Katherine Mansfield: New Directions
Birkbeck, University of London
28-29 June 2018
An international conference organised by the
Katherine Mansfield Society
Hosted by Birkbeck, University of London
Supported by the New Zealand High Commission
and the University of Northampton
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Acclaimed authors
Ali Smith and Elleke Boehmer
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
This international conference celebrates 10 years since the formation of the international Katherine Mansfield Society. Since that time there has been a significant resurgence of scholarly interest in Mansfield, driven by the Society’s journal Katherine Mansfield Studies, now published annually as a prestigious yearbook by Edinburgh University Press. The themes covered to date have been wide-ranging: KM and Continental Europe; KM and Modernism; KM and the Arts; KM and the Fantastic; KM and the Postcolonial; KM and World War 1; KM and Translation; KM and Psychology; KM and Russia. The tenth volume (on the theme of KM and Virginia Woolf) will be published in 2018.
In addition to the yearbook, the Society has organised numerous international conferences, in New Zealand, France, the UK, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Australia, all of which have fed into this resurgence of interest in Mansfield. There have also been three major new biographies in the last ten years: Kathleen Jones’s Katherine Mansfield: The Storyteller (2010), Gerri Kimber’s Katherine Mansfield: The Early Years (2016), and Redmer Yska’s A Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington 1888-1903 (2017).
The time has surely now come, therefore, to reassess Mansfield’s life and reputation ten years on, in the light of so much new research, and to consider new directions for future Mansfield studies.
Suggested topics for papers might include (but are not limited to):
• KM and world literature
• KM, music and art
• KM as an avant-garde writer
• KM and modernist magazines
• KM and material publication contexts
• KM and cultural material studies
• KM and medical humanities.
• KM and queer studies
• KM and her biographers
• KM and her contemporaries
• KM and New Zealand
• KM and World War 1
• KM and cosmopolitanism
• KM and travel writing
• KM and the literary marketplace
• KM and modernity/the modern
• KM and pedagogy
• KM and the colonial world
• KM and critical heritage
• KM and her legacy
Abstracts of 200 words, together with a bio-sketch, should be sent to the conference organisers:
Dr Aimee Gasston, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Dr Gerri Kimber, University of Northampton, UK
Professor Janet Wilson, University of Northampton, UK
Submission deadline: 1 February 2018.