Category: Postgraduate

MODERNIST COMMUNITIES

The inaugural international conference of the
French Society of Modernist Studies

25-26 April 2014
University of the Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
Paris, France

Keynote speakers:
Jessica Berman (University of Maryland)
Linnell Secomb (University of Greenwich)

Call for papers

The aim of this two-day conference is to foster discussion on communities in the modernist period. As discursive constructs and historical practices, communities constitute a privileged phenomenon from which to understand the political and ethical regime of modernist texts, as well as the actual forms of collective experience in which writers and readers were involved. More than a decade after Jessica Berman’s landmark work on “the politics of community” in modernist fiction, we seek to explore the various ways in which communities were configured across genres and artistic media, but also to acknowledge the grounds of their historical and cultural specificity. We hope that this will lead us to distinguish various versions of the communal, from the ideal to the empirical, from the utopian to the everyday, from consensus to dissensus.
Communities can be recorded at a symbolic as well as a material level, both inside and outside modernist texts themselves. We therefore encourage a variety of critical approaches, ranging from historicist and sociological, to aesthetic and philosophical. Through this critical diversity, we are particularly interested in investigating the historicity of modernist communities: how can we identify the historical singularity of modernist communal forms? How can we account for the changing scales, spaces and media of communal thinking in the modernist period? This emphasis on a historical being-in-common—what Jean-Luc Nancy defined as the community of the contemporary—can fruitfully be coupled with a critical reading of various later theories of community, from Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities” to Jacques Rancière’s aesthetic conception of “the common”. To what extent do modernist texts lead us to understand or challenge such theories? By taking a far-ranging approach to the concepts, forms, and historical practices of community, we hope to map out the plurality of this phenomenon, while recording its persisting elusiveness.
As the conference will inaugurate the creation of the French Society of Modernist Studies—Société d’Etudes Modernistes—, we seek to bring together scholars from all countries and hope to strengthen collaborations between French and international researchers.

Possible paper topics may include, but are not limited to:

– Communities across genres and literary forms
– Communities across artistic forms (painting, music, etc.)
– Writing, reading, and printing communities
– Academic communities and the institutional construction of modernisms
– Cultural communities and the ‘battle of the brows’
– Everyday communities: communal practices, communal occasions, communal emotions
– Utopian communities
– The places and spaces of community
– The temporalities of community
– National and transnational communities
– Technological and ecological communities
– Modernism and the discourses on community: international relations, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology, sciences, etc.
– Modernism and later theories of community (Benedict Anderson, Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, etc.)

Organisers: Vincent Bucher (University of Grenoble 3) and Caroline Pollentier (University of Paris 3)
EA 4398 – PRISMES (VORTEX)

Scientific Committee: Isabelle Alfandary (University of Paris 3), Jessica Berman (University of Maryland), Catherine Bernard (University of Paris 7), Vincent Bucher (University of Grenoble 3), Antoine Cazé (University of Paris 7), Claire Davison-Pégon (University of Paris 3), Catherine Lanone (University of Paris 3), Laura Marcus (University of Oxford), Axel Nesme (University of Lyon 2), Caroline Pollentier (University of Paris 3), Linnell Secomb (University of Greenwich).

Papers will be delivered in English.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short bio-bibliography to both organisers by 31 October 2013.
buchervincent@gmail.com
caroline.pollentier@hotmail.fr

Listening to Literature, 1900-1950
12-14 March 2014 – KU Leuven

Keynote
Julian Murphet
(University of New South Wales, Sydney)

This three-day conference seeks to survey the impact of aural media (phonograph, gramophone, telephone, radio) and other major sound events of the first half of the twentieth century on the literature of the period. Through in-depth analysis of the different ways in which modernist and avant-garde authors reflected on and incorporated sound and aural technologies in their writings, we aim to explore the literary soundscape between 1900 and 1950.
The first half of the twentieth century – “the age of noise” in the words of its contemporaries – is littered with events crucial to the history of modern aurality. The phonograph and its successor, the gramophone, enabled man to record and replay sound. Telephone and radio enabled long distance verbal communication. The combustion engine filled the big city with its incessant mechanical drone. And of course there were the two World Wars, whose aural impact – deafening bombings, nerve-shattering sirens, the rhythmic stamping of marching feet and the continuous drone of planes overhead – can hardly be overestimated.
This conference aims to explore the impact of these and other related events on the literary landscape of the period, looking for the answers to such questions as:

• How is sound represented? What techniques are used to represent sound?
• What kinds of sounds are represented and how do they compare? What function do the represented sounds fulfill within the literary work?
• Was the representation of sound altered by the introduction of new aural media such as the phonograph or telephone?
• How were the various aural media themselves represented? What is their function within the literary work? How are they used as a literary motif or device in the work of particular authors?
• How can we study sound within the literary work? How does fictional sound relate to actual sound?
• Are there substantial differences in the treatment of sound within the period, for instance between modernism and the avant-garde, but also between authors, genres, generations? And if so, how can they be explained?
• How does the literary representation of sound relate to that of the other senses? Do they fulfill different functions within the literary work?

