Inaugural Conference of Palgrave Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture
Lancaster University, UK
21–22 April 2017
-Plenary speakers: Marian Aguiar (English, Carnegie Mellon University, USA), Kat Jungnickel (Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London)
-Film screening and Q&A with Director Andrew Kötting
-Roundtable on “New Directions in Mobilities Studies” featuring: Nick Dunn (Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University), Ruth Livesey (English, Royal Holloway, University of London), Pete Merriman (Geography, Aberystwyth University)
This two-day conference provides a forum for scholars working at the intersection of literary and cultural studies and mobilities theories to explore the cultural representation of mobilities across geographical regions and historical periods. The conference offers a timely space in which to discuss the incisive new methodologies, frameworks, and theorizations that are shaping the dynamic and growing field of literary-mobility studies.
The organisers invite papers both from scholars who draw upon cultural geography and/or sociology to gain new insights into literary and cultural texts, and from researchers who make use of literary and cultural texts in their theorizing of space and movement. The conference will encompass a wide range of movements from the global and transnational to the local and the everyday, including journeys by foot, bicycle, motorcar, rail, air, and sea, at local, regional, national and transnational levels. Textual materials of all kinds – film, photography, digital media, and the visual arts, as well as fiction, poetry, and other literary forms – and projects engaging with non-western literatures and cultures are welcome. Uniting this diverse temporal, spatial and textual field, the conference retains a core focus on the fluid, reciprocal and often innovative relationship between mobility and culture.
Suggested topics might include but are not limited to:
The conference organisers invite abstracts of 350 words for 20-minute papers and a short biographical note by 1 December 2016 to mobilitiesconf@gmail.com. Find out more about Palgrave Studies in Mobilities Literature and Culture at http://www.springer.com/series/15385.