The First International Djuna Barnes Conference
21-22 September 2012
The work of author, poet, playwright, journalist, visual artist and sometimes reluctant modernist Djuna Barnes (1892 – 1982) has continued to beguile, excite and inspire readers and has, over the years, produced its own voluminous and varied critical history. While Barnes has often been treated as a somewhat peripheral figure in relation to modernism, recent studies, graduate research activity, and research focused on questions of literary history and modernism continues to reveal a deepening body of research that increasingly values Barnes’s importance as a central modern writer.
The First International Djuna Barnes Conference presents itself as a timely opportunity to reflect upon this complex critical history history and consider the shape and scope of Barnes scholarship and twentieth century literary studies today. International and interdisciplinary in focus, this conference hopes to reflect the diversity of Barnes’s own art practice, cohering a diverse and dispersed research community of scholars and postgraduate students interested in Barnes either directly, tangentially, or in relation to other frames of cultural-historical studies which might open up further possibilities for investigation and discussion.
We warmly invite papers on any aspect of the work of Djuna Barnes. For a list of possibl topics, and further informatio, please visit: http://djunabarnes2012.wordpress.com
Please send proposals of no more than 300 words in length for 15–20 minute papers (or 500 word proposals for panels of 3 papers). Please also include: affiliation and position, details if applicable of graduate work, and research interests to djunabarnes2012@gmail.com by 30th March 2012. Decisions will be announced by June 2012.
Main Organisers: Caroline Knighton & Cathryn Setz (University of London, Birkbeck College).
Organising Committee: Claire Conilleau (Université Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle), Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes), Elizabeth Pender (University of Cambridge), and Joanne Winning (Birkbeck College).