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The deadline for abstracts for our forthcoming conference, “The Book as Cure:
Bibliotherapy and Literary Caregiving from the First World War to the Present” (to take place at Senate House, University of London, on 14 September 2018), is
this Friday, 4 May 2018.
We welcome
proposals of 300 words for 20-minute papers from PhD students, ECRs and established scholars working in the field. Potential topics include: the healing book; creative and expressive writing interventions; reading, writing
and trauma; author-based studies on literary caregiving of any type; hospital, prison, and asylum reading/libraries and mental health/wellness; curating generative archives; documenting resilience and identifying outcomes.
Please send proposals and enquiries to the conference organisers:
Dr Siobhán Campbell, [log in to unmask];
Dr Sara Haslam, [log in to unmask]; and Dr Edmund King, [log in to unmask].
For further details, follow the link above to the conference website or see below.
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This one-day event, part of the annual programme of the History of Books and Reading (HOBAR) research collaboration at The Open University, explores in the centenary year of the war’s end the
legacy of wartime bibliotherapy. It brings together early career researchers and advanced scholars with practitioners, policy makers, charities, and representatives from the culture and heritage industries to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue about
the curative power of reading during and after the war. How is that curative power understood now? How was it understood in 1914? How has it been managed since in the voluntary sector and in institutions? In what ways does the legacy of First World War bibliotherapy
remain active in contemporary policy-making in the charity sector, and in work with veterans and settled refugees?
Led by three members of The Open University’s Department of English & Creative Writing, Siobhan Campbell, Sara Haslam, and Edmund King, this event will contribute to and shape understanding of the therapeutic importance of books across
disciplines and help to generate further focused research in the Humanities and beyond.
Best wishes (and apologies for cross-posting),
Edmund King (on behalf of the conference team)
Dr Edmund G. C. King
| Research Fellow in English: School of Arts and Cultures | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
The Open University, Level 2, Perry C Building, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes,
MK7 6AA
Tel: +44 (0) 1908 653579
