22nd Annual Meeting of the British Women Writers Conference
June 19-21, 2014
Binghamton University, State University of New York
REFLECTIONS
For the 22nd annual meeting of the British Women Writers Conference
For the 22nd annual meeting of the British Women Writers Conference, we will focus on the theme of “Reflections.” Cross-disciplinary in scope and implication, we invite papers—as well as panel and roundtable proposals—to explore “reflections” as broadly as possible, whether they are physical or metaphysical; individual or cultural; social, historical or fictional; real or imagined; seen or unseen.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
Reflective Objects and Spaces
Imagery of mirrors in women’s writing
Cemeteries, memorials, monuments; museums
Ruins
Shop-windows
Fashion/clothing; consumption/consumerism; advertising
Women in business/finance
Books (and readers)
Photography/photographs
Private spheres: homes/decor, women’s rooms, closets
Public spheres: public gardens, theaters, salons
Liminal spaces
Reflections of/on the Body
“Beauty”/appearance; body image
Youth/age
Changes in the female body: internal and external; psychological or physiological; perspectives and attitudes regarding adolescence and maturation, menstruation and menopause, motherhood and childbirth
Health/disease
Disability
Gender and sexuality
Body as reflection of the unconscious
Reflective Genres
Women’s life writing; women writing about women; biographical
or autobiographical reflection
Letters and journals; epistolary novel; transnational correspondence
Reviews/reception
Ekphrasis; reflections on/of visual arts (other arts) in literature
Histories/origins; the historical novel
Detective fiction
Travel writing
Medical writing
Metafiction; fiction about reading fiction; Romantic poetry
Textual Reflections
Repetition in form/structure
Doubling, doppelgängers; the uncanny
Dreams
Textual gaps or silences
Revisions/retellings of original stories
Creative Work: poetry, fiction, non-fiction inspired by BWWs
Reflective Moments
Epiphany
Memory/remembrance; Erlebnis and Erfahrung
Sensory reflection (smell, taste, sound)
Self and identity, self-recognition/narcissism
Death and (re)birth
“The mirror stage”
Desire/eroticism
BWWs and travel
Women’s Rights/ Suffrage
Distorted Reflections
Repressed and displaced language
Translations
Cross-disciplinary reflections
Abstractions
The Gothic
The grotesque
(Re)imagining the past and future
“Aura”/mass reproduction
Madness, hysteria
Through the Looking Glass
Reflective Possibilities (Possible roundtables/special sessions)
British Women & Health/Medicine
British Women & American Women
British Women in Pop Culture/Film
British Women & Travel
British Women & the History of Women’s Rights
British Women & the Military
For paper proposals, please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio (in a single attachment) to bwwc2014@gmail.com by January 1, 2014.
For full panel or roundtable/session proposals, please attach all proposals to a single email. Papers and panels must address the theme and apply to long 18th- or 19th-century, Romantic or Victorian women’s literature.