Call For Papers

 



Call for Papers

The Graduate School for Humanities at the University of Bristol is pleased to announce its forthcoming Postgraduate Conference ‘Imagined Spaces: Literature and Environments,’ due to take place on Wednesday April 29th 2015 at the University of Bristol.

Keynote speaker: Professor David Morley, University of

Warwick

The conference will build on recent space and place studies in literature and culture questioning the spatial relationship between humans and our environment. We want to explore how emerging literary ecology studies are opening up new interdisciplinary ways of mapping space.

Broadly, we will examine the relationship between texts and their “locatedness” in space, opening discussion on issues such as globalization, travel, eco-criticism, spatial poetics, imagination, memory, and mapping.

We imagine space as a diverse spectrum and we hope to see discussion of traditionally ‘green spaces’ opening up to their prismatic potential.

Questions to consider include: What is the significance of regional literature? How do books and texts travel through space and place? How do imaginative places shape us? How do urban and rural environments affect human experience and identity? How are modes of mapping influenced by special experience? How is space performed and how does it ‘perform’ us?

We are currently accepting 200-300 word abstracts for individual papers on any aspect of imagined spaces. Presentations of papers must not exceed 15 minutes.

We particularly welcome papers on the following subjects:

 Performing Space and Performed Spaces

 Cultural Memory & Identity

 Lives of Specific Cities

 Regionalism & Regional Literature

 ‘The Travelling Book’: how books travel through time and space

 Mappings: Place and Cartography

 Imaginary and Mythical Place: children’s and young adult literature

 ‘Prismatic Environments’: eco-criticism today

 Waterways and Seas: navigations & narratives

Please note that this approach is not limited to these subjects or literary narratives. We also welcome interdisciplinary and collaborative papers.

Please submit your abstract as a Word doc along with your institution, paper title and a brief biography to imaginedspacesbristol@gmail.com by 9th March 2015.

Start the conversation @imaginedspaces.