Narrated Spaces Narrated Spaces |
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Narrated Spaces is an interdisciplinary group of like-minded researchers with an interest in the interaction between narratives and represented, representational, ideological, textual, and imagined spaces both material and abstract. Specific interests and expertise include: the representation of cities and urban space; exile; war and conflict zones; the construction of national spaces (particularly Ireland and the USA); the construction and representation of domestic spaces; travel narratives; and landscape description and representation. AimsThe Narrated Spaces Research Group aims to provide a forum for like-minded individuals, including postgraduate researchers and both emerging and established scholars, to investigate the theory and practice of narrated spaces. The Group aims to produce publications from individual research and from collaborative projects such as seminars, colloquia, and conferences. Group Members
Dr. William Blazek, group co-leader, email:
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Recent PublicationsCollaborative workLucy Kay, Zoë Kinsley, Terry Phillips, and Alan Roughley, eds, Mapping Liminalities: Thresholds in Cultural and Literary Texts ( Bern: Peter Lang, 2007)
This collection of essays, part of the series Transatlantic Aesthetics and Culture, is the product of the Liminal Discourses colloquium hosted by the Narrated Spaces Research Group in September 2005 (see below). The essays offer new perspectives on the concept of liminality. They explore the relevance and significance of the limen or threshold from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives, and across a broad range of historical periods. The authors all seek to revisit key questions raised in recent literary and cultural criticism, whilst also moving that discussion in new directions. In particular, the essays stress the importance of defining liminality for particular literary and cultural contexts, and highlight the fact that whilst it is liberating and progressive in some instances, in others it is violent and oppressive. Examining texts from the early modern to the postmodern periods, by authors on both sides of the Atlantic, the volume embraces a wide range of literary forms, including novels, travel narratives, religious texts, and philosophical treatises; it also includes consideration of non-literary forms of representation such as photography. This book reveals the complexity of the concept of liminality, and underscores its powerfulness and potential for understanding the ways in which both individuals and communities, in the past and in the present day, negotiate states of transition, and give expression to their experience of being 'in-between'.
Lucy Kay, Zoë Kinsley, Terry Phillips and Alan Roughley, ‘Introduction’ Publications by individual researchersWilliam Blazek
Twenty-First-Century Readings of Tender Is the Night. Ed. William Blazek and Laura Rattray. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007. Zoë KinsleyWomen Writing the Home Tour, 1682-1812 (forthcoming, Ashgate, 2008)
‘Travel and Material Culture: Commodity, Currency, and Destabilised Meaning in Women’s Home Tour Writing’, Studies in Travel Writing, 10/2 (2006), 101–22. Current and forthcoming activities and projects
Narrated Spaces Research Seminar Series
“Postcolonial Subaltern Lifewriting” Professor Tim Youngs ( Nottingham Trent University)
“Red Ice: Narratives of the 1937 Soviet North Polar Expedition” Dr. Chalen Westaby ( Liverpool Hope University)
"Imperial Lethargy: Self-Determination and the Decolonisation of Sierra Leone" Wednesday, 16 April 2008, 5.00 PM Professor Françoise Sammarcelli ( University of Paris IV—Sorbonne)
“Walden Landscapes” The 2nd Liverpool Travel SeminarFollowing the success of the event in 2007, the second Liverpool Travel Seminar will take place in March 2008 at Liverpool Hope University. Further details will be available shortly. Julian Barnes and the European Tradition Conference, 14 th and 15 th June 2008 This conference stages a unique opportunity to reflect on the significance of Barnes’s accomplishments, bringing together the foremost Barnes scholars, critics working on modern and contemporary fiction, his translators - and Julian Barnes himself, who will be in conversation and reading from his work. Invited speakers include: Vanessa Guignery (Sorbonne) John Mullan (UCL, The Guardian) Peter Childs (Gloucestershire) Dominic Head ( Nottingham) Merritt Moseley ( North Carolina) Amanda Hopkinson (BCLT, UEA) Expand for further details and Call for Papers [please can following info in blue be revealed by pressing ‘expand’ button] Julian Barnes is one of the most refined writers and distinguished intellectuals of hisgeneration. Although primarily a novelist and essayist, the ‘chameleon of British letters’ has also written short stories, television scripts and a screenplay. While postmodern in its resistance to categorisation and humanist in his commitment to ‘what is constant in the human heart and passions’, Barnes’s work also explores, unlike any other writer of his generation, the dislocated meanings of Englishness and Europe in the contemporary period. This conference stages a unique opportunity to reflect on the significance of the author’s accomplishments, bringing together the foremost Barnes scholars, critics working on modern and contemporary fiction, his translators - and Julian Barnes himself. A tour of Liverpool, Cultural Capital of Europe 2008, is part of the conference programme. Short papers are invited on aspects of Barnes’s writing focusing on specific texts/periods, or addressing his relation to Genre and Hybridity; the Creative and the Critical; Intertextuality; European History, Trauma and Memory; (European) Literary Traditions, Postmodernism and the Contemporary; Morality and Ethics; Class and Englishness. Delegates are particularly encouraged to submit proposals for papers on Barnes’s relationship to European culture and history. Send abstracts for papers of 250 words, together with a brief biographical note, to Sebastian Groes at the (email) address below, before 15 April 2008 . A limited number of postgraduate student bursaries are available. Requests for early notification of acceptance for international delegates are welcome. For furtherinformation and registration details, please contact: Sebastian Groes, Julian Barnes Conference, The Deanery of Arts and Humanities, Liverpool Hope University Hope Park Liverpool L16 9JD Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it United Kingdom Tel.: 00-44(0)151-291 3560 Conference organisers: Sebastian Groes (Liverpool Hope) and Sean Matthews (Nottingham) Recent activities and projects Kazuo Ishiguro and the International Novel: A One-Day Conference, June 2007 This conference provided a unique opportunity to reflect on Ishiguro’s achievements, exploring themes including: Ishiguro and the European Tradition; World Literature; Intertextuality; Trauma and Memory; Postmodernity and the Contemporary; Postcolonialism and Otherness; Morality and Ethics; Class and Englishness; Nationalism and Ethnicity; and Genre and Forms of Representation. The programme includes a reading by the author, contributions from his foremost critics and a discussion of the international reception of the work with his translators.For more information see the conference website: http://www.hope.ac.uk/research/ishiguro/index.htm Liverpool Travel Seminar: Travel Across the Disciplines, April 2007 The aim of this one-day seminar, organised in collaboration with the University of Liverpool, was to foster interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration between academics working in the fields of travel and travel writing, particularly those working in Liverpool and the northwest. Details of speakers and papers |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 07 May 2008 ) |
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