Call for papers: Norden/The North: Anglo-Nordic Exchanges, 1700-1850 (28-30 November 2014, St. Mary's University, Strawberry Hill)
Plenary speakers: Christoph Bode (Munich); Robert Rix (Copenhagen); Gordan Ryden (Uppsala)
www.norden2014.wordpress.com
Historiographies of British culture in the eighteenth century and Romantic period have tended to look south and east for influences, following a pathway of exchange encoded in terms like ‘Augustan’, ‘neo-Classical’, ‘Oriental’, and ‘Romantic’, or else west to the Atlantic world and the Americas. Historiographies of Nordic culture during the same period have, for their part, tended to represent moments like the Danish ‘Golden Age’ or the Swedish ‘Age of Freedom’ as driven by interiority, as flowerings of national identity – political and cultural alike – prompted by a diminishing international presence following the Great Northern War and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This conference seeks to complement such historiographies by interrogating the thriving and, until now, comparatively neglected axis of cultural exchange which existed between Britain and ‘the North’ during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Exchanges between Britain and the Nordic World were many and varied during this period, and this conference will take an eclectic approach to their consideration. Contributions on respective influence in the social and political, economic and industrial, cultural and literary, and intellectual and scientific realms will be welcomed. Equally, ‘the North’ as an imagined space occupied a key place in the cultural history of the long eighteenth century, and papers are invited that consider how thinkers from the various parts of the British Isles and the Nordic regions (re)imagined their place in the world at this time.
This conference will assess each of these varying modes and genres of exchange with a view to reconsidering both the relationship between British eighteenth-century and Romantic-period culture and ‘the North’ and the relationship between Nordic romanticism and Britain, considered both as actual and imaginary spaces.
Potential topics for papers might include:
British travellers to ‘the North’ and Nordic travellers to Britain
Exploration of the Arctic and the hunt for the North-West passage
The role of ‘the North’ in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars; exchange of political and social models
Other ‘Norths’: Scotland, Newfoundland, Greenland, Ireland, Iceland.
Representations of ‘the North’ or ‘Northern-ness’ across different genres and disciplines
Thomas De Quincey’s translation of Niels Klim and his essays on the Danish language
The influence of Norse and other ‘Northern’ cultural forms on British Romantic writing
The Danish ‘golden age’ and European Romanticism
Scientific exchange, particularly in the life sciences and astronomy.
Borrowed models of industrial, agricultural and social development.
Proposals of no more than 300 words for papers lasting 20 minutes should be sent to
[log in to unmask] by 1 June 2014. Proposals for panels of three or four speakers will be particularly welcomed.
General queries should be addressed to the organisers:
Cian Duffy ([log in to unmask]), Peter Howell ([log in to unmask]), and Robert Rix ([log in to unmask])
www.norden2014.wordpress.com
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