Conferences & Calls
Please contact the webmaster with info on upcoming Lawrence related conferences, panels, and calls for papers. Your assistance is appreciated in helping to keep these notices up-to-date. Past MLA Lawrence session paper titles are now archived on our website as well as information regarding past International Lawrence Conferences.
Conference Announcements |
36th INTERNATIONAL D. H. LAWRENCE CONFERENCE 13-15 April 2023 HOME, HOMES AND HOMELAND
CALL FOR PAPERS "This is our own still valley / Our Eden, our home” Renascence
“And I’m a pale-face like a homeless dog That has followed the sun from the dawn through the east” The Red Wolf
As a writer who spent the last ten years of his life travelling around the world in search of the freedom and creativity he felt his homeland could not give him, the least that can be said about Lawrence’s relationship to his home is that it was complex and shifting. Lawrence’s early stories, set in his native Midlands, offer a historical and sociological testimony of life in the colliers’ and farmers’ homes – complete with details of the rent, furniture and architecture of their houses – and invite us to think about the duality of the home as both one’s parents’ home and a place of one’s own. Thus, nostalgia for the childhood home as a place of “irresponsibility and security” (Rainbow 76) recalls past feelings of belonging and comfort: “the heart of me weeps to belong / To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside / And hymns in the cosy parlour” (Piano). The parental home provides protection against the hostility of the outside world, yet it may also be perceived by young men and women as a place of oppression to be escaped We will therefore study how Lawrencian characters are induced to leave home and the shielding influence of mothers – a necessary step towards adulthood: “the long voyage in the quiet home was over; we had crossed the bright sea of our youth” (The White Peacock 237). Some relinquish the notion of a traditional physical home, finding a home instead in the body of the beloved, like the poet-narrator of Song of a Man Who is Loved: “Between her breasts is my home”; others still, are compelled to leave the homeland, as Lawrence himself did in 1919, after many conflicts with the Home Office, involving the prosecution and destruction of The Rainbow in 1915, or his disgust with England’s government policies during the war. His fiction, letters and poems of that period show him to be unequivocally at odds with the politics and public feeling of his home country, which he openly criticised in the likes of the poem Songs I learnt at School, justifying his flight abroad. Thus “home” becomes a denomination for England or Europe in Kangaroo, The Boy in the Bush and The Plumed Serpent, as Lawrence unearths traces of “home” in Australian cities, analyses how the “Old Country” is considered by the Australians, and ponders his own relationship to the now distant “home” country and the pull “homewards”. The Rananim project was of course one of the ideals Lawrence pursued around the world and in his writing, as his travelling protagonists seek to recreate a home for themselves abroad: Harriett Somers’s yearning for the safety and rootedness of a home manifests itself in contrast to Richard Somers’s rejection of homeliness, as Birkin did before him. Jack, in The Boy in the Bush, also asserts his homelessness, the word “home” having lost its meaning: “There are words like home, Wandoo, England, mother, father, sister, but they don’t carry very well” (230). Feeling at home neither in one’s native country nor abroad, with no lasting home, one may become a “wandering Jew,” as Lawrence referred to himself in letters, subjected to bouts of homesickness, like Kate Leslie longing for spring or Christmas in Britain. Yet Lawrence invariably seems to imagine homecoming as an experience of estrangement and disappointment. Is there no permanent home then, for Lawrence and his characters, besides the eternal home behind the sun or in the moon, in The Plumed Serpent? But even that is the mystic home of the gods, to which Quetzalcoatl, Jesus and Mary retire. There remains the psychological home, feeling “at home in ourselves” (Woe), or the “home” of the Morning Star, in which men and women become their true selves. Possible paths of reflection: Home as a paradoxical space and polysemic concept Home as a personal, physical or metaphysical space Domesticity Women’s and men’s roles at home Home as the mother-country The metaphorical uses of the word home From nostalgia to emancipation Home and identity formation Privacy and community Homelessness and homecoming The typology of dwellings (sociological implications, narrative function of these descriptions) Comfort, furniture, decoration, possessions The Lawrences’ homes in England and abroad Foreigners who made England their home
Organisers: Elise Brault-Dreux, Fiona Fleming Scientific Committee: Cornelius Crowley, Ginette Roy
The deadline for proposals is 7 November 2022. Priority will be given to proposals received before the deadline, but we will continue to accept proposals until 14 November 2022. Please send a 300-word abstract to Fiona Fleming, fiona.fleming@parisnanterre.fr
Conference fee: 85 euros Link to our journal Etudes Lawrenciennes: https://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/
San Francisco, CA (Jan. 5-8, 2023) The D.H. Lawrence Society of North America invites papers for a panel on “Lawrence, Work, and the Working Class” at the Modern Language Association conference in San Francisco, CA on 5-8 January 2023. Papers may treat any aspect of Lawrence’s life or work in relation to this theme. Please email an abstract of 250-300 words with a brief c.v. and A/V requirements to Ron Granofsky, McMaster University, at granofsk@mcmaster.ca by the 19th of March, 2022. ![]() Dear Members,
I am happy to announce the first of a series of bi-monthly Happy Hours, which are intended to appeal alike to academic and non-academic Lawrence enthusiasts. On Tuesday 29th March (1:00 pm Eastern Standard Time), Dr Audra Bellamore will give a presentation on a painting of Frieda Lawrence that was found recently at the DHL Ranch in New Mexico. Dr Bellamore is a curator at UNM.
