Registration Open: Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes (4/10-11/2014)

Registration Open

University of Liverpool

April 10-11, 2014 

“Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes”

History is not like a bus-line on which the vehicle changes all its passengers and crew whenever it gets to the point marking its terminus. Nevertheless, if there are dates that are more than conveniences for the purposes of periodisation, August 1914 is one of them. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire.

At the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, how useful is it to think about the Edwardian era as ending decisively in 1914? Indeed, how helpful have conventional boundaries of periodisation been in our understanding of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century British culture? Rather than viewing ‘the Edwardian’ as a fixed and isolated historic moment, this conference seeks to open up new ways of thinking about the premonitions and echoes of the Edwardian age. Just as the 1880s and 1890s can be interpreted as ‘proto-Edwardian’, so too the Edwardians can be seen to have anticipated many issues and debates of the present day, from coalition governments to trade unions, immigration acts to women’s rights.

The committee invites papers on any aspect of British culture, based on varied temporal definitions of the ‘Edwardian period’.  Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• Proto-Edwardians: how far back can we trace the spirit of the Edwardian age? The Victorians? The Regency? Beyond?
• 21st Century Edwardians: to what extent have the social reforms, political activities and cultural developments of the Edwardian era shaped contemporary society?
• Between Two Wars: what is the relationship between war and the Edwardians? How significant is it that the Edwardian era is frequently perceived to have been bookended by the Boer War and the First World War?
• Old versus new: how helpful is Samuel Hynes’s observation that the Edwardian era was one in which ‘old and new ideas dwelt uneasily together’? Was the Edwardian period an unusually heterogeneous cultural moment?
• Uncanny Edwardians: how did the Edwardian preoccupation with séances, emergent psychological theories, and theological developments, influence their perception of themselves in terms of their historical moment?

“Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes” is the second annual conference of the Edwardian Culture Network.  The two-day conference will be hosted by the University of Liverpool on April 10th-11th 2014. For more about the conference and the Edwardian Culture Network, see www.edwardianculture.com

Reminder: Edwardian Culture Network 2014 "Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes" (12/2/2013; 4/10-4/11/2014)

Call for Papers: "Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes"
University of Liverpool
April 10-11, 2014
Deadline: December 2, 2013

"Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes" is the second annual conference of the Edwardian Culture Network.  The two-day conference will be hosted by the University of Liverpool on April 10-11, 2014. 

At the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, how useful is it to think about the Edwardian era as ending decisively in 1914? Indeed, how helpful have conventional boundaries of periodisation been in our understanding of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century British culture?

Rather than viewing ‘the Edwardian’ as a fixed and isolated historic moment, this conference seeks to open up new ways of thinking about the premonitions and echoes of the Edwardian age. Just as the 1880s and 1890s can be interpreted as ‘proto-Edwardian’, so too the Edwardians can be seen to have anticipated many issues and debates of the present day, from coalition governments to trade unions, immigration acts to women’s rights.

The conference organizers invite papers on any aspect of British culture, based on varied temporal definitions of the ‘Edwardian period’.  Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Proto-Edwardians: how far back can we trace the spirit of the Edwardian age? The Victorians? The Regency? Beyond?
• 21^st Century Edwardians: to what extent have the social reforms, political activities and cultural developments of the Edwardian era shaped contemporary society?
• Between Two Wars: what is the relationship between war and the Edwardians? How significant is it that the Edwardian era is frequently perceived to have been bookended by the Boer War and the First World War?
• Old versus new: how helpful is Samuel Hynes’s observation that the Edwardian era was one in which ‘old and new ideas dwelt uneasily together’? Was the Edwardian period an unusually heterogeneous cultural moment?
• Uncanny Edwardians: how did the Edwardian preoccupation with séances, emergent psychological theories, and theological developments, influence their perception of themselves in terms of their historical moment?

Please send 300 word abstracts to edwardianculture@hotmail.co.uk by no later than Monday December 2, 2013. For more about the conference and the Edwardian Culture Network, see www.edwardianculture.com

CFP: Victorian and Edwardian Lives and Letters (1/31/2014; 7/10-11/2014)

University of Hertfordshire and Knebworth House

July 10-11 2014

January 31, 2014

Keynote speakers:

• Professor Jane Ridley, University of Buckingham (Bertie: A Life of Edward VII; The Young Disraeli; The Architect and his Wife: a life of Edwin Lutyens).
• Professor Katharine Cockin, University of Hull (The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry; Women and Theatre in the Age of Suffrage; Edith Craig (1869-1947)) 

Submissions are invited for this two-day conference to be held at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield and at Knebworth House, the country home of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-73). The conference will focus broadly on the topic of life-writing in its different manifestations and the challenges posed by Victorian and Edwardian figures from across the literary, theatrical, political and social scenes. How, for example, were Victorian lives recorded by Victorian contemporaries? How did a Victorian subject go about writing an autobiography or memoir? What was/is the relationship between life-writing and creative writing? Given that the fields of biography and autobiography regularly undergo re-evaluation as notions of identity, selfhood and `suitable' subjects shift, how do those working on nineteenth century topics in the twenty-first century approach them. Where is the field going?

