An interdisciplinary postgraduate conference hosted by doctoral students at the Centre for New Writing and the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.

'[How] are we to interpret history's claim, when it constructs a narrative, to reconstruct something from the past? What authorizes us to think of this construction as reconstruction?'
(Ricoeur, Time and Narrative Vol. 3)

'The conjunction of identification and foreknowledge contains the relationship between human beings and God, between freedom and fate, and these relationships are inherent in the most basic perspectival structures of narrative.'
(Currie, The Unexpected: Narrative Temporality and the Philosophy of Surprise)

Narrative has a long and rich history in the humanities and social sciences. Although first developed in the field of literary theory, the concept soon migrated across disciplinary boundaries, and has become a productive analytical tool within areas as diverse as history, psychology, and translation studies.

This interdisciplinary postgraduate conference, featuring keynote speaker Professor Mark Currie (Queen Mary University of London), brings together research perspectives from across the academic spectrum in a discussion of narrative and its interaction with notions of time and freedom. We welcome contributions on all aspects of the relationships between these three concepts, including but not restricted to:

• Narrative processes in literature and in wider society
• Time and/or freedom as a matter of content and form in fiction
• Time and/or freedom in experimental literature
• Narratives of the past and of the future
• Narrative and social change
• Narrative as a means of sustaining/challenging political power
• Narrative construction in the digital age
• Narrative and the notion of free will
• Narrative and the 'free' press
• Freedom as a temporal construct
• (Capitalist) time as a social construct
• Narrative and personal identity

Please send proposals of up to 300 words, together with a 50-word biographical note, to: timefreedomnarrative@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions: 13 April 2015