Category: Postgraduate

Members of BAMS are cordially invited by the Ezra Pound Society to participate in its session organised for the Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 in Louisville. The session considers Pound’s poetry in connection to his cultural and political activities, as well as his relationships to other writers in that turbulent decade.

Please send your 300-word abstract to convenors Roxana Preda and Justin Kishbaugh at ezrapoundsociety@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk

OMG XVIII – Durrell & Place: Translation, Migration, Location

Vancouver, BC | 14-17 May 2014

OMG XVIII – Durrell & Place: Translation, Migration, Location

Following on the Durrell 2012 centenary celebration in London hosted by the British Library and Goodenough College, the 18th biannual conference of the International Lawrence Durrell Society will take place in Vancouver, British Columbia, at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Papers and panels on all aspects of Durrell’s works or those of his milieu are welcome. Paper and panel proposals related to “place” are particularly encouraged. Relevant themes may include Durrell’s position as a writer during the collapse of the British Empire, the politics of place in his various foreign residences (Argentina, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Egypt, etc.), the spatial turn or cultural field in criticism, shifting national boundaries in his works and across his life, or the various translations across languages and locations in Durrell’s work.

In addition to paper and panel proposals, the conference will include seminars for the first time. Seminar papers will be shared prior to the conference, and seminars themselves will be dedicated to discussion and the development of a particular critical theme. Seminar themes related to Durrell’s position in literary studies, the classroom, or in relation to other literary movements are encouraged.

DETAILS & DEADLINES

The conference organizers welcome the submission of short abstracts (250 words) with a short biography (50 words) for proposed PAPERS or COMPLETE PANELS by 30 November 2013. Proposals for complete panels should include an abstract for the panel as a whole with the names, titles, and biographies of each presenter.

For the first time, the ILDS will include seminars in the conference. Seminars will meet for 3 hours and include a maximum of 6 participants whose papers will be read by the group prior to the conference—seminar leaders will guide the discussion of each paper and the overall seminar theme. Proposals from seminar leaders should be submitted by 31 October 2013, and accepted seminars will be listed by 15 November 2013 for registration. Seminars that consider Durrell’s works in relation to his contemporaries or milieu are particularly welcome, as are professional seminars focused on pedagogy, curricula, or the discipline.

All submissions should be sent electronically through the online forms:

OMG XVIII – Durrell & Place: Translation, Migration, Location

British Waters and Beyond:

The cultural significance of the sea since 1800

Call for papers

Royal West of England Academy, Queen’s Road, Bristol

Monday May 12th, 2014

Coinciding with a major exhibition – Power of the Sea (April 5 – July 6th) – the Royal West of England Academy is hosting an interdisciplinary one-day symposium in partnership with Oxford Brookes University and Leeds Metropolitan University.

Power of the Sea explores the aesthetic sensibilities of the sea, celebrating its qualities through observed, naturally occurring phenomena, as well as drawing upon the rich cultural legacy of narratives, metaphors and allegories with which it is associated. Work by contemporary artists will be shown alongside that of 19th and 20thc century British painters (including Turner, Constable, John Brett and Paul Nash), a fertile period of artistic expression embracing Romanticism, naturalism and abstraction.

Since the beginning of the 19th century, the sea has been an important focus for painters and writers who relished the challenge of working directly from nature, often in inhospitable conditions. Some have made scientific studies of the movements of the waves; others have concentrated on the human costs of storms at sea, either in their direct effects on the shipwrecked or in their impact on those left behind on shore. Such work has gained a new urgency in recent years with concerns about climate change and rising sea levels.

This symposium aims to expand on the themes of the exhibition encompassing the wider context of the seas around the British Isles. While the centre of gravity will remain the visual arts, and the arts of Britain in particular, we welcome papers that will consider the conceptualisation of the sea and the ocean from an interdisciplinary perspective.

This symposium seeks to create dialogue between practising artists, curators, writers, academics and students from disciplines including visual arts, cultural theory, geography, history and literature.

Proposals for papers are invited on the following broad themes but not limited to these:
•The sea as metaphor and cradle for the imagination: cultural representations by artists, writers and musicians
•Maritime communities: past, present and future
•Gendering/sexing the sea
•From coast to coast: the sea as a place rather than a space; its power to link communities and to transform social relations
•Trade and empire: the politics of the sea, travel, migration, slavery and nomadism
•The science of the sea: renewable energy and climate change; ecology and erosion

Proposals: 250 word abstracts for 20 minute papers, by December 31st 2013

Proposals should be emailed to janette2.kerr@uwe.ac.uk

For further information please contact:

Joel Edwards, RWA Learning and Resources manager: joel.edwards@rwa.org.uk or

Dr Robert Burroughs, School of Cultural Studies and Humanities, Leeds Metropolitan University: r.m.burroughs@leedsmet.ac.uk

Royal West of England Academy, Queen’s Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1PX

Modernism and the Moral Life

A Symposium

Manchester, 30 May 2014

No engagement with modernist works can fail to be struck be their ethical intensity. Often considered solely in terms of a radical break with aesthetic norms and existing socio-cultural institutions and relationships, modernism also demonstrates a marked preoccupation with questions of how to live, the nature of the good, the status of the subject and the social bond, and the relation between ethics, aesthetics and politics. While recent years have seen a renewed interest in the relationship between modernism and ethics, much of the work in this field has tended to (i) conceive of ethics simply in terms of an openness to ‘otherness’, or (ii) suggest that modernism signals an ‘overcoming’ of the ethical as such. While important work has been carried out from these perspectives, this conference invites participants to radically rethink the ways in which it is possible to understand the relation between modernism and the moral life. We invite papers that investigate the multiple ways in which the struggle to lead a human life is undertaken and articulated within modernist cultural production. At the same time, we are interested in the ethical and political investments—whether declared or presupposed—of modernism’s ongoing critical reception. Of particular interest, therefore, are papers which reflect upon their own historical moment and connections with current political, economic and ecological debates.