We welcome both theoretical and case-based studies on these and other questions central to the mapping of the literary soundscape between 1900 and 1950. Proposals (in English) should be sent to ltlconference@arts.kuleuven.be by 1 August 2013. These should contain a 300-word abstract as well as a short bio listing contact and affiliation details.
The first day of the conference will cater specifically to postgraduate students, enabling young and promising scholars to present their research and collaborate with their peers.
This conference is organized by the Leuven-based research team MDRN. For more information, visit http://www.mdrn.be. If you have any further questions, please contact tom.vandevelde@arts.kuleuven.be or tom.willaert@arts.kuleuven.be.

Third international ESPRit conference

Backroom Business: The Production of Periodicals

10-11 April 2014
Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Proposals deadline: October 1, 2013

This conference seeks to explore every aspect related to the production of European periodicals, from the early eighteenth century to the present day. Papers could address issues of financing, sponsoring, editing, designing, advertising, printing and digitization. We are for instance interested in what Barbara Onslow called the “back-room workers”: the printers, typesetters, engravers and illustrators who are often invisible in periodical histories. We invite scholars to send in proposals for 15 to 20 minute talks on the above themes, both dealing with individual magazines and discussing wider trends, such as the evolutions in the production of periodicals. We especially look for papers that reach beyond national borders and challenge traditional literary-historical boundaries. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
 Editors and editing
 Financing and sponsoring
 Printing and digitization practices
 Photography, illustrations, and advertising
 Periodicals as producers of culture

Please send a 250 word proposal for a 15 to 20 minute presentation by August 15 to the conference organizers at esprit@let.ru.nl. A selection of papers will be published in a special issue of the future ESPRit e-journal.

Ordinary/Everyday/Quotidian

An International Two-Day Conference

The ordinary and the everyday are intuitively self-evident, yet notoriously elusive. Efforts to define “ordinary language” or “everyday practice” have preoccupied thinkers across many disciplines: philosophers, historians, sociologists, political theorists, geographers and critics of literature and the visual arts. And these subjects demand more attention from scholars working on race, class, gender and sexuality, as well as food studies and the digital and medical humanities. Yet existing efforts have rarely engaged in dialogue with their counterparts in other disciplines. We call for papers from scholars in all these fields to join in a spirited dialogue at an international, two-day conference to be held at the University of York, 26 and 27 September 2013.

Scholars in all disciplines are invited to ponder, celebrate, and critique the quotidian, ranging from the furtive pleasures of pop to the dubious delights of junk: “Does it glow at the core with personal heat, with signs of one’s deepest nature, clues to secret yearnings, humiliating flaws? What habits, fetishes, addictions, inclinations? What solitary acts, behavioral ruts?”

Confirmed events include keynote addresses by:

· Prof. John Roberts (History of Art, Wolverhampton)

· Dr. Jennifer Baird (Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck)

· Dr Bryony Randall (English, Glasgow)

It will culminate in a colloquium chaired by Prof Ben Highmore (Cultural Studies, Sussex) and featuring:

· Prof. Michael Sheringham (French, All Souls Oxford)

· Dr. Holger Nehring (History, Sheffield)

· Dr. Rupert Read (Philosophy, UEA)

· Dr. Michael White (History of Art, York)

· Dr. Neal Alexander (English, Nottingham)

What do the terms everyday, ordinary and quotidian mean at the beginning of the twenty-first century? This conference will confront head-on the challenges and opportunities presented by the interdisciplinary nature of such an enquiry.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to oeqyork2013@gmail.com by 16 August; general enquiries are also welcome. You can also visit our website at: http://www.york.ac.uk/modernstudies/conferences/oeq/

Katherine Mansfield and France

International conference organised by the Université Paris III—Sorbonne Nouvelle in conjunction with the Katherine Mansfield Society

19–21 June 2014

Guest speakers will include C. K. Stead and Gerri Kimber

2014 seems the ideal year to celebrate Katherine Mansfield’s lifelong attachment to France, and her passionate involvement with all things French: not just the language, literature and the arts, but the everyday world too, from recipes and customs to the contemporary socio-political context, transport, economics and of course the devastating impact of the war. France for Mansfield was a land of transit, a haven to escape to and a place of exile; it was an adopted home and a sad reminder of how far away those she loved were; life the other side of the Channel was sometimes a source of wonder and inspiration, at others the trigger for comic irony and bitter satire.

