CFP: H. G. Wells: From Kent to Cosmopolis

[faustus]

An international conference to be held at the Darwin Conference Suite, University of Kent at Canterbury, England

July 9-11, 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

The conference marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the H. G. Wells Society in 1960 together with the centenary of Wells’s comic masterpiece The History of Mr Polly. It will take place in what Mr Polly found to be the ‘congenial situation’ of Canterbury, the Kentish cathedral city within easy reach of Folkestone and Sandgate where Wells lived in the early twentieth century and wrote some of his best-known works.

We shall examine Wells both as a novelist formed by local circumstances of his time and place, and as a thinker and social prophet who remains intensely relevant today. We aim to discuss Wells’s links to modern science fiction in all media, his imagining of worlds to come, his political, social and ecological expectations for the 21st century, and his success as an artist and controversialist both then and now.

We invite proposals for papers on all aspects of Wells’s life and writings: his science fiction, his novels and short stories, his political, sociological and autobiographical works, and his contributions to education, journalism and the cinema. In keeping with the conference title ‘From Kent to Cosmopolis’ we hope to attract contributions which relate the local to the universal in his writings and/or look at Wells’s achievements in relation to wider cultural, historical, temporal and spatial perspectives.

250 word abstracts for 20-minute papers should be sent by 1 March 2010 to Andrew M. Butler and Patrick Parrinder at 2010wellsconference@gmail.com

Priority booking for the conference at bargain rates is available up to 30 June 2009. Contact the Hon. Treasurer, Paul Allen, at PaulMalcolmAllen [remove and replace with at sign] aol.com

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I've just floated an abstract for another smaller conference, on Wells annoying feminists in the 1930s - might this fit somewhere? On the other hand I still have my plethora of notes from the trip to Urbana-Champaign to digest and think about working up in various directions.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure either would - but perhaps it might be better to wait to see how the abstracts stack up to decide. Urbana-Champaign was all about Rebecca West, yes?

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Either Wells destroyed all letters from her*, or they are closed until a significant period after their son's death, I can't recall. No, I was looking more broadly at HGW as a pivotal figure for interwar British progressives and their movements.

*His letters to her are at Yale, and stomach-churningly twee. 'Jaguar wuvs Panfer very much...'

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Looks like we lapped the 2009 conference:

H.G. WELLS SOCIETY

Special Conference: 26 September 2009, Women's Library, London
'Ann Veronica': Feminist, Flâneuse and Freethinker?


This interdisciplinary, one-day conference marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of H.G. Wells's 'feminist' novel, Ann Veronica. In this unique conference, we will be exploring the lives and work of women who were associated with Wells or were influenced by him during the Edwardian era.

We welcome hearty debate and papers on the following or related topics:


Ann Veronica, the story of its publication, contents and influence

* How 'feminist' a novel is Ann Veronica?
* Wells's fiction and his portrayal of concerns and interests relating to women, for instance, education, suffrage, sexual freedom and the role of women in his utopian works
* The work and achievements of the women writers who worked alongside Wells during his lifetime
* Wells's relationship with women


Please send a 250-word proposal and a few words about yourself to:
emelynegodfrey@yahoo.com or sylviahardy@btinternet.com by 30 April, 2009.
Speakers will be confirmed June-July.