‘Spaces of Comparison: Welsh Writing in Comparative Contexts’
Description
The focus of the twenty-first annual conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English at Gregynog Hall in Powys, Wales, UK from March 27 – 29th, 2009 will be ‘Spaces of Comparison: Welsh Writing in English in Comparative Contexts’. In recent years ‘postnationalism’, ‘transnationalism’ and the ‘transatlantic’ have become influential paradigms in a variety of academic fields. This conference aims to explore the applicability of these concepts to Welsh writing in English. Is it time that we moved beyond the ideological and political requirements of the nation state? Or does ‘Wales’ remain a politically fragile entity that needs to be continually reimagined and reinforced by literary texts? What other peoples, nations and literatures may shed light on the histories and literatures of the Welsh people? Panel papers of a broadly theoretical nature are welcome, as well as papers that compare the literatures of Wales, that place Welsh writing within European and Transatlantic contexts, and that relate comparative approaches to colonial, postcolonial and global contexts.
The focus of the twenty-first annual conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English at Gregynog Hall in Powys, Wales, UK from March 27 – 29th, 2009 will be ‘Spaces of Comparison: Welsh Writing in English in Comparative Contexts’. In recent years ‘postnationalism’, ‘transnationalism’ and the ‘transatlantic’ have become influential paradigms in a variety of academic fields. This conference aims to explore the applicability of these concepts to Welsh writing in English. Is it time that we moved beyond the ideological and political requirements of the nation state? Or does ‘Wales’ remain a politically fragile entity that needs to be continually reimagined and reinforced by literary texts? What other peoples, nations and literatures may shed light on the histories and literatures of the Welsh people? Panel papers of a broadly theoretical nature are welcome, as well as papers that compare the literatures of Wales, that place Welsh writing within European and Transatlantic contexts, and that relate comparative approaches to colonial, postcolonial and global contexts.
Keynote Speakers
Our two keynote speakers are pre-eminent figures in the field of comparative cultural studies. Peter Lord's work will address Wales directly, while Professor Susan Manning is a leading figure in the field of transatlantic literature.
Professor Susan Manning, is Grierson Professor of English Literature and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh University. She works on British and American Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century literature, in particular on Scottish and American literary, religious and philosophical relationships, and she has a special interest in the writing of the Scottish Enlightenment and its influence in Europe and America.
She is the author of The Puritan-Provincial Vision: Scottish and American Literature in the Nineteenth Century (1990), and Fragments of Union: Making Connections in Scottish and American Writing (2002), and editions of Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward (1992), Washington Irving’s The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1996), Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1997) and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun (2002).
Her editions of Scottish Enlightenment texts include The Works of Henry Mackenzie (1996), Mackenzie’s Life of John Home (1997) and Julia de Roubigné (1999); she is currently completing (with Li Ping Geng) the first modern edition of Mackenzie’s three novels. Susan is a co-editor of the new three-volume Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature and, with Andrew Taylor, she is general editor of the Edinburgh Series in Transatlantic Literatures. She is working on a book on Becoming a Character, and another provisionally entitled Lateral Literary History.
She convenes the Carnegie Trust funded STAR (Scotland's Transatlantic Relations) Project, a collaborative initiative between Scottish and North American universities, libraries and museums. For further information please see the STAR website: http://www.star.ac.uk.
Peter Lord is a Research fellow at CREW (Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales), Swansea University. He is an art historian, who specialises in the study of the visual culture of Wales. He has particular interests in the artisan painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the imaging of industrial Wales in the first half of the twentieth century, and in the theoretical questions which arise from the study of visual culture in a nation regarded as marginal to the mainstream of western art history. He has recently been engaged in a comparative study of art in Wales and the United States.
Peter Lord took a degree in Fine Art at the University of Reading in 1970. Until 1986 he worked primarily as a sculptor, latterly working on large-scale public commissions. Since 1986 he has worked as a writer. In 1994 he was Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. From 1997 until 2003 he was a research fellow at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth.
In 2002 the CD-ROM version of The Visual Culture of Wales: Imaging the Nation, was awarded the Besterman/McColvin Gold Medal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals for an outstanding work of reference.
Our two keynote speakers are pre-eminent figures in the field of comparative cultural studies. Peter Lord's work will address Wales directly, while Professor Susan Manning is a leading figure in the field of transatlantic literature.
Professor Susan Manning, is Grierson Professor of English Literature and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh University. She works on British and American Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century literature, in particular on Scottish and American literary, religious and philosophical relationships, and she has a special interest in the writing of the Scottish Enlightenment and its influence in Europe and America.
She is the author of The Puritan-Provincial Vision: Scottish and American Literature in the Nineteenth Century (1990), and Fragments of Union: Making Connections in Scottish and American Writing (2002), and editions of Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward (1992), Washington Irving’s The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1996), Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1997) and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun (2002).
Her editions of Scottish Enlightenment texts include The Works of Henry Mackenzie (1996), Mackenzie’s Life of John Home (1997) and Julia de Roubigné (1999); she is currently completing (with Li Ping Geng) the first modern edition of Mackenzie’s three novels. Susan is a co-editor of the new three-volume Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature and, with Andrew Taylor, she is general editor of the Edinburgh Series in Transatlantic Literatures. She is working on a book on Becoming a Character, and another provisionally entitled Lateral Literary History.
She convenes the Carnegie Trust funded STAR (Scotland's Transatlantic Relations) Project, a collaborative initiative between Scottish and North American universities, libraries and museums. For further information please see the STAR website: http://www.star.ac.uk.
Peter Lord is a Research fellow at CREW (Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales), Swansea University. He is an art historian, who specialises in the study of the visual culture of Wales. He has particular interests in the artisan painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the imaging of industrial Wales in the first half of the twentieth century, and in the theoretical questions which arise from the study of visual culture in a nation regarded as marginal to the mainstream of western art history. He has recently been engaged in a comparative study of art in Wales and the United States.
Peter Lord took a degree in Fine Art at the University of Reading in 1970. Until 1986 he worked primarily as a sculptor, latterly working on large-scale public commissions. Since 1986 he has worked as a writer. In 1994 he was Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. From 1997 until 2003 he was a research fellow at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth.
In 2002 the CD-ROM version of The Visual Culture of Wales: Imaging the Nation, was awarded the Besterman/McColvin Gold Medal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals for an outstanding work of reference.
Responses
The CREW Blog published three responses to the conference:
- a poem written by Sally Roberts Jones;
- Matthew Jarvis's review of the poetry reading that took place on the Saturday evening;
- a small collection of photographs.
Documentation
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Download the 2009 call for papers here:
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Download the 2009 booking form here:
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Download the 2009 conference programme here:
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Download the abstracts for the 2009 conference here:
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