Salman Rushdie and the Historical Novel

online conference panel (ESSE seminar) 

This panel will explore Salman Rushdie’s historical novels from Midnight’s Children (1981) to The Enchantress of Florence (2008) and Victory City (2023). Submissions are welcomed on Rushdie’s entire oeuvre, nevertheless, we are particularly interested in analyses that trace the ways in which his fiction has transformed. The seminar will focus on three specific questions: how do Rushdie’s novels conceptualize global history and the metafictional elements of historical storytelling? What is the role of translocality, that is, the focus on two or more different cities and continents, in his historical novels? How do his recent novels depict fundamentalisms, the politics of post-truth, and contemporary history?

Convenors: • Florian Stadtler (University of Bristol, United Kingdom) florian.stadtler@bristol.ac.uk • Ágnes Györke (Károli Gáspár University, Budapest, Hungary) gyorke.agnes@kre.hu

Scholars wishing to present their paper are invited to submit 250-word abstracts of their proposed presentations and a brief bio directly to the convenors by 31 January 2024.

For more details, please click on the link below: 

Call for posters and seminar papers – The European Society for the Study of English 2024 Conference (unil.ch)