Registration is now open for Modernism and the Moral Life, a one-day symposium in Manchester on Friday 30th May. Details of the event, including the programme, can be found on the conference website: http://modernismmorallife.wordpress.com. Keynotes are by Jay Bernstein and Esther Leslie. Please email Ben Ware and Iain Bailey at morallife@gmx.co.uk for any further details.
Category: Uncategorized
CFP: COSMOPOLITANISM, AESTHETICISM, AND DECADENCE, 1860-1920
* DEADLINE APPROACHES* March 3rd2014
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 17-18 JUNE 2014
STEFANO EVANGELISTA – JONATHAN FREEDMAN – MICHÈLE MENDELSSOHN
Over the past twenty years, the term “cosmopolitanism” has been the focus of intense critical reflection and debate across the humanities. For some, it represents a potential remedy for oppressive and antagonistic models of national identity and a means of addressing the ethical, economic, and political dilemmas produced by globalisation. Others consider it a peculiarly insidious form of imperialism, and argue that it advocates an untenable ideal of a privileged, rootless observer, detached from — and disposed to romanticise or commodify — very real injustices and inequalities. Meanwhile, the “transatlantic” has emerged as a popular critical framework and field of inquiry for historians and literary scholars. But the “transatlantic” is also sometimes perceived as a problematic category insofar as it can serve to reinforce the narrow focus on Anglo-American culture that the “cosmopolitan” ideal aspires to overcome.
Aestheticism and decadence, which flourished as broad artistic tendencies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, speak directly to the issues at stake in contemporary debates about “cosmopolitanism” and “transatlanticism”. This is firstly because they evolved out of transnational dialogues between artists, writers, and critics. But it is also because aestheticism and decadence tended to celebrate an ideal of a disaffiliated artist or connoisseur whose interests ranged freely across history, language, and culture, and who maintained an ironic distance from the conventional determinants of identity. Over the last two decades, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century aestheticism and decadence have become established and extremely lively areas of research in the fields of literary studies, cultural studies, and art history. Our conference aims to bring together established as well as emerging scholars in these fields, and to explore how the attractions and problems of “cosmopolitanism” illuminate, and can be illuminated by, current scholarly debates about aestheticism and decadence.
Plenary Speakers:
Dr Stefano Evangelista (Trinity College, Oxford)
Professor Jonathan Freedman (University of Michigan)
Dr Michèle Mendelssohn (Mansfield College, Oxford)
Possible topics for papers include, but are not restricted to:
Border crossing/flânerie/tourism/expatriatism
Aestheticism/Decadence and the Ideals of World Citizenship/Literature
Cosmopolitan Communities and Identities
Cosmopolitan Forms and Formalisms
The Poetics of Cross-Cultural Influence/Translation
The Politics of Aestheticism, Decadence, and/or Cosmopolitanism
Networks of Artistic and Scholarly Exchange
Anti-cosmopolitanisms: Nationalism, Philistinism, and Xenophobia
Visual Culture and the Consumption of Art
Salons, coteries, and clubs
Print culture and the circulation of texts beyond national borders
Exile, Hospitality, Assimilation, and Strangers
Consumerism and Mass Culture
Elitism, Democracy, and Culture/Kultur
Transatlantic Fashion and the Circulation of Commodities
The ethics of Aestheticism, Decadence and/or Cosmopolitanism
World Religions, Alternative Spiritualities, and Cosmopolitan Secularisms
Regional Writing/Forms of Localism/Homelands
Cosmopolitan Detachment/Aesthetic Disinterest
Decadent/Aesthetic Cities
The aesthetics of particularity/universality
The pathologisation of Decadence/Cosmopolitanism
Transatlantic Celebrity/The Cult of the Artist
We will provide four fee-waiving places at the conference: two are reserved for graduate students who wish to attend and serve as conference reporters, and two are reserved for early career researchers (i.e., graduate students or scholars who have recently completed a PhD but do not currently have a supportive institutional affiliation) who wish to deliver a paper and would otherwise struggle to attend. If you would like one of these fee-waiving places, please write to us and briefly explain (in fewer than 500 words) how the conference relates to your research.
Please send proposals (of 500 words or fewer) as pdf or Word attachments to cosmopolitanism.conference@gmail.com by March 3 2014.
CFP: Anna Kavan Symposium
11th September 2014
Institute of English Studies, London
ANNA KAVAN: HISTORICAL CONTEXT, INFLUENCES AND LEGACY
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 30 April 2014. For further information visit http://annakavansymposium.wordpress.com/
via David Bradshaw at the Faculty of English, Oxford
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
AHRC Doctoral Studentship in English Literature – The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh.
