KIPLING CONFERENCE 2007

September 7- 8, University of Kent, UK

Keynote Speakers

Christopher Hitchens

Benita Parry

It is now 100 years since Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907, “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author”. The University of Kent, sponsored by the Kipling Society, is hosting an international conference on Kipling’s work; our keynote speakers are the political commentator and critic Christopher Hitchens and the postcolonial critic Professor Benita Parry of Warwick University. It is the intention of this conference to encourage new approaches to Kipling scholarship, and to foster dialogues between two different kinds of Kipling’s readers in the twenty-first century who are too often separate: on the one hand, experts and enthusiasts of Kipling’s life and writings, and on the other, the increasingly influential exponents of postcolonial criticism. Such dialogue will be enabled by panel discussions, whose planned topics include but are not limited to