physical consequences of living in a culture defined by the increasing density of data and reach of communication technologies. We invite contributors for a two-day conference to explore the reverberations of this bloom of data in cultural, artistic and academic practice. Aiming to trace an aesthetics of information overload, this event seeks to analyse how different environments and their consequent effects, both real and projected, public and personal, have engendered artistic forms. We encourage participants to experiment with a range of presentational formats, testing new ways of sharing information as well as discussing its conceptual ramifications. The conference aims to prompt conversations between new and perhaps unexpected perspectives on contemporary art, literature, media and culture, opening discussion to a wide range of disciplines, approaches and theoretical frameworks. How have authors and artists interrogated information overload, diagnosed its symptoms and hypothesised its cure? Are there benefits to conceptual overload? What aesthetic forms have been developed to represent or counteract the effects of overload?

Please see the CfP at infoload.co.uk/cfp for full details.

CONTACT: cfp@infoload.co.uk
ORGANISERS: Dorothy Butchard, Andrew Campbell, Rob Lederer

INFORMATION OVERLOAD is a project to trace the aesthetics of information overload in cultural, artistic & academic practice. The conference in Edinburgh on 4th-5th September 2014 is funded by AHRC Collaborative Skills award and Edinburgh University’s Researcher-Led Initiative fund.

Follow us @infoload2014 or check infoload.co.uk for conference updates, writing on the theme of information overload, and more details.

Katherine Mansfield and the ‘Blooms Berries’

An international conference organized by the Katherine Mansfield Society, to be held at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois, USA

28–30 May 2015

Keynote Address:

Professor Sydney Janet Kaplan

University of Washington

 

In his eagerness to establish Katherine Mansfield’s place among her peers, John Middleton Murry sometimes published work that she herself would have rejected. Likewise, the extent of his culling of her letters and notebooks glossed over Mansfield’s complex personality and relationships, elements of her life that provide a context for better understanding her fiction.  This ‘Mansfield Myth’ made her appear out of touch with the social and cultural upheaval of her time.

Having generally been relegated to the fringe of literary modernism during her lifetime, especially among the influential ‘Blooms Berries’, as Mansfield referred to them in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell on 15 August 1917, she nevertheless worked her way into enviable positions of prestige in some key literary magazines, and had become well known as a writer by the end of her life. It is as a member of the social fringe, though, that Mansfield becomes the most intriguing. As Sydney Janet Kaplan demonstrates in her seminal book, Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction, Mansfield brings a different perspective –– and, like Virginia Woolf, provides a corrective – to the dominant, male-centered version of modernism.  Likewise, as a colonial, Mansfield remained free of the traditions that haunted most of the Bloomsbury group, including their ‘anxiety of influence’.  In this, Mansfield demonstrated herself as more ‘modern’ than some of her contemporaries; having less ‘tradition’ to overcome, she was able to adopt a style that was unselfconscious of influence. The focus of this conference will therefore allow us to place her more firmly within the literary context of her time.

 

Suggested topics for papers might include:

• Mansfield and the ‘Blooms Berries’, focusing on her personal and/or professional relationships with particular members of the Bloomsbury group.
• Mansfield on the Fringe, exploring her relationship with other fringe-members of the Bloomsbury group such as D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot, or perhaps the impact her relegation to the fringe had on her personal and/or professional life.
• Mansfield and Style, which could address some of the literary influences of some of the Bloomsbury group on Mansfield or her influence on them.
• Mansfield and Art, focusing on the shared influences the post-impressionists had on both Mansfield and the members of the Bloomsbury group, as well as other cross-fertilizations.
• Mansfield ‘in’ Bloomsbury, exploring how Mansfield has been portrayed in the fiction and letters of the various members.
• Bloomsbury ‘in’ Mansfield, turning the tables to focus on how members of Bloomsbury are portrayed in Mansfield’s fiction and letters.
• Mansfield, herself.  We would entertain proposals that focus more specifically on Mansfield; however, priority will be given to those proposals that tie more directly to the conference theme.

What better venue to explore Mansfield’s interrelationships with the members of Bloomsbury than the beautiful Newberry Library in Chicago, the world’s second largest holder of Mansfield’s papers.  As part of the conference, Huntington University will sponsor an exhibit of some of the library’s Mansfield holdings.  Those interested in staying over on Sunday can arrange to visit the Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute of Chicago, or the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History.

