Dear Iberia list members,
Please find attached details of a colloquium on 3rd July at Lancaster University looking at four British writers (John Langdon-Davies, Lucia Graves, George Orwell and Matthew Tree) and their relationships with both their own culture and the cultures of Spain/Catalonia. The guest speakers are Miquel Berga, Lucia Graves and Matthew Tree.
We hope to see you there.
Frederic Barberà and Kathryn Crameri
Reciprocal Gazes on the Iberian/British Other
(Cultural Decline as "Raw Material" for Narrative Excellence)
Lancaster University, 3rd July 2004,10.30am to 4pm
Part of the Peripheral Identities Research Project
The authors Lucia Graves and Matthew Tree (both of British extraction but immersed in Spanish/Catalan culture) each have their own unique perspectives on their native and adoptive homelands, which are essential factors in their published writings about their own lived experiences of personal and 'national' periods of crisis. George Orwell and John Langdon-Davies, the subjects of the paper by Miquel Berga, chronicled one such period, the Spanish Civil War, from their own point of view as outsiders who nevertheless had strong personal and political connections to the events they describe. Some of the questions to be addressed in this colloquium include:
- Issues of historical and personal 'truth': exploring the motivations behind the writing of memoirs
- Transferences and mutual influences between the writing of fiction and non-fiction
- Relationships between memoirs and other 'non-fiction' genres such as journalism etc.
- The nature of the 'reciprocal gaze' on British and Spanish/Catalan history and identities by writers who are fully immersed in all of these cultures
- Education, class and ideology as factors in the works under discussion.
Each contributor will give an individual paper in the morning session, while the afternoon will be dedicated to a round table discussion. (All sessions will be conducted in English.)
Miquel Berga is Dean of the Humanities Faculty of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, a journalist and essayist, and an expert on George Orwell and John Langdon-Davies.
Lucia Graves is a writer and translator, and the author of A Woman Unknown (Virago, 1999), in which she recalls her childhood in Mallorca and her adult life in Catalonia against the backdrop of the Franco regime.
Matthew Tree has published fiction and journalism in both English and Catalan. An autobiography of his life in the 1970s and 80s, entitled Memories!, has just been published in Catalan (Columna, 2004).
If you would like to attend, please return the attached form to Kathryn Crameri, DELC, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YN, before 5th June 2004 (we _may_ be able to accept later bookings). The conference fee includes refreshments and lunch. Please email [log in to unmask] or phone 01524 593693 if you require any further details.
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