Trauma and the Sublime - British Association for Romantic Studies

CALL FOR PAPERS
An international interdisciplinary conference
Department of English, Swansea University, Wales, UK
Contacts:
S.P.Vine@swansea.ac.uk
M.L.Kohlke@swansea.ac.uk


Trauma and the Sublime

Wednesday 6 - Friday 8 August 2008

PLENARY SPEAKERS
Christine Battersby (Warwick)
Elisabeth Bronfen (Zurich)
Richard Humphreys (Tate Britain)
Gene Ray (independent critic)
Philip Shaw (Leicester)

In recent decades, trauma studies and the category of the sublime have engaged theorists and practitioners across a range of cultural disciplines and activities, informing work on the postmodern, historical memory and testimony, the avant-garde, and theories of representation and ideology. This international, interdisciplinary conference aims to explore the impact of present and past versions of trauma and the sublime, and to consider the extent to which these terms might inhabit each other. Papers are invited in any area of trauma studies and theories and practices of the sublime, particularly contributions that consider the connections or interactions between trauma and sublimity. The conference welcomes proposals from the disciplines of literature, philosophy, history and art history, politics, psychoanalysis, film, music, theology, science, medicine and any other field where the themes of the conference take on meaning.

TOPICS MAY INCLUDE

abjection gender race
apocalypse genocide sexuality
colonialism the gothic slavery
consumption history suttee
cultural memory language temporality
desire literature terror
divinity martyrdom testimony
ecology materiality visual presentation
ethics the occult war

200-word proposals for 20-minute papers should be sent to the conference organisers, Dr Steve Vine and Dr Marie-Luise Kohlke, at TraumaSublime@swansea.ac.uk [this web page is not yet operational]- or by post to Department of English, Swansea University, Wales, SA2 8PP, UK - before 31 March 2008.