 

Please submit abstracts of 250 words plus a bio-sketch of 50 words to the conference organizers, Todd Martin, Erika Baldt, and Alex Moffett, to:

kmsintheus@gmail.com

Complete panel proposals of three speakers plus a chair, are welcome.

Deadline for abstracts:  30 October 2014

http://elizabethbishopat50.wordpress.com

CALL FOR PAPERS – DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 16 MAY 2014

ANNA KAVAN: HISTORICAL CONTEXT, INFLUENCES AND LEGACY

11th September 2014

A one-day symposium at the Institute of English Studies in association with Liverpool John Moores University Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History and Peter Owen Publishers

Anna Kavan’s publication history spans from her early novels under the name Helen Ferguson in the late 1920s and early 1930s to her last work which won Brian Aldiss’ prize for ‘Sci-Fi Novel of the Year’ in 1967.  Her own life story has been widely reported in magazine articles, book reviews and popular biography, but there has been little serious scholarly attention to her writing.  The often sensationalized focus on Kavan’s biography, particularly her adoption of her own fictional character’s name, her long-term heroin addiction, and her psychological difficulties, has overshadowed serious critical attention to her work.  Yet, her writing continues to be published in English and translation, to hold fascination for new generations of readers, and to interest or influence other writers and artists.  This symposium aims to bring together scholars with an interest in Kavan to promote an increasing academic focus on her work.  The day will be a forum for knowledge sharing, with the broad aims of historicizing Kavan’s work, situating her within the literary and intellectual context of her times, and charting her legacy as a writer.  The symposium will close with a public event in the evening at which leading contemporary writers will discuss Anna Kavan’s work in relation to their own writing.

The symposium will primarily focus on Kavan’s fictional writing, but also welcomes those working on her biography, her journalism, her little-studied artwork and her philosophical or intellectual influences.  Papers might include the following topics:

• Comparative readings of Kavan’s fiction with her contemporaries and the authors who have admired her since (e.g. Doris Lessing, J G Ballard, Anais Nin, Maggie Gee).
• Connections/differences between her writing as Helen Ferguson/ Anna Kavan.
• High Modernist influences on Kavan’s work.
• Readings of Kavan’s fiction that historicize her writing in the context of the Second World War, the Cold War and 1960s counterculture.
• Kavan’s theoretical or philosophical influences.
• Feminist readings and reassessments of Kavan’s work.
• Examination of the (post-)colonial aspects of Kavan’s fiction and journalism.
• Kavan’s engagement with visual cultures, including her own artwork.
• Studies of Kavan’s use of form (especially the short story) and narrative style (especially her distinctive uses of first and third person narrative).
• Theories of autobiography and fiction and their impact on the reception of Kavan’s life and work.
• Kavan’s writing of madness, asylum incarceration and opiate addiction.
• Kavan’s literary networks (e.g. her friendships with Rhys Davies, Kay Dick, Sylvia Townsend-Warner and others, and her associations with Cyril Connolly and Jonathan Cape).
• Issues of genre including interpretations of Kavan’s work as ‘Science Fiction’.
• Kavan’s journalism (in Horizon) and its relation to her fictional writing.
• Other writers’ engagement with Kavan and the legacy of her work.

Presentations should take the form of 20-minute papers. Please send proposals of no more than 300 words toinfo@annakavan.org.uk by 16 May 2014.  For further information visit http://annakavansymposium.wordpress.com/

Poetry has long constructed itself as an interface between word and image. At the turn of the twentieth century, Mallarmé and Apollinaire’s experiments with visual poetry launched a new investigation into poetry as image, shaping an area of modernist and avant-garde interest that would develop throughout contemporary poetics. Celebrating the interdisciplinary bent of the avant-gardes, this conference will examine the point at which poetry and image meet. Taking in the long twentieth century up to and including current practices, we will invite speakers to interrogate the nature and effect of works that are both word and image.

 

Areas that papers could explore include:

• ·       What does it mean to frame poetry as image or image as poetry?
• ·       The interdisciplinary poet-artist / artist-poet
• ·       The materiality of language
• ·       Where the visual meets the digital
• ·       The artistic and political potentials of visual poetics
• ·       Illustration
• ·       Collaborations between visual artists and poets
• ·       Typographic innovation as visual art practice
• ·       The printed page as canvas
• ·       The poetics of the moving image
• ·       Sound poetry scores

Please send abstracts of 300 words to modernismsucc@gmail.com by Friday 16th May. This symposium will take place in Tactic Gallery, Cork and will accompany the Word into Image exhibition of visual poetry. It will also coincide with the annual SoundEye Poetry Festival which runs from 11-13th July in the Guesthouse, Cork. Word into Image is kindly supported by Tactic Gallery, UCC History of Art Department and UCC Department of French.

