Cross-colonial encounters and expressions of power in middlebrow literature and culture, 1890-1940
University of Reading, 8-10 September 2016
This conference is organised by the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, in collaboration with Professor Ehland of the University of Paderborn, with the intention of enabling a wide-ranging reappraisal of the position of middlebrow writing on the British Empire in its literary and historical contexts. Papers are invited that explore the literary as well as the socio-political role middlebrow writing and its markets and audiences played in the propagation and naturalisation, but also in the critique of the British Empire between 1890 and 1940. The conference will also be interested in the discussion of the generic proliferation of the imperial discourse in the middlebrow from children’s literature to romance and the adventure novel.
Abstracts should be no more than 250 words for 20-minute papers. The conference welcomes panel proposals for linked papers, and welcomes abstracts from independent scholars with existing publications on any of the conference topics.
Please send your abstract(s), which should include your institutional affiliation, past or present, and details of any relevant publications or papers given on the conference subject, to k.macdonald@reading.ac.uk , by Monday 29 February 2016. All authors will be contacted about their paper’s inclusion in the programme by mid-April, but if you need an earlier decision for funding application purposes, please let us know, with the deadline.