{"id":2879,"date":"2020-03-17T13:44:47","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T13:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2879"},"modified":"2020-03-17T13:44:47","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T13:44:47","slug":"call-for-papers-romantic-interventions-from-idealism-to-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2879","title":{"rendered":"Call for Papers: Romantic Interventions: From Idealism to Activism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

February 11-13, 2021, TU Dortmund University, Germany<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nProf.\nAngela Esterhammer, University of Toronto
\nProf. Peter Kitson, University of East Anglia
\nProf. Sharon Ruston, Lancaster University\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The era of Romanticism is commonly\nunderstood as a time of unrest and change, perceptibly impacting the lives of\nindividuals as well as collective entities across multi-faceted boundaries. In\n\u201cinterlocking interests\u201d, as Raymond Williams claimed in his classic Culture\nand Society<\/em>, \u201ca conclusion about personal feeling became a conclusion about\nsociety, and an observation of natural beauty carried a necessary moral reference\nto the whole and unified life of man\u201d (1958: 48). With the French Revolution at\nits centre, arguably the decisive historical moment of the era, certain structures\nof feeling<\/em> emerged in liberal and revolutionary circles on the European\ncontinent. As the breaking-apart of Europe’s ancien r\u00e9gimes<\/em> sparked\ndrastic changes on political and socioeconomic levels, Romantic thinkers sought\nto employ their texts and activities as contributions to a critical\nre-evaluation of the status quo. In a Wordsworthian manner, many Romantic poets\nunderstood themselves as prophets of the people, whose duty it was to intervene\nin dominant representational discourses and thereby challenge well-established\nhegemonic power structures. At the same time, however, Romantic movements must\nnot be understood as having solely gyrated around the intellectual efforts of\nthe elitist few. Fruitfully and mutually intersecting with the individual (and\nindividualised) endeavours of poets, philosophers, scientists, politicians and\nentrepreneurs, elements of (popular) culture in a more general sense, such as\nconsumer resistance, political cartoons, visual arts, fashion, aesthetics, or\ncultural rituals like the Grand Tour must also be taken into account to define\nthe emerging formations of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand the complex interplay\nof historical momentum, idealist visions of the future as well as Idealist\nphilosophical conceptions that probed into the conditions of existence per\nse<\/em>, and courageous activism, key concepts of cultural studies may offer\nvaluable tools for analysis. What we seek to establish with this conference is\nan understanding of the sociology of Romantic consciousness via cultural\nmaterialism as a practice to recreate the zeitgeist<\/em> of a historical\nperiod shaped by numerous forms of intervention. In contrast to approaches to\nthe Romantic Era that take their cue primarily from literary studies, we would\nlike to ask contributors to access the period via the methodologies developed\nby (British) cultural studies in order to consider Romantic interventions in a\npossibly new light. We therefore suggest to look at the decades before and after 1800 by way of\nconcepts like: representation, discourse, power, hegemony, articulation,\npopular culture, identity\/subjectivity, class, race, gender, age,\nproduction\/consumption, place\/space, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we encourage a broad interpretation of the theme\nof intervention, possible approaches may include the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n