UCC Modernisms Research Centre – Dr Kerstin Fest, Dr Sarah Hayden, James Cummins, Rachel Warriner

Date: Friday/Saturday 12/13th September 2014

Venue: University of Plymouth, Devon, UK

 

 

CFP-DORIS LESSING 2014-AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

European Network of Comparative Literary Studies (REELC/ENCLS) 6th Biennial

 

Congress. Organised in collaboration with CLAI (Comparative Literature

Association of Ireland)

Themes: “Longing and Belonging”

Places: Dublin City University and National University of Ireland, Galway

Dates: 24-28 August 2015

 

The notion of belonging has often been examined from the perspective of location and of the

politics of relations to space and culture. Literary studies have helped map out and interrogate the

representations of topographical belonging, creating new possibilities for interpreting individual

and collective images. Politics of relations also explore the notion of becoming, as attached to

belonging, and the conditions out of which actions are produced, experience is built and beliefs

emerge. Artists and characters may adhere or resist systems pertaining to spatially, historically or

culturally defined groups, bringing political considerations to the fore, which can in turn entail

stylistic innovation involving transmutation or hybridization of classical approaches.

Adaptation and rewriting (prose, film, graphic novels) can be the vehicles of such action. While

providing new readings of iconic texts, they are intrinsic elements of a cultural heritage which

actualises traditional ideas and representations. This is particularly the case with the treatment of

fairy tales whose new versions have been developing, whether addressed to children or to adults,

in graphic novels, films, stage performances, etc. These transformations involve moving the

location of the original plot and characters to new contexts (realistic, utopian, dystopian or

digital, for example) thus challenging the social or cultural baggage transmitted by canonical

texts over time. They also apply to musical traditions in which the evocation of ancestral places

is of essential importance regarding ideological and aesthetic criteria. Adaptation and rewriting

can indeed operate through songs (operatic or popular), which skilfully describe places,

provoking strong feelings of nostalgia in their listeners, especially if the singers, lyrics or musical

instruments present a certain significance for the audience, resonating with memories and

emotions attached to specific spaces.

Identities are constructed and contested in a wide variety of contexts. Distinctions between

identities, whether cultural or gendered, relate to a sense of belonging to a powerful centre vs an

opposite periphery or minority. These distinctions can either strengthen or undermine the

perceptions of individuals and groups (their auto- and hetero-images). Hierarchical barriers can

also be constructed between affiliations and with regard to the value of certain forms of

knowledge. Authors and artists have often disrupted claims of cultural or national superiority

when grounded in political, racial or geographical specificity. Identities can be refined or

transformed across time and space by both global and local events. However, as different

literatures have revealed, after a sense of liberation from monolithic political systems, nostalgia

can occasionally set in, ideologies having shaped conceptions of self and community. Longing

for an idealised past can prove as painful as longing for a promised land, and artists may find

themselves in sublimated exilic states while seeking either a new home and new identity or a

way to come home to a former identity.

The notions of longing and belonging therefore lend themselves to a comparative exploration

through different disciplines, such as: Geocriticism, Diaspora Studies, Migration Studies,

Imagology, Myth- and Folklore criticism, (Post-) Colonial Studies; Sexuality Studies, Women’s

Studies, Gender Studies, Masculinity Studies; Ekphrasis, Adaptation Studies, Intermedial

Studies, Reception and Reader-response Theory, Children Literature; Literature and

Anthropology, Literature and Science, Literature and Psychology, Literature and Philosophy,

Ethics in/and Literature.

All subjects related to the main theme of the congress are welcome. For instance, avenues of

investigation may include the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

· What fields belong to Comparative Literature or does Comparative Literature belong

 

to?

· Belonging to and/or rejection of schools of thought: Comparative Literature as

 

independent practice

· Expressions and manifestations of longing and belonging, and of longing to belong

· Places of (be)longing (fantasy, dream, imagination, virtuality, heterotopia, homeland,

cradle, home, club.)