Mansfield’s biographers have minutely charted out her constant channel crossings in the years 1914–1923. Her letters, notebooks and stories all point to the different repercussions of France and French culture on her vivid imagination. Recent critical studies have explored both the story of Mansfield’s reception in France and the various influences French arts had on her own creative output. But the time now seems ripe to bring together scholars, researchers and students to try and piece together an overall picture of Mansfield in France and ‘une Mansfield française’.

Suggested topics for papers might include:

v Mansfield and French arts and literature: her reception in France; Mansfield as reader, critic and reviewer of French arts in Great Britain; her influence on contemporary and later French authors; translations and the publication history of her works in French.

v The French influence on Mansfield: French language and culture in her education and apprenticeship years; France as a setting for her stories; French life recorded in the journals in early story sketches; her readings of key French authors and their influence on her works; French aestheticism, fin-de-siècle and early-twentieth-century philosophy.

v Mansfield and French life and society: as journalist and eye-witness of war-torn France; a satirist of local habits and customs; a bemused observer of expatriate and émigré life; Paris and the French Riviera as the specific locations that have become so much associated with her work, but also French geographies of displacement, both real and affective.

v Mansfield, the polyglot, cultural ambassador and cosmopolitan: France as a step outside Englishness; forms of cultural otherness, alienation and renewal through the meeting and mixing of identities; language as empowerment and disempowerment; nationalism versus the political repercussions of border crossing; bilingualism; redefining the self as other; Mansfield the European.

v Mansfield and Frenchness as a means of thinking between: cross-dressing, role-play, borrowed identities, impersonation; travesty, but also Frenchness itself seen from within and without, from the privileged outsider’s point of view, the ‘devenir français’ from Mansfield’s perspective.

v Biographical, linguistic, literary, sociological, political comparative . . . all approaches are welcome in this endeavour to embrace Katherine Mansfield’s French life.

Our exploration of the various French avenues in her life, works and afterlife will take place in the heart of Paris, and time out will be programmed into the conference to enable all those who attend to obtain a very literal sense of place and setting. Possible Mansfield-inspired walks within Paris itself and additional excursions to the immediate environs will be suggested later.

The three-day conference will also include an alternative, intercultural approach to Mansfield’s French life in the form of a cello recital given by London-based cellist Joseph Spooner and New Zealand pianist Kathryn Mosley with a programme of early twentieth-century French music and works by Arnold Trowell.

Please submit abstracts of 250 words plus a bio-sketch of 50 words to the conference organisers : kminparis@gmail.com

Deadline for abstracts: December 31st 2013

Organisers:

Claire Davison, Caroline Pollentier, Anne Mounic, Anne Besnault-Levita

Paris 2014 Call for Papers 1

Devouring: Food, Drink and the Written Word, 1800-1945

Saturday 8th March 2014, University of Warwick

Keynote speakers:

Professor Nicola Humble (University of Roehampton)

Dr Margaret Beetham (University of Salford)

CALL FOR PAPERS

This one day interdisciplinary conference will explore the place of food, drink and acts of consumption within the textual culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The years 1800-1945 are marked by food adulteration scandals, the growth of the temperance movement, and significant reforms in the regulation and legislation of food standards, as well as the influence of the colonies on British cuisine and a relationship with food and drink made increasingly complex by wartime paucity and rationing. These changes are both precipitated and responded to in a vast array of textual forms, including periodicals, the press, recipe books, household management manuals, propaganda, literature and poetry. This conference will therefore engage with the intersections of food/drink cultures and the written word.

We are seeking papers which explore how food and drink were written, experienced and imagined during the period: as a commodity, a luxury item, a source of poison or nutrition, in its abundance or in short supply. We hope to attract all researchers who have an interest in the culinary cultures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including those working in the histories of medicine, art and food, as well as anthropologists, historians of the nineteenth century and war years, and those working in literary studies. By bringing together scholars from many disciplines, we hope to provide a space in which to open up dialogue about nineteenth and early twentieth century narratives of eating, drinking, consuming, and their worth, and to provide a timely examination of our relationship with food and drink at a moment when economic and ecological pressures herald a re-appropriation of the values of wartime thrift and Victorian domestic economy.

