Romantic Circles Blog

Submissions are invited for “Byron and Modernity” an international conference, sponsored by the University of British Columbia, to be held in Vancouver at the Coast Plaza Hotel and Suites October 26-28, 2007.

Keynote speakers: Professor Christopher Ricks, Professor Jerome McGann, and Professor Tilottama Rajan

We welcome papers that explore the way Byron and Byronism have been interpreted since the Romantic period, in Byron’s reception through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the place of Byronism in fashion, popular, and print culture. But we are especially interested in papers that take Byron’s presence in modern culture as an opportunity to address wider questions surrounding modernity and modernism. If “the modern” marks the time when the subject left the safety of the local to experience the world, if modernism celebrates change itself as the driving force of global power, to what extent is Byron, the cosmopolitan wanderer and genius of self-promotion, an exemplary, if not pivotal figure of modernity? The Byron circle might be called the first avant-garde: what part did the figure of Byron play in other modern avant-garde movements or in the development of criticism, theory, and culture that followed them? Byron was a social critic and a fashion icon: his work straddles high and low culture, aristocratic pretension and bourgeois consumerism, the power of the mind and the experience of the body. What can his influence tell us about similar contradictions in modern poetry and literature? What might Byron’s presence in popular culture and, by contrast, his relative absence from critical culture tell us about culture generally in the modern world? We are less interested in Byron the man than we are in “Byron” the idea, a specter of art, power, and transgression that haunts modern consciousness.

Proposals of 500 words for 20 minute papers may be sent by email to: byron07@interchange.ubc.ca

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2007 (Original deadline: January 31, 2007)

Conference website: http://www.english.ubc.ca/PROJECTS/byron_conference

ImageText, an interdisciplinary comics studies journal, is pleased to announce the publication of their special issue on “William Blake and Visual Culture,” now available here.

“William Blake and Visual Culture” is edited by Roger Whitson and Donald Ault. It seeks to challenge divisions existing between comic, visual, and Romantic studies. The issue features essays from Arkady Plotnitsky, Nelson Hilton, Ron Broglio, Donald Ault, Esther Leslie, Matthew Ritchie and Roger Whitson, as well as original art by Joel Priddy and John Coulthart and an interview with Bryan Talbot.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Wordsworth-Coleridge Association invites proposals for its sessions at the Modern Language Association Convention in Chicago, Illinois, 27-30 December 2007. SESSION TOPIC: “Romanticism, Reading, and Translation: The Processes of Literacy.”

Essays should address the history, theory, representation, and practice of reading and translation, and the normative or transgressive roles of readers, writers, and translators in the British Romantic period. Abstracts by 15 March 2007 to James McKusick: james.mckusick@umontana.edu
The John Clare Society of North America invites proposals for its session at the 2007 MLA Convention. SESSION TOPIC: “John Clare in History.”

Papers on John Clare in relation to various histories: natural, literary, political, cultural. Abstracts are due by 15 March 2007 to Scott McEathron: McEath@aol.com

NOTE: All MLA program participants must be members of the Modern Language Association by 1 April 2007. (This MLA membership requirement can be waived for program participants who reside outside North America.) It would be helpful to us (in preparing program copy) if you would provide your full name and academic affiliation. For further information on the MLA Convention, go to: http://www.mla.org/convention