DHLSNA

LONDON CALLING:  LAWRENCE AND THE METROPOLIS
THE 14TH INTERNATIONAL D.H. LAWRENCE CONFERENCE
JULY 3-8, 2017

Deadline extended to Dec. 31

Updated Conference Call Download
(Contains additional info and the Graduate Fellowship Application Form)

London played a crucial role in Lawrence’s early life: he taught here, got his first
literary breaks here, and even got married here in 1914. It was in London that he met
the friends and patrons who launched his career and facilitated his travels, and
whenever he and Frieda returned to England, it was to London that they came first.
Lawrence visited London around fifty times - for the first time in October 1908 for his
interview for a teaching position in Croydon, and for the last time in September 1926.
Over those eighteen years he visited or lived in London in every single year, apart from
during his travels in 1920-22.

He saw the city grow from seven to eight million people, and become the metropolis
we know today, with its buses, trams, private cars, bridges, Underground stations,
West End theatres, and electric street lights. He knew London as it was approaching the
historical peak population; this was followed by decline, and which has only just (in
2015) been exceeded.

He knew the London of the Edwardian period, of the War, and of the jazz age. He
knew middle-class outer-suburban Croydon, but also some of London’s most
fashionable districts, where his friends lived: Hampstead (Edward Garnett, Dollie
Radford and Catherine Carswell), St. John’s Wood (Koteliansky), Mecklenburgh
Square (H.D. and Richard Aldington), and Bedford Square (Lady Ottoline Morrell).
London was the legal, as well as the literary, artistic and theatrical, centre of England.
In 1913 Frieda’s divorce hearing was heard there; in 1915 Lawrence was examined for
bankruptcy at its High Court; in the same year The Rainbow was tried at Bow Street
Magistrate’s Court; in 1927 David was produced at the Regent Theatre; in 1928
Catherine Carswell oversaw the typing of part of Lady Chatterley’s Lover there; in
1928 Lawrence explained ‘Why I Don’t Like Living in London’ in The Evening News;
and in 1929 his paintings were exhibited at the Warren Street gallery and impounded.
Given his hatred of London’s intellectualism and authoritarianism, and his objections
to metropolises in general, it is not surprising that much of what Lawrence writes about
London is negative. But, as he admitted in 1928, ‘It used not to be so. Twenty years
ago, London was to me thrilling, thrilling, thrilling, the vast and throbbing heart of all
adventure.’

For such a nodal city - the world’s biggest city, the heart of the world’s biggest empire,
and a centre of international modernism - it has a peripheral place in his work and in
work about him. But Lawrence could not have become the person and writer he did
without having known his native capital city.

The 14th International D. H. Lawrence conference will be held in London at the
College of the Humanities, Bedford Square, and nearby venues. It is authorized by the
Coordinating Committee for International Lawrence Conferences (CCILC) and
organized in collaboration with the D. H. Lawrence Society of North America and the
D. H. Lawrence Society (UK).

The conference welcomes papers on topics including but not limited to:

§ Lawrence’s experiences of, and/or reactions to, London and its various social
groups and geographical districts
§ Lawrence’s relationships with individual Londoners
§ Lawrence’s interactions with London-based journals and publishers
§ The suppression of The Rainbow
§ The premiere of David in London
§ Lawrence’s exhibition of paintings at the Warren Street Gallery
§ Works written by Lawrence while he was resident in London
§ Lawrence’s responses to and thoughts about cities in general

Papers are welcome from Lawrence scholars, graduate students, and the public.
Papers should last no longer than 20 minutes, and will be followed by 10 minutes of
questions. They will be presented in a panel together with two other papers.

If you would like to contribute, please send an abstract of up to 500 words to the
Executive Director, Dr. Catherine Brown: catherinelawrencelondon@gmail.com
by midnight on Dec. 31, 2016 (unless you are a graduate student who wishes
to apply for a Graduate Fellowship, in which case please follow the alternative
procedure described below). Submissions will be assessed by the Academic Program
Committee detailed below, and responses will be issued by Feb. 15, 2017.
The abstract should include the following information as part of the same file (in
either MS Word or pdf format):

§ Your name, postal address, telephone number, and email address
§ The name of the institution (if applicable) at which you are registered
§ Your CV (1 page condensed version)
§ Please indicate if you need OHP or other such media equipment for your
presentation.

The Conference Fee is expected to be approximately £280-320 for the week.
The Conference website may be found here:
http://dhlawrencesociety.com/home/14thinternational-d-h-lawrence-conference-london/

Graduate Fellowships:
Six Graduate Fellowships are available for Graduate Fellows.
A Graduate Fellowship covers fees, and efforts will be made to make cheap
accommodation available.
Graduate Fellows will be required to help with registration and other duties during the
Conference.
If you would like to apply for one of these, please fill out the Graduate Fellowship
Application form below, or click here.
This competition will be assessed by the Graduate Fellowships Committee chaired by
Dr. Andrew Harrison.  Fellowship Submissions are to be sent to
lawrencegraduatefellowship@aol.com by Dec. 31, 2016.