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:

•Representations of food and drink in specific texts and their wider implications.
•Cultures of eating, drinking and cooking.
•Social histories of food and drink.
•The uses of food and drink in the articulation (or challenging) of community, nation or empire.
•Food or drink as metaphor/trope/structural device.
•The relationship(s) between reading and eating or drinking.
•The role of food and drink in cultural constructions of domestic space.
•Perspectives from ‘fat studies’/‘fat feminism’.
•Gendered practices of food and drink consumption.
•Food and drink in medical/psychiatric discourse: alcoholism, eating disorders, compulsive behaviour.
•The cultural legacies and/or persistence of Victorian and early twentieth century cultural imaging of food and drink.
•Recipe books, household management manuals and aspirational food.
•The narrating of gluttony or hunger.
•Textual representations of farms, breweries, pubs and restaurants.

Applicants should note that papers may also be considered for inclusion in a possible publication resulting from the conference.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words, accompanied by a brief biographical note of no more than 100 words, should be sent to devouring2014@gmail.com by 31st October 2013.

This conference is being organised by Mary Addyman, Laura Wood and Christopher Yiannitsaros (University of Warwick).

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/food/

http://devouring2014.blogspot.co.uk/

University of Birmingham, 27th June 2013

Keynote speaker – Dr Matthew Rubery, Queen Mary University of London

How did the rapid period of industrialisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries help to shape societies and lifestyles in the West? What types of social changes, movements and developments characterise this time period? This interdisciplinary postgraduate conference, in affiliation with the Centre for the Study of Cultural Modernity and hosted by the College of Arts and Law, seeks to explore the various ways in which this century was one of ‘motion’, in every sense of the word. The conference title seeks to encapsulate both the uncertainty and upheaval of this period as well as the physical and cultural movements that occurred at this time. We invite papers addressing these themes from postgraduate researchers and early-career academics working on this period from a variety of backgrounds.

Abstracts of 250-300 words for 20 minute papers along with a short biographical note of no more than 50 words should be sent to pgculturalmodernity@contacts.bham.ac.uk by 17th May 2013. For a list of potential topics that papers might cover, see the full Call for Papers on our website: http://pgculturalmodernity.wordpress.com.

Information about the Centre for the Study of Cultural Modernity is available here: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/culturalmodernity/index.aspx

Information about the Schools comprising the College of Arts and Law is available here:  http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/university/colleges/artslaw/index.aspx

You can keep up-to-date with information about our conference through our Twitter account @pgculturalmod and at http://www.facebook.com/pgculturalmod.

in:flux 1845-1945: A Century in Motion
College of Arts and Law
University of Birmingham

Twitter: @pgculturalmod
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pgculturalmod
Website: http://pgculturalmodernity.wordpress.com

Katherine Mansfield Society Postgraduate Day

‘Katherine Mansfield and her Circle’

23 November 2013 at Birkbeck, University of London

Keynote speaker: Dr Andrew Harrison

Hosted by the Katherine Mansfield Society in association with Birkbeck, University of London, this exciting one-day international symposium, the first of its kind, will bring together emerging modernist scholars to present and discuss new research relating to both Mansfield and her contemporaries. We are delighted to announce our keynote speaker for the day will be Dr Andrew Harrison, Director of the D. H. Lawrence Research Centre, University of Nottingham.

Proposals for 15-minute papers are invited from postgraduates. Directions might include discussion of newly-discovered texts; circulation of texts and modernist magazines; materiality; genre; class; the everyday; the fantastic; non-literary arts; philosophical and theoretical approaches; World War One; illness; bohemianism; the post/colonial; the visual arts and the theatrical; fashion; influence.

Please send 200-word proposals and a biographical sketch to

kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org by 1 August 2013

Latest information will be posted on our website at: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/2013postgraduateday

The event is free to KMS members. Non-members: £15

An unwaged /student membership to the KMS costs just £20 and offers considerable benefits, including an annual copy of Katherine Mansfield Studies, the society’s prestigious yearbook, published by Edinburgh University Press. For further details and how to join, go to our website: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org

Organised by Aimee Gasston (Birkbeck, University of London) and Chris Mourant (King’s College London)