Please see below for a new Call for Papers for a fascinating-sounding conference on literary periodisation, to be held at All Souls College, Oxford on the 3rd of June 2014.\u00a0 Clare Bucknell, one of the organisers, writes:<\/p>\n
“We want to start an academic conversation about the categories in which scholars, critics, institutions and anthologies subdivide literary history, and we intend to scrutinise the kinds of social or disciplinary bias that underlie the boundaries of literary-historical study.\u00a0 We hope that the subject will be of great interest to Romantic scholars, as there are many provocative questions it might raise – for instance:<\/p>\n
– when does ‘late eighteenth-century’ become ‘Romantic’?<\/p>\n
– what does the institutional history of ‘the Romantic period’ say about the interests and biases of English as an academic discipline?<\/p>\n
– are certain genres and forms conceived to be characteristic of ‘the Romantic period’? If so, why – and what does this tell us about the thinking behind periodisation?”<\/p>\n
The full CfP is below; abstracts are due on February 1st.<\/p>\n
– – – – – – –<\/p>\n
PERIODISATION: PLEASURES AND PITFALLS<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n A one-day conference at All Souls College, Oxford, June 3rd 2014<\/em><\/p>\n Keynote Speaker: Professor James Simpson, Harvard<\/em><\/p>\n What do we mean by \u2018medieval\u2019?\u00a0 When does \u2018late eighteenth-century\u2019 become \u2018Romantic\u2019?\u00a0 What on earth is \u2018Early Modern\u2019?\u00a0 How did these categories come about in the first place?\u00a0 Papers are invited for a one-day conference on the advantages and problems of periodisation, which aims to interrogate the literary-historical categories that govern the way we organise, teach and think about literature.<\/p>\n We ask whether periodisation is a useful tool for segmenting the lengthy sweep of English literature into sensible sections for study, or whether it is a na\u00efve, narrowly historicist critical approach that risks making unhelpful connections between radically different types of texts.\u00a0 We question whether some types of periodisation are more useful than others (is \u2018the Tudor Period\u2019, for instance, a more fruitful designation than, say, \u20181100-1350\u2019?); we ask if periodisation is prone to entrenching scholarly prejudice against certain forms of literature; and we address the fact that some periods (for example, mid-eighteenth-century literature, Caroline literature) are much less studied than others (Romantic, Elizabethan, Modernist), and seek to interrogate why this might be.\u00a0 We are also interested in the role of the university in the debate over periodisation: why do certain institutions or critical schools organise literary history in different ways, and what do these differences say about the nature and progress of English as an intellectual discipline?<\/p>\n We invite 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers on any aspect of periodisation.\u00a0 Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:<\/p>\n \u2022 period boundaries: should \u2018boundary\u2019 mean \u2018division\u2019 or \u2018meeting point\u2019?<\/p>\n \u2022 periods of literature which have suffered comparative critical neglect, and potential reasons for this neglect;<\/p>\n \u2022 the study of English Literature in universities and the validity of periodising approaches;<\/p>\n \u2022 the history of periodisation: what kinds of literary histories have critics and writers produced in the past, and how do they differ to the habits of periodisation now current?<\/p>\n \u2022 political and economic factors: do these provide imperatives for the shaping of the canon?<\/p>\n \u2022 are certain genres and forms conceived of as \u2018characteristic\u2019 of particular periods?\u00a0 What does this say about the way in which periods are established?<\/p>\n \u2022 radical alternatives: if we choose not to organise literary history by \u2018period\u2019, what might we do instead?<\/p>\n Please send your abstracts to the conference convenors, Clare Bucknell and Mary Wellesley (clare.bucknell@all-souls.ox.ac.uk<\/a>\u00a0 and mary.wellesley.09@ucl.ac.uk<\/a>) by February 1st 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Please see below for a new Call for Papers for a fascinating-sounding conference on literary periodisation, to be held at All Souls College, Oxford on the 3rd of June 2014.\u00a0… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}