Monthly Archives: February 2020

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Jenny Diski: A Celebration 7 April 2020

Jenny Diski: A Celebration

A one-day symposium on the wonderful writer Jenny Diski, will be held at the University of Oxford, on 7th April 2020.

Diski wrote in many genres, and was a prolific reviewer, who contributed regularly to the London Review of Books. Diski herself, though, refused to classify her writings, and it is as a writer, first and foremost, that she is appreciated by her many admirers. No reader of hers can fail to be dazzled by her style, or struck by her formal playfulness and innovation. Yet, perhaps owing to her refusal to be confined by boundaries, Diski has tended to slip under the radar, or between the gaps, in academic discussions. This symposium will bring her to the fore by recognising that it is precisely her difference from what we might expect that makes her so exciting, and by drawing together the many aspects of her work.

The keynote speaker for the symposium is the writer Blake Morrison. Jenny Diski’s daughter Chloe Diski will be delivering a paper, and her husband, the poet Ian Patterson, will give the concluding remarks.

Registration will close on 17th March 17:00, book now to secure your place!

Symposium website: https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/jenny-diski-symposium-2020

Contact: Dr Ben Grant benjamin.grant@conted.ox.ac.uk

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Call for Submissions – Destinations deadline 1 March 2020 (ORE)

OXFORD RESEARCH IN ENGLISH

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS ISSUE 11: DESTINATIONS

Destination – the word itself concerns both journey and journey’s end. For this issue of Oxford Research in English, we invite articles that delve into arrival and setting forth in literature, as well as the textual, intertextual and extratextual ways one can examine literary places and spaces. “Destination” derives from the Latin dēstināre—to resolve, to determine, to destine— before journeying into French and arriving in English.

Literary destinations are spatial as well as temporal, with memory and narrative being integral to how we make sense of where we are, and how we come to be. Destinations may be metaphysical or institutional, lieux de mémoire, or itinerant sites that emerge and vanish, in ways that illuminate literary production and interpretation. Texts travel through time: from mind to page, mind to mind, bookstand to bookshelf.

We are interested in submissions from any period or focus within literary studies and related fields that engage with the following topics:

  • Travel writing and journeys evoked in literature
  • Pilgrimage, predestination and fate
  • Temporality of memory and remembrance
  • Diaspora, nation and homeland
  • Circulation of texts, translation and reading across borders
  • Literary traditions genealogies, and the arrival of texts in canons
  • Literary networks and internationalisation
  • Theoretical approaches to readership and authorship – the text as performative site
  • Evolution of literary forms and genre conventions
  • The writer’s oeuvre as teleology, and analyses of an author’s early vs. late styles

Oxford Research in English (ORE) is currently seeking papers of 5-8,000 words for its eleventh issue, to be released in Autumn 2020. Please submit papers for consideration to ore@ell.ox.ac.uk by the deadline of 1st March 2020. We ask that submitted articles be formatted using MHRA.

For our style guide and previous issues of the ORE, please visit our website https://oxfordresearchenglish.wordpress.com/

Oxford Research in English (ORE) is an online journal for postgraduate and early career scholars in English, Film Studies, Creative Writing, and related disciplines. All submissions are peer-reviewed by current graduate students at, or associated with, the University of Oxford

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CFP: Journeys Across Media 2020: Sharing Stories deadline 14 Feb 2020

Journeys Across Media 2020: Sharing Stories

University of Reading, 3rd April 2020

In the White Album, Joan Didion writes that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live […] We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices” (1). The act of storytelling involves a process of choice making – we choose the details to include and exclude, we shape narratives depending on who we share our stories with and how. This conference is interested in exploring methods and approaches to sharing stories in theatre, performance, film, television and literary practice. We are also interested in innovative ways of disseminating research stories. Through an interdisciplinary approach, we seek to investigate connections between different modes of storytelling through the varied forms of current postgraduate and ECR research.

The conference seeks to draw together panels on topics included but not limited to:

  • Stories and identity
  • False/misleading narratives (propaganda, self-mythologising, “Fake news”)
  • Re-sharing (translation, provocation, distortion, representation) Interpersonal connections in story-making
  • Human connections in sharing
  • Stories of exclusion and exclusion from stories
  • Stories as commodities
  • Sharing research stories: documentary and documented practice
  • Sharing across borders, cultures and communities through reflective practice.
  • Methods of storytelling in theatre and film
  • Digital and DIY storytelling

As a conference, we are open to applications for the following:

  • 20 minute papers
  • Shorter provocations of 5-10 minutes
  • Full panels of 3 x 20 minute papers
  • Participatory Workshops (up to 30 minutes in length)
  • Practice as Research disseminations (up to 30 minutes in length)
  • Video essays (Up to 20 minutes in length)

Please send proposals of 200 words to jamconference2020@gmail.com by 14th February 2020. We would welcome bios of up to 50 words along with your abstracts.

Journeys Across Media: Sharing Stories is organised by members of the postgraduate community at the University of Reading in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television.

The JAM Organising Committee (Mag Mosteanu; Chloe Duane; Sarah Byrne; John Whitney).

Citations

Didion, Joan. The White Album. London: 4th Estate, 2017.

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