Zoom information will be shared nearer the time. For now, please mark this event on your calendar and spread the word as far and wide as you can.
Two further happy hours, facilitated by Ben Hagen and David Game respectively, will follow in May and July -- as indicated on the ad below. For which, and for all their good work on making this happen, much gratitude is due to Ben Hagen, Julianne Newmark, Thalia Trigoni, and Kathleen Vella.
Cheers,
Adam
VIRTUAL GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE April 23, 2022
Abstracts are welcome on any topic in D.H. Lawrence studies, including any aspect of his fiction, poetry, essays, literary contacts, and place in modernism and/or literary history. We are especially interested in papers relating to the topic of relationships: love, hate, friendship, family, courtship, and marriage. The online conference will use the Zoom meeting platform but will follow the traditional format of in-person meetings. Each session will be led by a Chair and will feature a respondent, a senior Lawrence scholar who will provide constructive commentary on the papers. Our aim is to enable as many students as possible to participate without budgetary pressures. There is no conference fee, but DHLSNA membership is required for presenters (student rate $10 USD). Please email an abstract of 200-300 words plus concise curriculum vitae to Ron Granofsky, Professor Emeritus, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, at granofsk@mcmaster.ca by April 1, 2022. Acceptance notices will be sent by April 10, 2022. Please Note Deadline Extension! CALL FOR AWARD NOMINATIONS
All nominations and self-nominations should be sent to DHLSNA President Elect Ronald Granofsky at granofsk@mcmaster.ca and must be received no later than Labor Day, 6th September 2021. Winners will be announced in the Spring 2022 Newsletter.
|
SAMLA 2021 (Atlanta, November 6-7) INTIMACY AND ALIENATION IN D.H. LAWRENCE This traditional session welcomes submissions that address questions of intimacy and/or alienation, broadly conceived, in D.H. Lawrence's poetry, short fiction, novels, essays, or other writing. How do Lawrence's texts illuminate or complicate our understanding of our current moment, in which we are both more connected to others than ever while at the same time being forced to keep our physical distance? By July 25, 2021, please submit an abstract of 200-300 words, a brief bio, and any AV requirements or scheduling requests to Tonya Krouse, Northern Kentucky University, at krouset@nku.edu. Please note extended deadline: July 25, 2021 |
MLA 2022 The D.H. Lawrence Society of North America invites papers for a panel on “Lawrence, Disease, and Recovery” at the Modern Language Association conference in Washington, DC on 6-9 January 2022. Papers may treat any aspect of Lawrence’s life or work in relation to this theme. Please email an abstract of 250-300 words with a brief c.v. and A/V requirements to Adam Parkes, University of Georgia, at aparkes@uga.edu by 20th March 2021.
34th INTERNATIONAL D.H.LAWRENCE CONFERENCE, "D.H. Lawrence and the People". Nanterre, France, April 8-10, 2021. Please contact ginette.katz.roy[at]gmail.com if you wish to participate/to confirm participation. https://crea.parisnanterre.fr/call-for-papers-34th-international-d-h-lawrence-conference-918591.kjsp This conference will be VIRTUAL!
D. H. LAWRENCE, DISTANCE AND PROXIMITY ‘What a pity that distance remains distance, so absolutely’ *Calls for Short Papers by April 15, 2021
The symposium will be hosted on Zoom by the D. H. Lawrence Society of Great Britain with no fee for registration and everyone is invited to attend any or all of the events, regardless of whether you are scheduled to present. The symposium will be scheduled to accommodate international time zones as far as possible, usually between 1300‒2200 GMT. INVITATION:
Dear DHLSNA members,
You are warmly invited to join our virtual symposium of more than eighty international Lawrence scholars on 10-14 July - the dates originally intended for the 15th International D. H. Lawrence Conference in Taos (new dates 17-22 July, 2022).
Next month's symposium hosted on Zoom will consist of a series of workshops and roundtables to share ongoing research and renew contact with Lawrence and fellow Lawrentians. The near-final programme (attached) will soon be published, together with speakers' abstracts and bios, on the symposium webpage: https://www.dhlawrencesociety.com/symposium
All events are free and open to all and we hope that you will join us for some or all of them. Please also invite your friends and networks. The Zoom links will be sent to this mailing list a week before the symposium starts. Meanwhile please direct any comments or queries to me at this email address; dhlsymposium2021@gmail.com
We look forward to welcoming you.
All good wishes,
Dr Susan Reid
Organiser: https://www.dhlawrencesociety.com/symposium
On behalf of the Symposium Committee:
Kate Foster (D. H. Lawrence Society GB)
David Game (Australia) Andrew Harrison (UK) Holly A. Laird (USA) Stefania Michelucci (Italy) Nanette Norris (Canada) Doo-Sun Ryu (Korea) Joseph R. Shafer (JDHLS Online)
Taos, NM, (NEW DATE: July 17-22, 2022) Visit the conference website to learn all about the event and the registration fee
|