Nature Writing’s Future Pasts – Land Lines Conference CFP
British nature writing can be understood as both a product of and a challenge to a western-style modernity that has created the conditions for its own unravelling. The tense that best captures these conditions is the future anterior. Scottish writer Kathleen Jamie, wandering through Bergen’s Natural History Museum, marvels at the ‘decaying bones of twenty-four cetacean skeletons crowded under the ceiling’. One whale skeleton alone, that of a gigantic blue, is ‘less an animal, more a narrative’. The different cetacean narratives add up to a devastating commentary to which even words such as ‘waste’ and ‘slaughter’ and ‘holocaust’ and ‘shame’ cannot do full justice. Jamie duly joins a team of conservators who lovingly polish up the bones, dedicated to preserving a future past. What are the futures of nature writing, in Britain and elsewhere? What are its pasts? And how might these be brought together? This two-day conference, held at the University of Leeds, will examine the different temporal registers of modern British nature writing, from the foundational work of Gilbert White in the late eighteenth century to the present day. Topics will include, but are not restricted to: deep time; the effects of temporal scales; predictions and prophecies; the workings of environmental memory; and the conflicted relationship between nature writing, natural history and changing conceptions of ‘nature’ itself. Attention will also be given to the relationship between hope and despair in modern British nature writing; to the transnational and global contexts within which it operates; and to the anticipated losses –– but also the alternative futures –– it confronts. The conference dates are Thursday 28th February and Friday 1st March 2019. We especially invite proposals for papers from Postgraduate and Early Career researchers. Alternative formats are welcomed (pre-formed panels; discussion groups based on 5-minute position papers; roundtables, etc). We anticipate that the conference will also be open to interested members of the public, either as presenters or audience members, numbers allowing. Our confirmed keynote speakers are Patrick Barkham (author of Islander, The Butterfly Isles, Coastlines, and environment correspondent for The Guardian), Miriam Darlington (author of Otter Country and Owl Sense, and Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Plymouth), and Richard Kerridge (author of Cold Blood and leader of the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University). As well as delivering keynote talks these speakers will also be giving a reading at Leeds Library open to both conference delegates and the public on the evening of the 28th February. To submit your proposal please email a 250 word abstract to [email protected] by 1st December 2018, with ‘Land Lines Conference’ in the subject bar. Please attach your proposal as an anonymised document and also paste it into the body of the email. If you are interested in attending but not presenting please also email us by this date so we can calculate numbers. ‘Land Lines’ is a 2-year, AHRC-funded research project working on the history of British nature writing, the main output of which will be a book for CUP (2019). Led by Professor Graham Huggan at the University of Leeds, the team also includes scholars from the Universities of Sussex and St Andrews. www.landlinesproject.wordpress.com; Twitter: @LandLinesNature or Facebook: www.facebook.com/LandLinesNature June 24-26, 2019
Boulder, Colorado, USA The International Association for Philosophy of Time (IAPT) is pleased to announce its sixth annual conference, which will be hosted by the Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science (CHPS) at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, Colorado (USA), from 24th-26th June, 2019 (arrival Sunday 23rd, departure Thursday 27th). The local organizer is Heather Demarest, the program committee is chaired by David Ingram. Papers suitable for a 30 minute presentation (and no longer than 4,500 words) should be submitted by email (as attachments in .docx or .pdf format) to David Ingram. The deadline for submissions is 12 noon (GMT) on Friday 21st December, 2018. Submissions should be on a topic in the philosophy of time, broadly construed, and should include an abstract of 150-200 words. Each submission should be prepared for blind review and include a word count. Only one paper per person is permitted. Please include author name(s), institutional affiliation, and preferred email address in the body of the email (and not in the paper itself). Notifications of acceptance will be delivered in February 2019. Selected speakers should confirm their participation before 1st March, 2019. Some funding will be available to graduate student speakers and non-TT faculty speakers. More information will be provided in due course. At the conference, presentations will be 30 minutes. Presentations will be followed by a 10 minute commentary and a brief reply from the presenter. There will be around 15 minutes for general discussion (Q&A). |
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