Applicants are sought for a three-year, fully-funded Studentship (including both fees and living costs) to work towards a DPhil (PhD) in the Faculty of English, University of Oxford on the AHRC project The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh. The Studentship will commence in October 2014 and is open to UK nationals, or EU nationals who have resided in the UK for 3 years or more. The successful applicant will normally have achieved a Master’s degree with distinction (or equivalent) in English Literature or a relevant subject, but does not necessarily have to be a Waugh specialist at the commencement of the Studentship.
The Project
The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh (CWEW) is an AHRC-funded project jointly led by Professor Martin Stannard (University of Leicester) and Professor David Bradshaw (University of Oxford), in collaboration with seven project partners including the Evelyn Waugh Estate and the Humanities Research Center, Texas. The project will produce the first scholarly edition of the complete writings of Evelyn Waugh, with Alexander Waugh as General Editor and OUP as publisher. CWEW will include a very large quantity of Waugh’s previously unpublished letters and personal writings as well as the writer’s novels, short stories, biographies and ephemera. The project is likely to form the largest scholarly edition of a British author to date. Publishing begins in 2016, to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Waugh’s death. The project blog may be viewed at: http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/waughandwords/
Nature and Scope of the Doctoral Studentship
The Studentship is focused on one of the project’s central areas of enquiry: Waugh’s inter-war travel writing. There is currently no scholarly edition of any of Waugh’s travel books. The Student’s supervisor will be editing two of them, and the Student will be examining the whole cultural and bibliographical context of all five of the inter-war texts with a view to producing a book from the thesis that could be submitted to OUP as a companion volume to the edition. He or she will also be invited to co-edit the proceedings of the project’s international conference in 2015.
Waugh wrote six travel books, publishing five in the 1930s. This decade is increasingly regarded as a golden age of travel writing and the Student will be poised to investigate not only Waugh’s books but also his numerous travel essays, and his many letters written about and during the course of his travels, and to examine their relation to travel books written by his friends and acquaintances such as Robert Byron and Graham Greene, as well as other inter-war exponents of the genre. Research questions to be addressed could be:
- In what sense does Waugh reconfigure the genre of travel writing?
- How fictionalised are his accounts of the Mediterranean, Ethiopia, British Guiana and Mexico?
- What themes spill into the travel writings from his fiction and vice-versa?
- In what sense does the cultural history of these writings inform the cultural context of the 1930s as a whole?
This DPhil will be a precursor of the renewed critical interest in Waugh which the Edition is expected to trigger. It will be one of the first critical works to interpret the mass of new materials the Edition will reveal and the Student will have access to a vast resource of unpublished letters etc. by and about Waugh.
Supervision and Support
The Student will be attached to the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. He or she will be supervised by Professor David Bradshaw, and will also work closely with the project’s Principal Investigator, Professor Martin Stannard, and Research Associate, Dr Barbara Cooke, who are both based at the University of Leicester.
In Oxford, the Student will have access to the Bodleian Libraries, with their superb specialist collections. The Humanities Division, and English Faculty offer extensive research and teaching training programmes, taking students through from research methods, to job
interviews, public engagement, and applying for research grants. The Student will be encouraged to take courses throughout their period of study. Oxford offers a wealth of relevant research seminar series which run throughout the year, in addition to numerous
interdisciplinary series, and conferences. The Student will be encouraged to take advantage of these academic offerings, but also to gain professional training through working with the project team in public engagement activities, and giving papers at or organising conferences.
Further Information
If you would like to discuss any aspect of the project informally, please contact Professor Bradshaw at: david.bradshaw@worcester.ox.ac.uk or Dr Cooke at: bc144@leicester.ac.uk.
If you would like discuss the application process please contact the Oxford English Graduate Office at: graduate.studies@ox.ac.uk.
TO APPLY
Applicants must apply by Friday, 28 February 2014 using the graduate application form available at:
http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/index.html
Completing the form:
- The Programme of Study is RESEARCH | 000592 | DPhil English
- You must clearly state ENGL Waugh Studentship for the Departmental Studentship Applications reference on page 6 of the application form.
Applications must include:
- 3 academic references
- Relevant transcripts
- Either two pieces of work of 2,000 words apiece, or a single piece of 4,000 words (please note that it is stated in the Graduate Admissions application guide that you should submit 2 pieces of 2,000 words, however the Faculty of English accept a single piece of 4,000 words and staff at the Admissions Office are aware of this).
