Romantic Adaptations:
A Strawberry Hill Symposium, 25-26 March 2011
This two-day conference, hosted jointly by the Departments of English, and Film and Popular Culture, at St. Mary’s University College, will mark the re-opening of Horace Walpole’s Gothic mansion at Strawberry Hill. Despite Blake’s often-quoted contention that he had to ‘create a system or be enslaved by another man’s’, the investment in originality during the Romantic period disguises a pervasive culture of adaptation. The diverse afterlives of Romanticism can also best be described as a history of adaptation. This conference, itself hosted in a highly adapted Gothic space, seeks to consider both romantic-period adaptation, and subsequent adaptations of ‘romanticism’ and ‘the romantics’.
The organisers invite abstracts for papers engaging with any aspect of this history of adaptation. Topics might include, but are not limited to:
• Antiquarianism, imitations and forgeries
• Histories and myths of romantic lives
• Gothic appropriations in print and on screen
• Iterations of poetic genres
• Classicism in art and politics
• Romantic intertexts
• Romantic drama and music
• Popular appropriations of romanticism
• ‘Genre’ and interdisciplinarity
• Eco-adaptations of romanticism
Keynote speakers are: Andrew Bennett (Bristol); Ian Hunter (De Montfort); Peter Kitson (Dundee); and Nigel Leask (Glasgow).
Enquiries and/or abstracts, of no more than 300 words, for papers of approximately 20 minutes, should be sent to Dr. Caroline Ruddell ([log in to unmask]) or Dr. Cian Duffy ([log in to unmask]). Abstracts should be received by 31 October 2010.
The conference will include a tour of Horace Walpole’s newly-adapted house.
|