· Belonging to a nation, group (patriotism, ethnicity, religion, school, subscription,

 

allegiance.)

· Limits imposed or labels attached to individuals and groups

· Forced belonging (subjugation, arranged marriages, colonization, slavery.)

· Perceptions/images/stereotypes of a place, nation, group

· Belonging as catharsis

· Longing for the other/longing for the self

· Belonging to a gender or sexual identity / denegation of same

· Perceptions/stereotypes of gender or sexual identity

· Belonging to a specific art form/ subversion of same

· Text (be)longing to/for image and vice versa

· Denunciation of belonging to a group (religious, political.) or to a community

(including an interpretive community)

· Exile, immigration, emigration and longing

· Possible worlds, digital worlds, and virtual escapism

· Past allegiance (nostalgia, anthropology, mythology, rejection of tradition)

· Longing for inclusion/refusal to integrate

· Being unable to belong/no longer wanting to belong

· Dreaming of belonging/reality and belonging

· Reception as the expression of a desire or rejection.

We welcome proposals for individual papers and for thematic panels. Please send your 300-word

proposals and short biographies to Brigitte Le Juez: Brigitte.lejuez@dcu.ie and Hans-Walter

Schmidt-Hannisa: h.schmidthannisa@nuigalway.ie by October 1st, 2014.
 

Congress registration fees (these will cover coffee-breaks and lunches):

1) Participants presenting a paper

– Early-bird: ?85 (till February 14, 2015, thereafter ?120)

– Student, independent scholar and retired academic: ?75 (till February 14, 2015, thereafter ?100)

2) Participants not presenting a paper:

– By July 25, 2015: ?60 (thereafter ?75)

– Local university students: ?20 (possibility to receive an attendance certificate)

The languages of the congress will be English, French and Irish. However, poster sessions may

be organised in any European language.

The congress takes place on the East and West coasts of Ireland. Cultural visits and events

will be organised in and between Dublin and Galway.

 

Ethnography and American Culture in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 1870-1920

Call for Papers

19th May 2014

University of Kent, Canterbury

Organiser: Dr. Michael J. Collins (University of Kent)

Plenary Lectures by Professors Nancy Bentley (University of Pennsylvania)

and Brad Evans (Rutgers, New Jersey)

 

Recent scholarship on the relationship between social science and the creative arts in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era USA has sought to question more traditional understandings of the era as the moment when scientific inquiry and artistic expression finally “broke” from one other. The perception that ethnography became a scientific discipline whose reach extended solely to universities and specialist periodicals is belied by the period’s rich and vibrant use of ethnographic materials and concepts in a huge variety of different artistic and cultural settings, including literature and mass-market periodicals (Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century), early film and photographic exhibitions, illustration, design, and architecture.

In other words, renewed attention has begun to be paid not just to the work of Gilded Age and Progressive anthropologists within their own institutional and disciplinary contexts, but how that work was diffused and circulated in the period’s popular culture. These questions of diffusion invariably raise further questions relating to the dangers implicit in the cultural appropriation, aestheticisation or marketisation of ethnographic subjects.

This one-day symposium will attempt to unite literary studies and print culture with intellectual history, anthropology, the history of science and visual culture studies in order to explore how mainstream media related to emergent social-scientific disciplines in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era United States. As such, we welcome proposals for 20 minute papers on any topics related to the themes and concerns of the conference.

 

Please send a CV, brief biography and an abstract of no more than 300 words to: ethnographyandamericanculture@kent.ac.uk by April 17^th 2014.

 

The symposium will conclude with the first British screening of a new version of the American photographer Edward Curtis’s important, 1914, silent feature film, In the Land of the Head Hunters (the first major motion picture to star Native North Americans) at the Gulbenkian Cinema on The University of Kent campus. Based on recent archival research, in 2008 a collaborative team led by Aaron Glass (now at the Bard Graduate Center), Brad Evans (Rutgers), and Andrea Sanborn (of the U’mista Cultural Centre in BC) oversaw a new restoration of the film that returned the film’s original title, title cards, long-missing footage, color tinting, initial publicity graphics, and original musical score—now thought to be the earliest extant original feature-length film score in America.

 

http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu/

 

Professor Brad Evans, who served on the team restoring the film, will be providing an introductory lecture. A Q&A will follow the screening.

 

 

Sponsored by The School of English, Centre for American Studies, and Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.