[URBANTH-L]CFP: The Metropolitan and Urban Imaginary

[Angela Jancius]

CFP: The Metropolitan and Urban Imaginary, June 10, 2005
Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London
Deadline for Submissions: April 15th


This conference will explore the different and complex ways in which
literary texts inform and shape our perceptions of the city and the urban
environment. We are particularly interested in papers which discuss the
different traditions of writing about the city with global and hybrid
perspectives. Examples of this are the current interest in the cities of
China, the 'new' Europe, as well as the cities of both American continents.

Proposals for papers

Subjects closer to home in the writing of England and post-devolution Wales
and Scotland are very welcome. The primary focus is literary, so papers
addressing the genres and narratives of writing the metropolitan and urban
imaginary are invited, e.g. in the form of the detective story, the work of
Yasmina Khadra, Haruki Murakami, Paul Auster, Don De Lillo, Orham Pamuk,
Minette Walters, John Williams, - or in a wider mode the writing of Charles
Dickens, Wilkie Collins to Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. Work addressing
questions of narrative, trauma, of travel writing and the self, is also
encouraged. Interdisciplinary papers incorporating the visual arts, film,
architecture and geography, are also invited.

Send a 300 word abstract to Dr. Carolyn Brown: bc22 at greenwich.ac.uk by 15
April 2005. Firm acceptance of papers will be dependant on payment of
conference fees.