Please note that the keynote speakers for the Byron and Modernity=20
conference will be Professor Jerome McGann (John Stewart Bryan=20
Professor at the University of Virginia), Professor Tilottama Rajan=20
(Canada Research Chair in Theory and English at the University of=20
Western Ontario), and Professor Christopher Ricks (Warren Professor of=20=

the Humanities at Boston University). Below is the previously posted=20
call for papers.

Submissions are invited for =93Byron and Modernity=94 an international=20=

conference, sponsored by the University of British Columbia, to be held=20=

in Vancouver at the Coast Plaza Hotel and Suites October 25-28, 2007 . =20=

We welcome papers that explore the way Byron and Byronism have been=20
interpreted since the Romantic period, in Byron=92s reception through =
the=20
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the place of Byronism in=20
fashion, popular, and print culture. But we are especially interested=20=

in papers that take Byron=92s presence in modern culture as an=20
opportunity to address wider questions surrounding modernity and=20
modernism. If =93the modern=94 marks the time when the subject left the=20=

safety of the local to experience the world, if modernism celebrates=20
change itself as the driving force of global power, to what extent is=20
Byron, the cosmopolitan wanderer and genius of self-promotion, an=20
exemplary, if not pivotal figure of modernity? The Byron circle might=20=

be called the first avant-garde: what part did the figure of Byron play=20=

in other modern avant-garde movements or in the development of=20
criticism, theory, and culture that followed them? Byron was a social=20=

critic and a fashion icon: his work straddles high and low culture,=20
aristocratic pretension and bourgeois consumerism, the power of the=20
mind and the experience of the body. What can his influence tell us=20
about similar contradictions in modern poetry and literature? What=20
might Byron=92s presence in popular culture and, by contrast, his=20
relative absence from critical culture tell us about culture generally=20=

in the modern world? We are less interested in Byron the man than we=20
are in =93Byron=94 the idea, a specter of art, power, and transgression=20=

that haunts modern consciousness.

Proposals of 500 words for 20 minute papers may be sent by email to:=20
byron07_at_interchange.ubc.ca
Deadline for submissions: January 30, 2007
Conference website: www.english.ubc.ca/PROJECTS/byron_conference

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Received on Tue Jan 16 2007 - 17:20:03 EST