CfP: The Michael Field Centenary Conference (Deadline 31/12/13)

The Michael Field Centenary Conference: New Directions in Fin de Siècle Studies
11-12 July 2014
Institute of English Studies, Senate House, University of London

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA)
Professor Margaret D. Stetz (University of Delaware)

Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper) occupies an increasingly central role as one of the most fascinating figures of the fin de siècle. Following ground-breaking revisionist scholarship of the 1990s which rediscovered Bradley and Cooper’s poetry, the last twenty years has seen a major resurgence in work on Michael Field – reflecting Bradley and Cooper’s own belief that their work would not be appreciated until sometime in the distant future.

This major international conference will mark the Michael Field Centenary, bringing together world-renowned scholars of fin de siècle literature, poetry, life writing, women’s writing and gender and sexuality.

The Michael Field Centenary conference also aims to acknowledge and celebrate the diversity and vitality of new scholarship surrounding Michael Field and fin de siècle literature generally, providing a platform for new voices and perspectives from postgraduate/ early career scholars. As the first major Michael Field conference following the 2004 ‘Michael Field and their World’ conference at University of Delaware, we aim to assess the how the ‘field’ has changed over the last ten years; for example, following the publication of significant works such as Margaret D. Stetz and Cheryl A. Wilson’s Michael Field and their World (2007), Marion Thain’s ‘Michael Field’: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Fin de Siècle and Sharon Bickle’s The Fowl and the Pussycat: Love Letters of Michael Field, 1876-1909 (2008).

We invite proposals for 20 minute papers on topics related to Michael Field and fin de siècle culture, which may include, but are not limited to:

• Fin de siècle poetry
• Late-Victorian literary culture
• Aestheticism and Decadence
• Verse drama/closet drama
• Drama and performance
• Poetic form, prosody, the lyric
• History, time, historiography
• Interactions with different periods/literary traditions
• Life writing, biography, autobiography
• Gender, sexuality, desire
• Michael Field’s circle/influences
• Fashion and dress culture
• Catholicism and religious writing
• Art and design
• Book history, book design, printing
• The New Woman, the Female Aesthete
• Modernity, modernism
• Michael Field’s influence on later writers

Deadline for abstracts: 31 December 2013
Please email 300-word abstracts to michaelfield2014@gmail.com

Organisers: Dr Ana Parejo Vadillo (Birkbeck, University of London), Dr Sarah Parker (University of Stirling) and Dr Marion Thain (University of Sheffield)