Reminder: Essay Collection on Thomas Hardy’s Short Stories (9/7/2012)

Hardy’s short stories have had little attention as compared to his novels and poetry. Therefore, I am organizing a volume of previously unpublished essays and seek articles of 6,000 to 8,000 words on any aspect of Hardy’s short stories which help deepen our understanding of his use of the genre. Proposals may address a story individually or the stories as collected in the volumes Wessex Tales (1888), A Group of Noble Dames (1891), Life’s Little Ironies (1894), A Changed Man (1913).

Key themes and topics might include:

Implications of periodical publication;

Readership of individual stories and/or collected stories;

Use of sensationalism;

Use of humor;

Emphasis on class and cultural issues;

Importance of music;

Gender relations;

Use of setting;

Use of supernatural, mystery, mythical aspects;

Use of religion;

Emphasis on community relations and mores;

Use of narrative form

Please send proposals of up to 500 words, for articles of between 6,000-8,000 words, by 7 September 2012 to Juliette B. Schaefer: schaefej@ohiodominican.edu Ohio Dominican University (614) 251-4667. Proposals should include the article’s working title, the author’s academic affiliation, and a 100-word biography.

Inquiries are welcome. I will aim to inform authors that they have been selected for the volume by the second week of October. 

CFP: 20th International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival (3/31/2012; 8/18-26/2012)

20th International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival

Dorchester, UK, 18-26 August 2012

We are soliciting papers from Hardy scholars around the world for the Twentieth International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival which will take place in Dorchester, UK from 18-26th August, 2012. Proposals should take the form of an abstract not exceeding 250 words max for papers of 20 minutes duration. These will be delivered in chaired parallel sessions throughout the week as part of the academic program of lectures, seminars, talks and the postgraduate symposium. Proposals may address any aspect of Hardy’s life, work and thought but we are particularly keen to encourage papers focusing on the following areas:

• Hardy and Genre (particularly the short story)
• Hardy and the Visual and/or Plastic Arts
• Hardy and Intertextuality
• Hardy and Cultural Heritage
• Wessex and the wider world
• Hardy and international politics
• International responses to the work of Thomas Hardy
• Hardy’s influence on poets, writers and musicians (including popular musicians) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

Proposals should be addressed to: ‘Call for Papers’ – ( The Thomas Hardy Society) Dr. Jane Thomas, Department of English University of Hull, East Yorkshire HU6 7RX

Email: j.e.thomas@hull.ac.uk

All submissions will be read and adjudicated by an academic panel.

The closing date is 31st March 2012.

The best of the papers given at the Conference will be eligible for publication in the peer-reviewed Thomas Hardy Journal appearing in Autumn 2012. Conference delegates contributing to the panels will be required to register for the Conference and Festival (‘Day Rates’ can be negotiated) and will be responsible for finding their own accommodation, which they are advised to do as soon as possible as accommodation is likely to be scarce in August in view of the Sailing Olympics.

A small contingency fund is available to assist accepted speakers who are not affiliated to an Institute of Higher Education or who might require financial assistance to attend the Conference and Festival. Decisions will be made by the adjudicating panel on a case by case basis.

Call for Applications: PhD studentship on Hardy and Education (3/9/2012)

Great Western Research and National Trust 

fully-funded Doctoral Studentship
Thomas Hardy and Education Ref: 945 

(application deadline 9th March 2012; studentship to begin October 2012)

The primary aim of this doctoral studentship is to ask how the study of Hardy can be taken beyond the academic research community. Focusing particularly on young audiences, but also on other learning groups, the project is interdisciplinary and in part practice-based, drawing on the research methods of English studies, history and education. It will involve some practical work in schools as well as with the National Trust and Dorset County Museum learning groups and the student will be required to develop and disseminate relevant, original research in the field. The student will also be expected to undertake up to six hours per week voluntary work from March to October each year at one of the Hardy properties in Dorset (birth place cottage or Max Gate) and will work with other parties in order to ensure the wider understanding both of Hardy and his work and of his importance to the cultural life of the South West region as well as more broadly.