- CV
- Research Proposal of around 2 pages – this should also outline your academic interests, prior research expertise, if any, in Waugh studies, and explain how your interests and experience make you a suitable candidate for this Studentship.
Further information on the graduate admissions criteria may be found at:
http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/prospective-graduates/admission/selection-criteria
At the time of your application, please also e-mail graduate.studies@ell.ox.ac.uk to inform us that you have submitted an application for the above Studentship.
Closing date: Friday, 28 February 2014.
Interviews of short-listed candidates will be conducted in mid-March.
Applications already submitted for the DPhil English programme:
If you have already applied to the DPhil in English programme, you do not need to submit a second application in order to apply for the Waugh Studentship. If you wish to be considered for the Studentship, please register your interest by contacting graduate.studies@ell.ox.ac.uk and also attach a revised research proposal relevant to the Studentship. Applications for the Studentship will be considered separately.
If you have any queries about the application process, please contact:
graduate.studies@ell.ox.ac.uk
TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE STUDENTSHIP
You cannot hold this award in conjunction with any other significant Studentship (eg. an AHRC award). If you are offered and wish to accept an alternative award, you must let us know as soon as possible.
The award is subject to your continued enrolment and satisfactory progress on the course; and to continued and satisfactory progress relating to the one day’s research assistance as part of the Studentship.
Applicants will be admitted as Probationary Research Students and will be subject to the standard procedures and arrangements for transfer to DPhil. status. If they are unsuccessful in transferring to DPhil. status as laid down in the Examination Regulations, the Studentship funding will cease.
The maintenance grant will be paid in three termly installments (each year) direct to the recipient’s bank account, at the beginning of each academic term. It is the recipient’s responsibility to ensure that the Faculty has up to date account details for payment.
All data supplied by applicants will be used only for the purposes of determining their suitability for the post, and will be held in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the University’s Data Protection Policy.
KEELE UNIVERSITY
BIRKBECK COLLEGE, LONDON
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
2 AHRC funded PhD Studentships
The Dorothy Richardson Editions Project
The Richardson Editions Project (REP) is an AHRC funded project to produce scholarly editions of 3 volumes the collected letters and 7 volumes of the collected fiction of the pioneering modernist writer, Dorothy Richardson, including her long thirteen volume novel, Pilgrimage. The volumes will be published by OUP. The REP is a cross institutional project based at Keele University, Birkbeck College, London, University of Birmingham, and University of Oxford. The PI is Scott McCracken (Keele) and the Co-investigators are Deborah Longworth (Birmingham), Laura Marcus (Oxford), and Joanne Winning (Birkbeck). Two AHRC funded PhDs are attached to the project, one at Birkbeck College and one at University of Birmingham.
PhD studentship 1: Dorothy Richardson’s Correspondence and Modernist Networks
Supervisor: Joanne Winning, j.winning@bbk.ac.uk
Department: English and Humanities
Institution: Birkbeck College
Modernism can be characterised, uniquely amongst periods and fields of literary and artistic production, as a set of radical aesthetic movements structured around a material network of practitioners, facilitators and patrons. While scholars have demonstrated how such networks enabled women to participate in literary production, the networks themselves have yet to be fully theorised. This PhD project seeks to map and theorise the question of gender in relation to modernist networks through the case study of Dorothy Richardson, who despite significant modernist production comparable to other major figures in the field of modernism, such as James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Katherine Mansfield, has remained a marginalised figure. However, as Richardson’s letters and fiction demonstrate, her lines of connection within the modernist network were manifold and diverse. This PhD project will aim to rethink such connections in relation to both an understanding of female patronage and editorial control in the modernist field and through models of networks of female friendship and support.
PhD studentship 2: A Genetic Study of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage
Supervisor: Deborah Longworth, d.l.longworth@bham.ac.uk
Department: English
Institution: University of Birmingham
This doctoral project in genetic criticism will use Dorothy Richardson’s letters, notes, manuscripts, typescripts, and editions to ask key questions about the writing process that resulted in the various editions of her long novel Pilgrimage. The PhD will go beyond the importance of the correspondence as just a biographical resource to use the letters as key documents for understanding the historical and material circumstances of the process of composition of Richardson’s fiction. A genetic approach is particularly appropriate to Pilgrimage, which consists of thirteen volumes and was forty years in the making. Not only was it unfinished at her death, but it was arguably inherently unfinishable, resisting narrative closure. With its emphasis on the writing process, genetic criticism opens up for study Pilgrimage’s unusually long and overlapping period of composition and publication. The doctoral project will examine the writing process in relation to the changing circumstances and historical events across which the text and its constituent books were produced, paying attention to the shifts in form and structure that occur across the different Chapters and editions. A genetic approach also promises to illuminate Richardson’s practice of interweaving art and life in Pilgrimage, and the ways in which she drew upon but also concealed her own autobiography for its composition. It will make an important contribution to the study of how we might reconstruct Richardson’s writing process.
