Women's Writing in Britain 1660-1830 (UK) (10/31/02; 7/15/03-7/17/03)

CFP: Women's Writing in Britain 1660-1830

This conference, jointly organized by the University of Southampton English Department and Chawton House Library, will take place 15-17 July 2003.

In the last two decades the study of women writers and their careers in this period has become a particularly rich field of work, and the range of women whose writing now receives critical and historical attention has expanded exponentially. As it has it has done so, the issues raised by women's writing have come to be seen as key to the early shaping of our tangled modernity. The conference will reflect on---and debate---new directions for research in the field.

Responding to the rising interest in the role of these women thinkers and writers, the conference will also speak to the legacy and afterlife of work by 18th-century women writers, highlighting especially its remembrance and reinvention through film and television adaptation as well as its analysis in biography, literary criticism, and social history.

Possible themes could include: biography; bluestockings; print culture; public spheres; consumption; scandal; sexualities; empire; sensibility; the woman of letters; feminism; patriotism; politics; men and masculinities; networks; radicalism; anti-slavery and racial thinking; gardens and gardening; manners; morals; motherhood; marriage; patronage; education; class and authorship.

Papers on all questions of adaptation for the large and small screen are welcome. We hope that some sessions will look at the framing questions of the construction of literary history and the changes in critical debate on this crucial period of women's cultural production. Interdisciplinary papers which look at the social and cultural environments and at material culture in the period are also very welcome.

The conference will also include keynote talks and plenary panel discussions.

Deadline for proposals: October 31, 2002
(please note the new deadline date)

Proposals for papers or panels should be no more than two pages. Papers should be devised for a 20-minute format. Please send a hard copy of your proposal to the English Department, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom. Email copies may be sent to the conference email address: wwb2003@soton.ac.uk. Enquiries about the conference or about proposals can be sent either to the conference email address or directly to Cora Kaplan, ck1@soton.ac.uk.