Early Modern Dis/Locations

An Interdisciplinary Conference, Northumbria University, 15-16 January 2010

On 15-16 January 2010, Northumbria University in Newcastle (UK) will host an interdisciplinary conference on Early Modern Dis/Locations.

Confirmed Plenary Speakers include:
Tim Cresswell (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Patricia Fumerton (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University)
Bernhard Klein (University of Kent)
Greg Walker (University of Edinburgh)
The organisers invite scholars and students working in literary and cultural studies, history, geography, philosophy, and related disciplines to submit 200 word abstracts for 20-25 minute papers relating to any of the following themes and questions by July 31st 2009 (please note this is an extended deadline). Contributors are free to interpret and address these as broadly as they deem appropriate:
What were the significant locations for and of early modern cultures, and why? How might we re-think and problematise constructions of court, city (or particular cities, real and imagined), 'suburbs', 'country', the 'nation', the 'home', 'private', 'public', the marketplace, the streets, 'landscape', colonies and plantations?
To what extent were locations conceived and constructed as gendered, rank-specific, desirable, or disgusting?
How were all such locations experienced (and by whom), and represented in literature, art, and philosophy?
In what ways did locations condition, inhibit, or compel political agency and cultural production and consumption?
How were locations demarcated, policed, transgressed and jeopardised in the period?
How was dislocation caused, theorized and represented in the period? What were the realities and representations of placelessness, homelessness, and dispossession? Where, how and why did 'mobilities' occur, and in what forms?
How have early modern cultural products and locations - like The Globe -been relocated into and appropriated by later historical and cultural positions?
How can modern theories of 'space', 'place', and 'placelessness' develop our understanding of early modern locations and dislocations?
Please submit 200 word abstracts for 20-25 minute papers by email to Dr Adam Hansen (adam.hansen@northumbria.ac.uk) by July 31st 2009. Please note this is an extended deadline.
If you have any questions please contact Dr Hansen by email or at this address:
Division of English and Creative Writing
126, Lipman Building
School of Arts and Social Sciences
Northumbria University
City Campus
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 8ST Tel: 0191 243 7193