Shaping Modernism: Katherine Mansfield and her Contemporaries

A two-day Conference in association with the Katherine Mansfield Society

25-26th March 2011
Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, UK

I was only thinking last night people have hardly begun to write yet. Put poetry out of it for a moment & leave out Shakespeare – now I mean prose. Take the very best of it. Aren't they still cutting up sections rather than tackling the whole of a mind? (Katherine Mansfield, 1921)

This conference explores new research concerning notions of modernism(s), with a particular focus on Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield was hugely influential on, and influenced by, writers including John Middleton Murry, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, A. R. Orage, T. S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley. Woolf's statement that Mansfield created 'the only writing I have ever been jealous of', highlights her significance within modernism and emphasises that her complex, experimental, satirical and humorous writing deserves further attention.

Proposals for papers are invited on topics that address Mansfield's relation to other writers and artists, as well as the broader lines of influence and exchange within modernist networks and between different disciplines. We particularly welcome papers specifically concerning Mansfield, but are happy to consider submissions from researchers working in related fields of modernist study. Submissions from postgraduate students are encouraged.

Papers are invited on topics that address, but are not limited to:
 Mansfield and 'high modernism'
 Rhythm and modernist magazines
 Modernist literary form: tradition, innovation and experimentation
 Modernism and the short story
 The influence of the First World War on modernism
 Notions of avant-garde and marginal modernisms
 Modernist literature and music
 Modernism, politics and social class
 Mansfield and cinema
 Mansfield and queer modernisms
 Notions of the modernist canon and its revisions
 Expatriate, displaced and colonial modernisms
 Gendered modernisms

Professor Laura Marcus is confirmed as a keynote speaker, and
will be discussing Mansfield and cinema. The author Ali Smith has kindly agreed to present a 'discursive short story'. Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Patron of the Katherine Mansfield Society, will be giving our post-dinner talk, following dinner in Newnham College.

Announcements on further keynotes and speakers will be coming soon!

Please see our webpage:
http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/cambridge-2011/

Abstracts of 250 words plus a brief 50-word biography should be submitted to the conference organisers
Alice Kelly (ark40@cam.ac.uk) and Dr. Kate Kennedy (kma23@cam.ac.uk) by 20th September 2010.