Text Landscape Identity
An Inter-disciplinary Conference for Scholars in the Arts and Humanities
Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

September 13th-15th 2007, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, Penryn.

In the last twenty years the notion of landscape has undergone significant
theoretical development which has focused attention on discourses, knowledge,
power and questions of representation. Geographers have reconfigured the
relationship between landscape and identity by drawing on a range of cultural
texts. However, their treatment of creative writing has been incomplete,
despite cultural geography's engagement with literary theory. Bosseau (1995)
criticised geographers for merely combing novels for relevant spatial
elements. Despite a trickle of research on writers' geographical
imaginations, the textualisation of mobility, and literature and cultural
difference, Sharp (2000) argued that Geography's vision of its relationship
with literature remains limited.

Literary Studies, similarly, has engaged with the social or psychological
relations of individual authors to landscapes (cf. Fulford 1996), but not
fully understood (a) the combined influence of landscapes and their literary
constructions on the creative process and (b) the significance of that process
as half-conceived and half-written. Although the reciprocal relationship
between the literary text and the historical 'reality' of landscapes has long
been understood (Landry 2001), most recently through eco-criticism, questions
remain about, for example, generic pressures (e.g. how does a writer respond
not just to landscape but to conventions of landscape writing?) and the
motility of the creative process (e.g. how does the writer's response to
landscape shift through the stages of writing?).

Questions we would seek to discuss include:

• How do landscape, the textual representation of landscape and the process of
representing landscape help shape identity?
• How does a sense of identity inform textual representations of landscape, in
turn?
• How do the genres of landscape-writing influence representations of
landscape and identity?
• How do we apply literary models of authorship and readership to the
experiences of 'real' authors and readers in response to landscape?

Keynote speakers:
Professor Timothy Fulford, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Professor Donna Landry, University of Kent, UK
Professor Kenneth Olwig, SLU, Sweden

Please send enquiries or abstracts of 300 words by 30th March 2007 to the
co-organisers:
Dr. Catherine Brace, Department of Geography, University of Exeter, Cornwall
Campus, Penryn TR10 9EZ; email: cbrace_at_exeter.ac.uk
Dr. Adeline Johns-Putra, Department of English, University of Exeter, Cornwall
Campus, Penryn TR10 9EZ; email: a.g.johns-putra_at_exeter.ac.uk

Other events in this series:
• Writing Landscape – an interdisciplinary symposium. 19th March 2007, Stewart
House, University College London
• Written Landscape – a symposium for writers and scholars. 7th-8th July
2007, University of Exeter, Streatham Campus, Exeter.
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Received on Wed Nov 08 2006 - 19:41:49 EST