Conjugal Wrongs: Marriage, Sex, and Text - 1970-present
Newman University, Birmingham, UK
Thursday 17th January 2019
Including a reading and Q&A with Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon (2016) and Trick to Time (2018): 18:00 – 19:00
This one day conference seeks to examine representations of marriage from the 1970s to the present across a range of cultural and spatial contexts. The institution of marriage has changed significantly across this period, starting with the Matrimonial Clauses Act 1973, and is currently undergoing major shifts with recent changes in marriage laws, including the introduction of civil partnerships and gay marriage. Marriage is, at its most basic, a legal union of two people but the social, cultural, religious and, increasingly, political motives and implications are central to its significance and value. What does it mean then when marriage ‘goes wrong’? What constitutes a ‘wrong’ marriage? To what extent might marital ‘wrongs’ function politically? This conference aims to explore how contemporary literature is presenting and responding to these questions. We welcome papers from the fields of literature and cultural studies which offer readings of violations of marriage laws or transgressive marital relations.
Topics for papers might include, but are not limited to:
Adultery Arranged marriage
Bigamy/polygamy Ceremony
Crossing boundaries of culture, age and class
Divorce Domestic violence
Forced marriage Gay marriage and civil partnerships
Interracial marriage Marital rape
Marriage and consummation/non-consummation
Marriage laws
Marriage under false pretences
Murder of spouse (mariticide/uxoricide)
Popular fiction and marriage: crime, romance, middlebrow
Religious Law vs National Law
We also welcome suggestions for panels.
Abstracts of 250 words and a short biographical note should be submitted to [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] by Friday 16th November 2018.
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