THE COUNTRY AND THE CITY

The Northern Renaissance Seminar
Call for Papers
One-day Conference, Saturday 8th November 2008
Northumbria University at Newcastle

In collaboration with Lancaster University and the Northern Renaissance Seminar series, Northumbria University is pleased to invite abstracts for a one-day conference on 8th November 2008. Papers should be between 20-30 minutes.

The theme of the conference is 'The Country and The City'. A wealth of scholarship exists on this area, from (at least) Raymond Williams' seminal 1973 work, to collections such as The Country and the City Revisited (1995), and including contemporary investigations of landscapes and geographies, applications of eco-criticism, and urban (and suburban) studies.

Accordingly, contributors are encouraged to interpret this theme in broad terms, attending to 'the country' and 'the city' independently, or in conjunction. Papers might therefore consider addressing the following questions, though not exclusively:

* How were 'the country' and 'the city' constructed and defined in early modern Europe?

* How did these constructions reflect or impact upon issues of social conflict, geographical mobility, politics, religious and 'ethnic' difference, otherness, and criminality?

* How did early modern cities condition the production and consumption of cultural texts?

* How did 'the country' and 'the city' interact or conflict, materially and culturally?

* How might we re-think the politics and poetics, and the realities and representations of: the suburbs, the 'pastoral', enclosure, landscapes, and the 'country house'?

Please email abstracts of 200 words for 20-30 minute papers to Dr Adam Hansen (adam.hansen@unn.ac.uk) by 30th May 2008.