Re-Reading Romanticism: Imagination, Emotion, Nature, and Things
University of Melbourne
23-25 July, 2015

The biennial conference of the Romantic Studies Association of Australia and a supernumerary conference of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism

Re-reading is a key practice for the humanities: it is one of the most important ways in which, on the one hand, the past is made available to the present and, on the other hand, ‘new’ sign systems are forged. More broadly, re-reading (understood as the bivalent process sketched above) is a powerful mode of Romantic creativity and, in this guise, one of the chief ways in which modernity discovers and realizes ‘various possibilities of order on the basis of an increasing freedom and a growing distance vis-à-vis an established reality’ (Luhmann, Art as a Social System). William Blake’s re-reading of Swedenborgian and Moravian discourses, for example, produces a sign-system (a poetic/analytic discourse) that to a surprising degree draws apart from its sources, while remaining independent of conventional semiotic repertoires existing at the time. Although the sources are different, much the same might be said of Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Robinson, William Wordsworth, and outside Britain, Olympe de Gouges, Germaine de Staël, Novalis, and many others. Romanticism itself has been the site of numerous re-readings, in which the same bivalent process can be observed; and Romanticism in its various guises continues to be re-read by important strands of contemporary culture. Most prominently, Romantic re-readings of earlier notions of imagination, passion, perception, nature, and things, exert a profound influence on, even as they are being re-read by, contemporary thought. Equally powerful forms of re-reading occur when European Romanticism crosses cultures and is read in China, India, Japan, and so on, and this is evident in the work of Rabindranath Tagore and Kenzaburo Oe, amongst many others. Seen in this light, re-reading converges with contemporary discourses of imagination, innovation, and creativity, whether deployed for politically conservative or progressive ends. Given its importance, it is surprising that so little attention is given to re-reading (as distinct from, say, intertextuality or the study of influence) and that so few accounts of re-reading engage with the bivalent process sketched above. It is our hope that ‘Re-reading Romanticism’ will begin to redress this balance, by providing an opportunity to explore this topic and its significance for the Humanities today. The work of Marilyn Butler will be one of the foci of our discussions. Butler’s strong re-reading of Romanticism has shaped the field we inhabit today, and this conference is intended to honor her memory.

Topics may include:

• literary and/or cultural theories or histories of re-reading;
• re-reading in theory;
• the politics of re-reading;
• Romanticism, re-reading, and the new;
• re-reading Romantic texts in China, India, or Japan;
• non-European readings of Romanticism;
• re-reading English Romanticism in Europe (and vice versa);
• Romanticism in Ireland, Scotland, or Wales;
• re-reading Romanticism in Australia;
• romantic re-readings of things, animals, or nature;
• re-reading Romantic bodies, sexualities, or genders;
• Romantic/gothic re-readings of religion, history, or the passions;
• re-reading, Romanticism, and the Humanities;
• contemporary re-readings of Romantic texts;
• re-reading Romantic canonicity;
• Marilyn Butler, history, and the study of Romanticism.

Deadline for proposals: A 250 word abstract, accompanied by a brief CV, must be submitted before 1 March 2015. Proposals for panels are welcome and should be submitted direct to the conference organizers (see below for details) before 1 February 2015.

Symposium on ‘Forests’:
Re-reading Romanticism’ will immediately follow a one-day symposium on ‘Forests’, to be organized by Dr. Grace Moore for the Centre for the History of Emotions at Melbourne University. (http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/about-the-centre/where-we-are/che-melbourne.aspx)

The organizers of the RSAA conference are:

• Peter Otto (The University of Melbourne) — peterjo@unimelb.edu.au
• Claire Knowles (Latrobe University) — C.Knowles@latrobe.edu.au
• Deirdre Coleman (The University of Melbourne) — colemand@unimelb.edu.au

Literary Networks Convention – AULLA, ASAL & AAL
University of Wollongong
7–11 July, 2015

Literature is a meeting point for intersecting lines of thought and feeling about the world. As the German critic Theodore Adorno observes in his Aesthetic Theory: “Art is autonomous and it is not…. The great epics, which have survived even their own oblivion, were in their age intermingled with historical and geographical reportage.”

Like its object of study, the discipline of literary criticism survives by making connections to other disciplines and to other ways of thinking and feeling about the world. Literary thinking, in this sense, is networked thinking. It is intermingled with other modes of discourse such as the philosophical, the linguistic, the political, the social, the geographical, the theological and the sexual.

We invite papers that engage with literature and literary criticism as a network where a network, is understood very broadly as a group or system of interconnected people or things. Given that this conference seeks to bring together scholars who work in and between a variety of national literatures, literary, media and cultural histories, we encourage submissions that engage with and exemplify the rich variety of critical and creative practices currently being undertaken under the aegis of ‘literary studies’ in a contemporary Australian context.

Papers might consider literature’s engagement with any of the following:

• Acoustics, aesthetics or the visual
• Affect, emotion or contagion
• Animals, the environment or space/place
• Appetite, consumption or food
• Communities or creative practice
• Communication, technology, transport or trade
• Festivals, public events or publishing
• Film, media, new media or television
• Gender, sexuality or corporeality
• Indigeneity, ethnicity, citizenship or diaspora
• Institutions – writers, students or scholars
• Neurology, cognition or the body
• Reading, reception or research

Due date for proposals: 31 January, 2015
Notification of acceptance: 1 March, 2015
Email: Leigh Dale – ldale@uow.edu.au

Proposal should include title, abstract (150 words), followed by name and email address, included in the email (not as attachments). Abstracts should be accompanied by a 100-word biography, which starts with the presenter’s name.

For more information, please refer to the online call for papers.

Rethinking Poverty in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Newman University, Birmingham
30-31 January, 2015

Conference Website

In a period when modern media outlets and politicians continue to discuss the cost of living in our own time, historians have long appreciated the preponderance and scale of poverty in the premodern world. While recent scholarship has done much to enhance our understanding of the development of centralised systems of poor relief between the late-medieval and early modern periods, historians know far less about continuities in the definition, treatment or legislation of poverty across this period. As a result, the gulf separating developments of the earlier and later part of this period appear even larger and more significant in their impact.

This two-day conference seeks to address poverty over a broadly defined medieval and early
modern period and will provide a forum for medieval and early modern scholars to compare and contrast developments and continuities across Europe. While medieval and early modern are deliberately broad concepts, the definition of poverty is also wide and could encompass a variety of topics. The work discussed here will augment the existing field of study by offering new ways to problematise the concept of poverty and understand the complexity of charitable giving, obligation and kinship in the pre-modern period.

The conference provides a platform where the contributions of postgraduates, early-career
researchers and established scholars exchange their ideas on an equal footing. We hope to
provide a small amount of financial assistance to PhD candidates or unwaged speakers at the
conference. If you would like to be considered for a postgraduate bursary (where available) please indicate so in your paper proposal.

We welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers on the following themes:

• Social, theological, ethnic and physiological definitions of poverty.
• Centralised and informal systems of charity.
• Assessing the movement of paupers, vagrants or wage labourers.
• Riots and unrest.
• The impact of warfare/epidemic/crisis on poverty.

Submission Documents: 300 word abstracts and CVs to rethinkingpoverty2015@gmail.com.
Deadline for Abstracts: Monday, 1 December 2014.
The cost of the conference is anticipated to be £150 for residential delegates and £100 for nonresidential delegates including all refreshments, lunches and conference meal.
Organisers: Dr Laura Crombie (University of York) and Dr Chris Langley (Newman University,
Birmingham).