 |
 |
The deadline for The Country House in Britain, 1914-2014 has been extended a final time due to popular demand and an expanding programme of events in collaboration with the National Trust's Cragside. Please circulate widely. Best wishes, Barbara Williams *** DEADLINE EXTENDED: CLOSING 20TH NOVEMBER *** The Country House in Britain, 1914-2014 Newcastle University, Friday 6th - Sunday 8th June 2014 www.countryhouseconference.wordpress.com<http://www.countryhouseconference.wordpress.com/> Keynote Speakers: Deborah Cartmell, Christine Geraghty, Ellie Jones and Alison Light Call for Papers: From Ian McEwan's Atonement (2001) to Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child (2011), the country house has had a strong presence in British culture of the past decade. This is the culmination of a century's interest in the spaces and places of the country house, an interest that burgeoned following the break-up of the great estates around the First World War. In texts ranging from P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle Saga to Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazlet Chronicles, and in television series such as ITV'sBrideshead Revsited (1981) and Downton Abbey (2010), British culture continues to return to the country house setting in both popular and high culture. Since the rise of the British heritage film in the 1980s and the proliferation of Austen adaptations in the 1990s the country house has played an equally important role in British cinema and continues to gain currency as a national icon. This preoccupation with the country house is fuelled by institutions such as the National Trust and English Heritage, as well as through documentary programmes such as BBC1's The Edwardian Country House (2002), Channel 4's Country House Rescue (2008) and Julian Fellowes's Great Houses on ITV (2013). Often overshadowed by the country house in other centuries such as the seventeenth-century country house poem or the nineteenth-century country house novel, studies of the twentieth and twenty-first century country house are scarce. This three-day interdisciplinary conference will trace the representation of the country house in British literature and film between 1914 and 2014. The conference will explore how space, class and gender operate in the wealth of filmic and literary texts which have been concerned with the country house throughout the last century, as well as considering how it functions in documentaries, historical monographs and reality television. We invite 300-word abstracts (for 20-minute papers) on any topic relating to the country house; possible topics might include, but are by no means restricted to: * Historical Fictions * The Downton Effect * The Modernist Country House * The Country House Abroad * The Middlebrow and Prize Culture * Costumes and Design * Cycles of Pride and Prejudice * Adaptation * Murder in the Country House * Haunted Homes and the Gothic * The Wartime Country House * Period Drama * Servants and Servitude * Class and the National Trust * Toy Soldiers and the Dolls House * Romance Fiction Abstracts should be submitted via email to [log in to unmask] by 20th November 2013; successful applicants will be notified by 2014. Send any queries to the above email. Conference Organisers: Faye Keegan and Barbara Williams Supported by the Newcastle University Gender Research Group and the FRDG -------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA mailing list -------------------------------------------------------- To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the MECCSA list, please visit: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MECCSA&A=1 ------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education. Membership is open to all who teach and research these subjects in HE institutions, via either institutional or individual membership. The field includes film and TV production, journalism, radio, photography, creative writing, publishing, interactive media and the web; and it includes higher education for media practice as well as for media studies. This mailing list is a free service from MeCCSA and is not restricted to members. For further information, please visit: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/ --------------------------------------------------------