British Association for Modernist Studies - Website Designed and Developed by Callum LeithModernism/modernity is currently accepting review proposals for future issues and for “What Are You Reading?, a feature of the journal’s soon-to-be-launched Print-Plus platform. We encourage queries about forthcoming books in all fields related to modernism. In particular, we welcome proposals for review essays, gallery reviews and reviews of monographs. Please address all correspondence to Jennifer Renee Blevins at jblevins@email.sc.edu.
Dear Modernists,
We are delighted to announce the CFP for the Orphan Identities Symposium, and hope that you will be able to participate in the event.
Kind regards, Diane
Dr Diane Warren
Dr Alex Gray
Dr Jennifer Jones
In 1975, Nina Auerbach commented: “Although we are now ‘all orphans,’ alone and free and dispossessed of our past, we yearn for origins, for cultural continuity. In our continual achievement of paradox, we have made of the orphan himself our archetypal and perhaps only ancestor” (1975 p 416).
The literary orphan figure occupies a liminal position in culture. Poised on the margins of the family, examining the relationship between the influence of the past and the capacity for self-fashioning in the creation of identity, orphan figures prompt important questions about the relationship between the self, the family and the wider social matrix, and self and other in especial.
Forty years on from Auerbach’s influential essay, and in the wake of important new contributions to the debate from Laura Peters and David Floyd (our keynote speakers), it is timely to consider the roles played by literary orphans, and assess the ways in which they reflect and refract the concerns of their contemporaneous cultures.
The Orphan Identities symposium will take place at the University of Portsmouth on Saturday November 12th 2016.
Topics may include (but are not limited to):
fashioning orphan identity; the liminal nature of orphan figures; orphans and transportation/colonial narratives; the orphan as scapegoat; the orphan and modernity; the orphan as dangerous supplement; the therapeutic power of the orphan; the war child/refugee
We are particularly interested in papers that deal with literature post 1800. Abstracts of around 250 words should be sent to: orphan-identities@port.ac.uk by June 10th 2016.
Dr Diane Warren
Milldam LB 1.14, telephone 02392 842193
From Phyllis Lassner, Series Creator and Editor:
Please post this announcement and discount order flyer for a new book from “The Cultural Expressions of World War II” Series from Northwestern University Press
H. G. Adler
Life, Literature, Legacy
Edited by Julia Creet, Sara R. Horowitz, and Amira Bojadzija-Dan
H. G. Adler: Life, Literature, Legacy is the first collection of essays in English dedicated to the life and work of German-language author H. G. Adler. Among the international scholars of German, Jewish, and Holocaust literature and history who reveal the range of Adler’s legacy across genres are Adler’s son, Jeremy Adler, and Peter Filkins, translator of Adler’s trilogy, Panorama (The Journey). Together, the essays examine Adler’s writing in relation to his life, especially his memory as a survivor of the Nazi death camps and his posthumous recognition for having produced a Gesamtkunstwerk, an aesthetic synthesis of the Shoah. The book carries the moral charge of Adler’s work, moving beyond testimony to a complex dialectic between fact and fiction, exploring Adler’s experiments with voice and the ethical work of literary engagement with the Shoah.
The rediscovery of Adler is a boon to literary scholars of the twentieth century as he combines modernist innovation with first-hand testimony of Holocaust experience. He was a great influence on W.G. Sebald and this collection of essays will influence a wide range of scholarship.
Reminder: Deadline *30 January*
Call for Nominations
Election of Postgraduate Representatives on the British Association for Modernist Studies Executive Steering Committee
Nominees for two two-year postgraduate representative positions are sought from registered doctoral students who have completed their first year of study. The elected representatives will join Jamie Callison (Northampton) and Ellen Ricketts (Hull), who were elected at the beginning of 2015.
The roles involve regular attendance at committee meetings (two to three times a year), administrative support for BAMS events (notably the annual postgraduate training symposium and the postgraduate conference New Work in Modernist Studies), maintenance of the membership database, information dissemination, and contribution to BAMS’ online presence.
Candidates must be a member of BAMS; they can be nominated by another BAMS member or nominate themselves. The final selection will be made through an on-line election open to all BAMS members.