Duration and Eligibility
The studentships will begin in September 2014 and are for 3 years duration.
We are looking for outstanding candidates. Applicants should have a strong honours degree and a Master’s in English.
The studentship funding for 3 years is as follows:
Fee waiver: ;at UK/EU levels £3,900
Stipend of £13,726 per annum; with London weighting £15,726
The closing date for applications is 21 February 2014.
Applicants are strongly advised to discuss their interests with the PI of the REP, Scott McCracken and/or their prospective supervisor.
Please liaise with Scott McCracken for advice on the project: s.mccracken@keele.ac.uk
Or contact the supervisors
Joanne Winning: j.winning@bbk.ac.uk
Deborah Longworth: d.l.longworth@bham.ac.uk
Full details and application procedures can be found here.
Categories
The New Age Art Show
The New Age Art Show (displayed at the MSA Conference in 2006) is now available online as an Omeka exhibition. This resource explores artistic debates surrounding “modernism” and “modernity” in The New Age Magazine between 1910 and 1914. The exhibition is open and free to all at: http://newage.omeka.net/exhibits/show/newage
The Literature section of The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism is seeking contributors to write short essays on Léon-Paul Fargue, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Arthur Symons.
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism is an online comprehensive resource that will provide definitions and essays on terms associated with modernism. All entries will be peer-reviewed, edited, and appear as signed contributions in the REM. Entries will be due November 1, 2013.
Please contact Christopher Bush (Northwestern University): c-bush@northwestern.edu.
Call for Contributors to Film Section of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism (REM):
Editorial Board: Rahul Sapra (Subject Editor), Aaron Gerow, Juan Antonio Suarez.
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism is an online comprehensive resource that will provide definitions and essays on terms associated with modernism. The REM presently seeks contributors to write entries on FILM and MODERNISM. All entries will be peer-reviewed, edited, and appear as signed contributions in the REM.
Visit the following link for a list of Available Entries and instructions for submission:
http://remodernism.wikispaces.com/home
Please contact the Managing Editorial Advisor for the Entry with a short CV. The deadline for submitting the entries is July 15, 2013. (You MUST use the email address of the Managing Editorial Advisor responsible for the entry. The email of the Managing Editorial Advisor is provided next to the entry). If you interested in contributing, but are unable to meet the deadline, then please contact the Managing Editorial Advisor for any possible assistance.
£20 off each book with the flyer below.
This series challenges traditional literary interpretations by taking an empirical approach to modernist writing: a direct response to new documentary sources made available over the last decade. Informed by archival research, and working beyond the usual European/American avant-garde 1900-1945 parameters the series reassesses established images of modernist writers by developing fresh views of intellectual backgrounds and working methods.
Categories
MSA 2013: Registration Open
Dear Colleagues,
The 15th annual conference of the Modernist Studies Association, entitled “Everydayness & the Event,” is fast approaching. We’ve received a phenomenal number of excellent applications, and are currently looking forward to hosting over 500 delegates from around the world at the University of Sussex between August 29th and September 1st 2013.
We’re very pleased to announce that registration is now open.
You can find information about registration and other aspects of the conference – satellite events, keynotes, accommodation, and travel – on our conference website:
http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa15/index.html.
If you missed our deadlines for seminar, panel, and round table proposals, it is not too late to become formally involved in this year’s conference. There remain two avenues for taking part:
Seminar Sessions:If you aren’t familiar with the seminar format, it is a lively and original forum unique to the Modernist Studies Association: 25 seminars on a wide variety of topics are now posted on-line (see: http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa15/seminars.html). Those who sign up to join those seminars will be asked to circulate a short paper to all participants prior to the conference. These papers will then form the basis of a group discussion that is scheduled during the conference proper. No proposal is necessary.
“What Are You Reading?” Sessions:You can join a “What are you Reading?” session when you register on-line for the conference by simply naming a scholarly book you’d like to present; conference coordinators will then include you in a discussion slot alongside other scholars. For more information, see: http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa15/wayr.html.
Please feel free to attend as a speaker or a listener – all are welcome. And please do not hesitate to get in touch with us atmsabrighton@gmail.com with any concerns or queries.
Cordially,
Sara Crangle
Conference Coordinator
(on behalf of a committee involving the University of Sussex and Queen Mary, London)
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