The University of Exeter (Centre for South West Writing and Centre for Victorian Studies, College of Humanities, in consultation with Exeter Graduate School of Education), in conjunction with the National Trust and in collaboration with the University of St Andrews and the Hardy Country Steering Group (among which current partners include Dorset County Museum (DCM), Dorset County Council, Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and the Thomas Hardy Society) has been awarded funding from Great Western Research (GWR) for this three-year doctoral research studentship on Thomas Hardy and Education.

For further details please see: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/studying/funding/award/?id=945

Reminder: 20th International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival (3/31/2012; 8/18-26/2012)

20th International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival

Dorchester, UK, 18-26 August 2012

We are soliciting papers from Hardy scholars around the world for the Twentieth International Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival which will take place in Dorchester, UK from 18-26th August, 2012. Proposals should take the form of an abstract not exceeding 250 words max for papers of 20 minutes duration. These will be delivered in chaired parallel sessions throughout the week as part of the academic program of lectures, seminars, talks and the postgraduate symposium. Proposals may address any aspect of Hardy’s life, work and thought but we are particularly keen to encourage papers focusing on the following areas: 

• Hardy and Genre (particularly the short story).
• Hardy and the Visual and/or Plastic Arts.
• Hardy and Intertextuality.
• Hardy and Cultural Heritage.
• Wessex and the wider world.
• Hardy and international politics.
• International responses to the work of Thomas Hardy
• Hardy’s influence on poets, writers and musicians (including popular musicians) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

 Proposals should be addressed to:

‘Call for Papers’ – ( The Thomas Hardy Society) Dr. Jane Thomas,

Department of English University of Hull,

East Yorkshire HU6 7RX

Email: j.e.thomas@hull.ac.uk 

All submissions will be read and adjudicated by an academic panel.  The closing date is 31st March 2012.

The best of the papers given at the Conference will be eligible for publication in the peer-reviewed Thomas Hardy Journal appearing in Autumn 2012. 

Conference delegates contributing to the panels will be required to register for the Conference and Festival (‘Day Rates’ can be negotiated) and will be responsible for finding their own accommodation, which they are advised to do as soon as possible as accommodation is likely to be scarce in August in view of the Sailing Olympics.

A small contingency fund is available to assist accepted speakers who are not affiliated to an Institute of Higher Education or who might require financial assistance to attend the Conference and Festival. Decisions will be made by the adjudicating panel on a case by case basis.

Additional Information: http://www.hardysociety.org/index.php/society-conference

CFP: Fourth International Postgraduate Symposium on Thomas Hardy (3/31/2012; 8/18-26/2012)

Fourth International Postgraduate Symposium on Thomas Hardy, at the 20th International Thomas Hardy Conference & Festival, Dorchester, UK, 18-26 August 2012

Proposals are invited for papers on any aspect of the life, work and thought of Thomas Hardy for the fourth International Postgraduate Symposium on Hardy which will take place in Dorchester, 18-26 August 2012, as part of the 20th International Thomas Hardy Conference & Festival.

Decisions will be made by the Symposium Convenors Professor Roger Ebbatson, Lancaster University, and Dr Angelique Richardson, University of Exeter. Proposals of 250 words (max) for papers of 15-minute duration should be sent to hardy-pgs@exeter.ac.uk by 31 March 2012.

A small bursary will be offered to successful applicants to assist with the cost of attending the conference, and conference fees will be waived. Reduced rates will be offered to postgraduates wishing to attend the conference but not giving papers. This is a unique opportunity to share and debate ideas on Hardy with other new and established scholars. A selection of these papers will be published in the peer-reviewed Thomas Hardy Journal. All attending postgraduates will be expected to join the Thomas Hardy Society at a reduced subscription rate.

