International Conference on Elizabeth Bowen

5 July 2016 – Warsaw, Poland

organised by Interdisciplinary Research Foundation

and

Department of Anglo-Irish Literature, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University

 

Elizabeth Bowen occupies a special place among twentieth-century writers. A superb novelist and a master of short story, she is known for her exquisite style and unconventional narrative technique. For the deep psychological insight she demonstrates in her works, Bowen has been called the “anatomist of consciousness”, the “historian and custodian of memory”. Her fiction has been considered in the light of modernist experimentalism and realist innovation, Gothic tradition and gender studies. However her contribution to world literature has been considerably underestimated and overshadowed by the achievements of canonical writers of the time.

The Conference seeks to explore the work of Elizabeth Bowen, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as works of other writers, artists, film-makers or scholars inspired by Bowen’s life and writing. We invite proposals from various disciplines including literature, linguistics, culture studies, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and arts.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

• (Anglo-)Irish modernist fiction

• colonial and post-colonial literature

• Big House tradition

• home and domesticity

• bizarre objects

• Gothic sensibilities and the uncanny

• war time fiction

• memory and trauma

• displacement and exile

• marriage and motherhood

Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 20 March 2016 to: bowen@irf-network.org. Download paper proposal form.

Full registration fee – 70 €         Student registration fee – 50 €

The registration fee covers all conference materials, coffee breaks, lunch, Warsaw city tour and post-conference publication.

Conference venue: As-Bud Conference Centre, Al. Jerozolimskie 81, Warsaw