Writing Wales

The Department of English, Aberystwyth University, and the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Aberystwyth and Bangor) are hosting a two-day conference on the theme Writing Wales: 1500-1800‚ to be held at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, on 3-4 July, 2008.

The conference aims to explore representations of Wales in historical and literary texts written in either Welsh or English between 1500 and 1800. It provides unprecedented opportunity for scholars across disciplines and conventional period demarcations to engage in a discussion of the different ways Wales was written in the early modern, eighteenth-century, and early Romantic periods. The conference will generate discussion concerning the broader continuities and/or discontinuities between different periods and different types of writing. Questions raised by the conference might therefore centre on the existence of similarities and/or dissimilarities between historical and literary treatments of Wales, the way in which identifiable literary and historical narratives of Welsh national consciousness develop over the period span, points of connection and/or dissension between Welsh-language and Anglophone imaginings of Wales, the contribution of women writers to a Welsh national vision, the ways in which religion informs literary and historical treatments of Wales. The conference will also raise broader methodological questions about the extent to which conventional period descriptors - early modern, eighteenth century, Enlightenment, Romanticism have shaped scholarly treatments of Wales, asking if we should continue to reinforce such period divisions, or start to reconfigure our approach to Wales‚s literary and historical past.

If you would like to offer a paper for this conference, please send an abstract of approx. 200 words to Dr Sarah Prescott, Dept. of English, Hugh Owen Building, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 3DY, or via email to scp@aber.ac.uk The deadline for abstracts is 31st January 2008. All papers will be of 25 minutes duration. Speakers are welcome to deliver papers in Welsh or English.