Celebrating H.G. Wells: Teaching His Literature in the 21st Century
Roundtable at the 2018 Annual Northeast Modern Language Association Convention
Pittsburgh, PA
April 12-15, 2018
For 152 years, H.G. Wells has been part of our literary cannon in science fiction, criticism and utopian projections. Fiction writers have the latitude to focus on current issues of their time, often in the guise of fictional places and/or unusual characters. H.G. Wells did exactly that in his science fiction as well as his fiction stories. Wells’ vision of an “open conspiracy of intellectuals and willful people” to build Cosmopolis occurs regularly in most of his fiction, and appears prominently in his major prophetic writings before 1914: in Anticipations, in A Modern Utopia, and elsewhere (W. Warren Wagar 40-42). The focus of this roundtable is to discuss the techniques H.G. Wells utilized, to discuss the interface between Wells’ literature and film adaptations, to assess the possible implications as seen in his literature as well as in the film adaptations, and to share pedagogical skills employed to reveal the genius of Wells.
The NeMLA site to submit your proposal is: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16658.
Please include your name, position, e-mail address and the title of your proposed submission. If you are an independent scholar, please indicate that information. The deadline to submit an abstract is September 29, 2017.