Conference delegates (including speakers) are responsible for finding their own accommodation and are advised to do so as soon as possible as accommodation is likely to be scarce in August in view of the Sailing Olympics (29th July to 11 August). Accommodation queries can be directed to Rebecca Welshman, the Thomas Hardy Society Student Representative, University of Exeter, hardy-pgs@exeter.ac.uk

CFP: "Global Hardy," cluster/special issue of Literature Compass (7/1/2012)

Literature Compass CfP: Global Hardy 


“The point of cross-cultural comparison is not to reify the reassuring opposition between two distinct identities but to force each side to ask: could we understand ourselves otherwise in the other’s terms?” (908). Hon Lam, Ling and Dahlia Porter. “Hybrid Commodities, Gendered Aesthetics, and the Challenge of Cross-Cultural Comparison: A Response to Moretti’s ‘The Novel: History and Theory’” 7.9 (2010)


Literature Compass invites submissions of articles of 5,000 words (excluding notes and bibliography) to a cluster/special issue on Global Hardy. Submissions will be peer reviewed through Literature Compass’s normal scholarly channels. The issue will develop a historical perspective and, in keeping with the Global Circulation Project (http://literature-compass.com/global-circulation-project/), it will focus on areas outside Europe and North America. Exploring the reception and circulation of Hardy it will look at ways in which Hardy's ideas have been received, and circulated, globally - Japan, for example, has a Hardy society older than Britain's - asking why Hardy has been, or is, so popular outside Europe and North America. 


Submissions should be sent to Dr Angelique Richardson at A.Richardson@exeter.ac.uk by 1st July 2012, for final submission in December 2012.


The Global Circulation Project is a global map and dialogue on how key Anglophone works, authors, genres, and literary movements have been translated, received, imitated/mimicked, adapted, or syncretised outside Britain, Europe, and North America, and, conversely, how key works from outside these areas have been translated, received, imitated/mimicked, adapted, or syncretised within Anglophone literary traditions. It asks, what forms of intertextuality, reception, etc. are generated through cultural contact? Guo Ting's article on Byron in China http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2010.00727.x/full  (contactA.Richardson@exeter.ac.uk for a copy if you are not at a subscribing institution) offers an example of the scope of the Global Circulation project.


All submissions must include full scholarly apparatus for notes (we follow MLA style, with in-text references and a Works Cited). We apologize in advance to the scholarly community that at this time we are only able to consider submissions and responses in English; this may change as the dialogue and network grow.

Because our intellectual priority is to promote a global circulation of ideas in the present as well as to study such circulations in the past, we ask our readers to read differently, to welcome the difficulty of reading unfamiliar inflections and entering unfamiliar critical frames. For, even as articles are published in English, we practice an editorial policy flexible enough to foster communication across languages and scholarly traditions. Our goal is to allow differences in style and approach to be heard, as much as is possible, across linguistic and cultural differences, so as to generate new international dialogues.


More information on Literature Compass can be found here: http://literature-compass.com/ 

The Hardy at Yale II Conference (6/9-12/2011)

The Hardy at Yale II Conference, sponsored by the Thomas Hardy Association and the Yale Center for British Art,  is now less than two months away.

Plenary presentations include:
Professor Penny Boumelha (Victoria University of Wellington) - "Hardy's Displacements"
Professor George Levine (Rutgers and New York University) - "Hardy's 'inward turn': From Mindless Matter to the       Realities of Mind"
Professor Herbert Tucker (University of Virginia) - "At the Bottom Line: How Hardy Tries Conclusions"
Professor Keith Wilson (University of Ottawa) - "The Epistolary Hardy: Volume Eight of The Collected Letters"

Other invited speakers include Dr. Linda Shires (Yeshiva University), Dr. Anna Henchman (Boston University), Dr. Gillian Forrester (Yale Center for British Art), Dr. Angelique Richardson (University of Exeter), Dr. Phillip Mallet (St. Andrews University), Prof. Pamela Dalziel (University of British Columbia), Dr. Jane Thomas (Hull University), Dr. Judith Mitchell (Victorian University), and Dr. Rosemarie Morgan (St. Andrews University).

Selected sessions include "Hardy, Empire and the Metropole," "Hardy and the Visual," "Embodied Hardy," "Hardy and the Ambivalences of Science," "Ecocritical Hardy," and "Jude the Pessimist, Jude the Optimist."  For a complete version of the conference program, and for registration information, please visit the conference website at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ttha/hay/index.shtml.

Everyone is welcome, and we look forward to seeing you in New Haven from June 9 to June 12.
Registration due May 27.