Candidates are asked to submit a brief biography as well as a 250-word proposal outlining their vision for the future of BAMS, their suitability for the role, and their envisaged contribution to the association. The name of the nominator, if there is one, should be included in the proposal. Applications should be emailed to Jeff Wallace no later than 30 January 2016.
To find out more about BAMS, and to join or renew your membership, please go to our website https://bams.ac.uk/membership/
Information about the positions can be directed to:
Jeff Wallace (Chair) (jwallace@cardiffmet.ac.uk)
Alex Goody (Secretary) (agoody@brookes.ac.uk)
or to the current postgraduate representatives:
Jamie Callison (Jamie.Callison@uib.no)
Sarah Chadfield (sarah.chadfield@rhul.ac.uk)
Sophie Oliver (sophie.oliver@rhul.ac.uk)
Ellen Ricketts (e.a.ricketts@2008.hull.ac.uk)
New British Library PhD Placement Scheme
A Call for Applications for PhD placements at the British Library is now open. We are really excited to be able to make 17 specially-selected placement opportunities available under this Call, based in areas such as Research Engagement, Corporate Affairs and Digital Scholarship, as well as across the Library’s specialist curatorial teams. These projects will appeal to researchers working across a wide range of disciplines/subject areas. All placement projects have appropriate training, supervision and support, as well as significant ownership responsibilities and opportunities for professional and personal development.
Full application guidelines, including profiles of all current placement opportunities, can be found on the BL website. The application deadline is 19 February 2016.
The Library is unfortunately not able to provide payment to placement students. We strongly recommends to HEIs that a PhD student given approval to undertake a placement is in receipt of a stipend – to a level at least equivalent to the RCUK national minimum doctoral stipend – for the duration of the placement.
Contact Research.Development@bl.uk for all queries or to be added to our mailing list.
Gayle Rogers and I are pleased to announce the launch of a new series published by Bloomsbury Academic titled New Modernisms. We’ve co-written the first book, Modernism: Evolution of an Idea and it is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers. This book concisely traces the development of the term “modernism” from its origin in the early twentieth century through its consolidation in anthologies and classrooms to its radical expansion in recent decades. We hope it can be that book that you hand to students when they ask, “what exactly is modernism?”
Our book will be followed in February by Peter Kalliney’s Modernism in a Global Context and then by several others, including:
Other books forthcoming in the series will focus on topics like gender, race, environments, and media. When complete, this this collection will offer useful guides to the complex array of work that has helped define and re-define modernist studies. All the books include critical bibliographies and a new website will soon feature sample syllabi, expanded bibliographies, and a glossary of key terms. For more information, visit the series website. You can download the first chapter for free if you’d like to get a sense of the book and the series.
Best wishes for this new year,
Sean Latham
Walter Endowed Chair of English
Editor, James Joyce Quarterly
Director, Oklahoma Center for the Humanities
a one-day symposium on air travel and interwar Britain
16 April 2016
The Aerodrome Hotel, Croydon Airport
London
In his seminal British Writers of the Thirties, Valentine Cunningham notes the ‘airmindedness’ of the decade; this one-day symposium aims at exploring the role held by flying in interwar Britain—actual, textual, material, cultural.
Held at Croydon Airport, a key site for aviation in interwar Britain, the conference will explore the texts and contexts that help to examine the impact of air travel on art, literature, film, space, perception and production.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
– The imagery of flight in poetry, prose, painting.
– ‘Airmindedness’
– Flights taken by individual authors, explorers, adventurers.
– Travel literature and its response to flight.
– The threat and reality of aerial bombardment.
– Airport architectures.
– Films featuring flying.
– The luggage and logistics of air travel.
Please send a maximum 250-word proposal by
18 January 2016 to
flyingthroughthethirties@gmail.com
Conference organisers:
Dr Michael McCluskey (UCL)
Dr Luke Seaber (UCL)
Dr Amara Thornton (UCL)
Dr Debbie Challis (Croydon Airport Society)
‘As you all know, the greatest feat, the most stupendous risk in human history is being undertaken this evening by a gentleman who prefers to remain known simply as the Pilot. His ambition is no less than to reach the very heart of Reality.’
W.H. Auden, The Dance of Death (1933)
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