Abandonment
University of Western Brittany (UBO), Brest, France, 6 March 2026
Call for papers :
“Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.” - Les Misérables, Victor Hugo (1862).
Throughout time, countless writers have explored the theme of abandonment. In his novel Les Misérables (1862), Victor Hugo wrote the stories of abandoned people and shed light on marginalised communities. Abroad, Charles Dickens and his famous orphan protagonist, Pip, in Great Expectations (1861) made abandoned orphans central to his narrative, Charlotte Perkins Gilman reflected on the notion of abandoning women to domestic madness in The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), and Edward Saïd with his Reflections on Exile (2000) explores the complexity of reintegrating oneself in society after experiencing the trauma of abandonment. These authors are amongst many who have explored the complex emotions, ruptures, and transformations associated with abandonment.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines abandonment as the surrender or devotion of oneself to an influence, passion, emotion; the state or condition of being abandoned by a person or people; the action of relinquishing, giving up, or forsaking something. This definition displays a notion of renunciation in abandonment, yet what transpires in the definition is the polysemy of the word. With its very general definition, we may wonder how omnipresent abandonment is in every aspect of society and how it is conveyed in the diferent texts and images surrounding us.
The seminar aims to develop an understanding and an acknowledgment of abandonment from various perspectives: literary, political, cultural, social and linguistic. We seek to explore abandonment as both a destructive and generative force: one that creates distance, rupture, and loss; but also leads to liberation, renewal, and redefinition. Abandonment allows for inspection of what once was and what is to come and will thus enable us to explore spatial and temporal aspects of the subject.
Papers may tackle the subject from diferent research fields and perspectives. We welcome proposals addressing but not limited to the following themes within the scope of abandonment :
● History: Political neglect, economic collapse, cultural genocide, displacement, erasure,
minority cultures, repetition and revolution.
● Censorship: Failure and censorship, banned literature, academic bankruptcy, research
defunding, media ownership and censorship.
● Linguistics: Diminishing numbers of speakers, linguistic improvement and impoverishment, and the endangerment of minority languages.
● Power and domination: Who is abandoned and who abandons? In relations where the
oppressed is dependent on the dominant, how does the threat of abandonment help maintain power? What are the diferent abandonment vectors (e.g. economic)? In international relations, how does colonial abandonment work?
● Community: Family, traditions, minority communities, LGBTQIA+, and consequences on one’s personal identity.
● Exile: The widespread movement of peoples, the voluntary and involuntary abandonment of one’s country, exile, mixed emotions and memories of places.
● Trauma: Memory, (mental) health, fear of abandonment, silence, healing processes, absence and cycles of abandonment.
● Replacing what has been forsaken: Representation or the lack thereof, technology over social interaction/tradition, practices sustainability.
● Resisting abandonment: Resilience, fight, memory, cultural renewal.
—
Presentation proposals in English, of a maximum 250 words, should be submitted to studyday.m2tile2026@gmail.com by January 6th, 2026.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January 16th, 2026.
The seminar welcomes submissions by Master’s degree students, PhD students, Phd Candidates as well as researchers.