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers for a range of topics. These might include, but are not limited to:

• Challenges in recovering both well-known and forgotten subjects
• Celebrity and infamy
• Working with letters and diaries
• Creative writing's use of Victorian and Edwardian lives
• Shifting reputations
• The legacies of earlier biographers (e.g. Froude, Strachey)
• New developments in the field
• Teaching life-writing

The conference includes a tour of Knebworth and conference dinner at the house. Residential accommodation is at the University of Hertfordshire.

Please email 300 word abstracts or enquiries to the conference organisers, Rowland Hughes, Andrew Maunder and Janice Norwood atVictorianLives@gmail.com. The closing date for abstracts is January 31, 2014.

CFP: Edwardian Culture Network 2014 "Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes" (12/2/2013; 4/10-4/11/2014)

Call for Papers: "Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes"

  

At the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, how useful is it to think about the Edwardian era as ending decisively in 1914? Indeed, how helpful have conventional boundaries of periodisation been in our understanding of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century British culture?

Rather than viewing ‘the Edwardian’ as a fixed and isolated historic moment, this conference seeks to open up new ways of thinking about the premonitions and echoes of the Edwardian age. Just as the 1880s and 1890s can be interpreted as ‘proto-Edwardian’, so too the Edwardians can be seen to have anticipated many issues and debates of the present day, from coalition governments to trade unions, immigration acts to women’s rights.

The conference organizers invite papers on any aspect of British culture, based on varied temporal definitions of the ‘Edwardian period’.  Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Proto-Edwardians: how far back can we trace the spirit of the Edwardian age? The Victorians? The Regency? Beyond?
• 21^st Century Edwardians: to what extent have the social reforms, political activities and cultural developments of the Edwardian era shaped contemporary society?
• Between Two Wars: what is the relationship between war and the Edwardians? How significant is it that the Edwardian era is frequently perceived to have been bookended by the Boer War and the First World War?
• Old versus new: how helpful is Samuel Hynes’s observation that the Edwardian era was one in which ‘old and new ideas dwelt uneasily together’? Was the Edwardian period an unusually heterogeneous cultural moment?
• Uncanny Edwardians: how did the Edwardian preoccupation with séances, emergent psychological theories, and theological developments, influence their perception of themselves in terms of their historical moment?

"Edwardian Premonitions and Echoes" is the second annual conference of the Edwardian Culture Network.  The two-day conference will be hosted by the University of Liverpool on April 10-11, 2014.  Please send 300 word abstracts to edwardianculture@hotmail.co.uk by no later than Monday 2nd December 2013. For more about the conference and the Edwardian Culture Network, see www.edwardianculture.com

Registration open: Beyond the Garden Party: Rethinking Edwardian Culture (4/12-13/2013)

Beyond the Garden Party: Rethinking Edwardian Culture

University of Durham & University of York

12th – 13th April 2013

Registration now open!

"It must have seemed like a long garden party on a golden afternoon – to those who were inside the garden. But a great deal that was important was going on outside the garden: it was out there that the twentieth-century world was being made. Nostalgia is a pleasing emotion, but it is also a simplifying one; to think of Edwardian England as a peaceful, opulent world before the flood is to misread the age and to misunderstand the changes that were dramatized by the First World War" (Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind).

More than forty years since Samuel Hynes wrote these words, many accounts and representations of Edwardian England still invoke the image of the garden party. Building on recent critical reappraisals, such as The Edwardian Sense (Yale 2010), and coinciding with the major Edwardian exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art, this interdisciplinary conference seeks to examine this notion, and to explore the alternatives. Was there such a thing as a distinct Edwardian culture; if so, what were the forces behind it?

This two-day conference will be held at the University of Durham (Friday 12th April) and the University of York (Saturday 13th April), and features a series of papers and panel discussions on subjects ranging from railway posters to chivalric costumes, censorship to science fiction, and spiritualism to neo-Edwardian films. Our confirmed keynote speakers are Dr. Ysanne Holt (Northumbria) and Dr. Simon J. James (Durham).

The total cost of the conference, including lunch on both days and a wine reception to close, is £10.

To register, please visit the online store.

Alternatively, you can follow the links on www.edwardianculture.com/conference.

For further information please email edwardianculture@hotmail.co.uk.

‘Beyond the Garden Party: Rethinking Edwardian Culture’ is generously supported by the Centre for Modern Studies and the Humanities Research Centre (University of York), and Event Durham (University of Durham).