cfp.english.upenn.edu

"Utopian Spaces of British Literature and Culture, 1890-1945", 18 September 2009, University of Oxford

***NOTE: Registration for the conference is now open. All delegates are kindly asked to register before 6 September. The registration form can be found on the conference website: www.utopianspaces.org.***

From the fin de siècle to the Second World War, the construction of alternative social and private spaces exerted a peculiar fascination for many British writers. The cataclysmic historical events of the period stimulated Utopian thinking and feeling even as they seemed to make them problematic or impossible. At the same time radical demands for new spaces, whether political, religious or aesthetic, also generated new ways of reading and writing the familiar urban and domestic spaces of everyday life.

The focus of the conference is on the spatial manifestations, geographies and practices of Utopianism, rather than on Utopianism as a category of millenarian anticipation. Papers are invited which address the various material and imaginary spatial forms of the Utopian impulse in the literature of period. How do certain spaces become associated with particular political or aesthetic visions of modernity? Does the Utopian bear a particular affinity to some spaces, rather than to others? Is the Utopian impulse articulated as a desire for order or anarchy?

Plenary speakers: Professor Jay Winter (Yale); Dr Matthew Beaumont (UCL); Iain Sinclair (London)

For the conference programme, accommodation possibilities and updates please visit our website.