The conference is designed as an opportunity for rigorous interdisciplinary exchange between the spheres of critical theory, cultural studies, philosophy, politics, literature, sociology, history, theology, the visual arts, architecture and music. We invite proposals for papers from scholars whose work looks to analyse the connections between aesthetics, ethics and politics in any and all of these fields. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

– the relation between style, form and ethics in modernist cultural production
– the extent to which ‘life’ entails or excludes the ‘moral’ in modernist thought
– theory and/as ethics
– ethics and langauge
– modernism and revolution
– utopia
– gender, ethics and critique
– modernism, vision and ethics
– violence and war
– after ‘otherness’
– the limits of liberal humanist approaches to literature and ethics
– perfectionism, authenticity, sincerity, bullshit, narcissism, hedonism, elitism, virtue, duty, commitment, loss of sensitivity, happiness, loneliness, anxiety, inequality, humanism and anti-humanism in the discourses of modernism

Proposals for twenty-minute papers should be directed to the convenors, Ben Ware and Iain Bailey, at morallife@gmx.co.uk, by 10 January 2014. Participants will be notified by 20 January.

1913 / the art of noises / 2013
University College Cork
13 December 2013

The year 1913 was a momentous one in art. From Proust to Stravinsky, Duchamp to Malevitch, Modernism was to recalibrate the way the world was seen; Futurism offered to change the way the world was heard. One hundred years ago, Luigi Russolo published his manifesto, L’arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noises), announcing a new way not only of conceiving music but also how we would hear the world around us. In the future, noises would be the material of music. Russolo’s manifesto, and his strange intonarumori devices, have been fantastically influential in the intervening century, and this event seeks to capture some of those connections, in both discursive and performative modes.

Possible themes:

New sounds; new instruments; celebration of speed, war, or the modern city in music, visual art and poetry; Futurist manifestos; music and sound art; connections to other artworks and artists in 1913; influences of Futurism in music and other arts.

Proposals are invited for papers on any of the suggested themes, in the form of an abstract or outline of not more than 300 words.

Proposals are also invited for art works – especially performances, installations, sound sculptures, compositions – which are specifically designed to address the themes suggested. The proposal should outline the projected artwork, and should be accompanied by an abstract of not more than 300 words that details the relationship of the work to the themes of the symposium.

The proposer will be responsible for supplying all equipment/special resources required for the creation or display/performance of any accepted proposal.

Please send your proposal by 5pm, October 31st by email to phegarty@french.ucc.ie. The selection panel will meet as soon after this date as possible and inform selected contributors forthwith.

Here by the sea and sand: A symposium on Quadrophenia

Sponsored by the Centre for Modernist Studies, University of Sussex

Falmer, Brighton

11 July 2014

Keynote Speaker: James Wood (Harvard University, The New Yorker)

“I don’t want to be the same as everyone else. That’s why I’m a mod, see?”

Released 40 years ago in 1973, The Who’s ambitious concept album Quadrophenia portrays the 1964 August bank holiday battle between mods and rockers on Brighton beach from the perspective of the young disillusioned pill-popping mod protagonist, Jimmy. Franc Roddam’s iconic film of the album was made in 1979, and in the past year the Who has toured playing the entire album. Quadrophenia, the album, was a comparative failure when released, but has since been recognised by many critics as their masterpiece. Quadrophenia is a complex and multilayered work, combining some of the Who’s most arresting music with a variety of other art forms (Townshend’s story in the liner notes, Ethan Russell’s compelling book of photographs). It is embedded in two sites, London and Brighton, as well as in many more personal and political histories.

The Centre for Modernist Studies at Sussex has decided to live up to its name by holding a one-day symposium on the album and film. Quadrophenia fans, please consider joining us.

Possible topics include but are not limited to: the representation of Mods; Mod revival(s) and nostalgia; Englishness; class; violence; crowds; work; adolescence; masculinity; the relationship between the film and the album; the concept/double album; the accompanying book of photographs and Townshend’s text; influences; legacies; Quadrophenia as rock opera; Quadrophenia in the Who’s oeuvre; the self-conscious representation of the Who’s history; the performance of it in the current moment; pills; punks; godfathers; sea; sand; rain; bellboys.

Paper proposals that mix personal with critical, historical, musicological, or cultural-studies analyses are welcome.

Please send short (300-500 word) proposals for 15-20 minute papers and a short bio of yourself to Pam Thurschwell, p.thurschwell@sussex.ac.uk by 1 December 2013.