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
Executive Director
Catherine Brown
Conference Treasurers
Bethan Jones and Kim Hooper
International Liaison and Assistant Treasurer
Jonathan Long
Conference Webmaster
Joseph Shafer
Conference Designer
Stephen Alexander
Conference Tour Director
Maria Thanassa
Conference Awards Organizer
President of the DH Lawrence Society of North America
Graduate Fellowships Committee Chair
Andrew Harrison
Accommodation Director
Ted Simonds
Conference Consultants
Nancy Paxton and Betsy Sargent
Academic Program Committee
International:
Australia: David Game, Christopher Pollnitz
Canada: Betsy Sargent, Laurence Steven
France: Ginette Roy
Germany: Christa Jansohn, Dieter Mehl
Italy: Simonetta de Filippis
Japan: Masashi Asai
Montenegro: Marija Krivokapic
South Korea: Doo-Sun Ryu
South Africa: Jim Phelps
Sweden: Margrét Gunnarsdóttir Champion
USA: Holly Laird, Nancy Paxton
British:
Michael Bell
Howard Booth
Catherine Brown
David Ellis
Andrew Harrison
Bethan Jones
Sean Matthews
Sue Reid
Neil Roberts
Jeff Wallace

Call for Contributions

D.H. Lawrence: Technology & Modernity

Dear fellow Lawrentians,

  I am putting together a proposal for Bloomsbury Publishing for a volume called D.H. Lawrence: Technology & Modernity (working title). The book would consist of roughly 16 -17 new essays seeking to explore the intricate relationship Lawrence had with technology. Technology should be understood here in quite a broad sense: ranging from industrialist practices to ways of understanding. Possible themes would tackle issues such as technology and social issues, pastoral vs. urban, war (technology) and Lawrence, mining and Lawrence, literary representations of technology, technology as a response to modernity and similar. Be creative! The length of each essay would be roughly 5000 words. Should you like to contribute, please send me the title and a very short abstract of the proposed essay (6-7 sentences) by December the 5^th. I have authored and co-edited two books under Bloomsbury before, which you can check out here:

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/henry-miller-the-inhuman-artist-9781623561086/

Henry Miller: The Inhuman Artist: A Philosophical Inquiry: Indrek Männiste: Bloomsbury Academic www.bloomsbury.com Against skeptics, Männiste argues that Miller does indeed have a philosophy of his own, which underpins most of his texts. It is demonstrated that this

University of Tartu, Estonia

e-mail: indrek.maenniste@gmail.com

PARIS OUEST UNIVERSITY

31^st International D.H.Lawrence Conference

29-31 March 2017

The Relative and the Absolute in D.H.Lawrence's Work

The focus of the topic of the 2017 D.H Lawrence conference is not restricted to the poetico-philosophical ideas which Lawrence expresses in his essays, notably in "The Crown" and "Fantasia of the Unconscious". The aim is above all to address the way that such ideas connect with his artistic production. Many of his statements about the relative and the absolute appear baffling and seem contradictory, when looked at outside their immediate contexts: in other words, when abstracted from their specific and relational or relative context in an artwork. In "The Crown", Lawrence asserts both that "All absolutes are prison-walls" and that "without something absolute, we are nothing"─ doing so with a touch of relativism and equivocation often to be found in his writings. The inquiry into Lawrence’s considerations on the absolute will obviously lead the participants in the conference to reflect on his idiosyncratic form of spirituality and his attempts to convey it through his novels and poems, almost from the start of his career. What he read about Einstein's Theory of relativity in 1921 reinforced his belief in the importance of universal relatedness and personal relationships, along with his desire to reconcile the relative and the absolute. In Kangaroo, Richard Somers, who torments his mind quite as much as his author does, reflects that "even relativity is only relative. Relative to the absolute".  How is the meditation of this fictional character to be deciphered? And how are we to assess the distinctions between Lawrence’s voice and the voice of his characters? For these voices are, by way of the subtle mediations and transformations of poetic voice and narrative form, receivable as two related modes of utterance. And how is this interminable conflict between the antithetical claims of the  absolute and of the relative resolved or balanced, temporarily or conditionally, by way of the specific mode of  expression and form that is proper to art, as  fashioned by the artist and as received by the reader or the viewer?

We invite reflection on the following, non-exclusive list of themes:

• Relativity, relatedness, relativism in Lawrence. Influence of his philosophical readings.
• Lawrence's mouthpieces. Fiction and philosophy. Distancing devices.  Dialogism.
• Dualities. The opposing infinites. Microcosm and macrocosm.
• The yearning for an ideal. Desire. Transcendence.
• Beyond metaphysics and materialism
• The absolute within the relative. The absolute or the relativity of love. The place of the body and the material world.
• The absolute dimension of self and being.
• Poetry, art and insubordination; the absolute of dogmatic truth . The absolute or relativity of art
• Images and symbols of the absolute (The Crown, the Morning Star etc). The fourth dimension.
• Godhead. Religions. False absolutes.The absolute of death and timelessness.

The deadline for proposals is 15 November 2016.  Priority will be given to proposals received before the deadline, but we will continue to accept proposals until 1 December 2016.

Please send a 200 word abstract to Ginette Roy  ginette.katz.roy@gmail.com or roy@u-paris10.fr

Organizing Committee : Ginette Roy, Cornelius Crowley, Stephen Rowley. 

Link to our journal Etudes Lawrenciennes : http://anglais.u-paris10.fr/spip.php?rubrique56

A few numbers of the journal are on line:  http://lawrence.revues.org/

Modern Language Association Meeting 2018

Dangerous Charisma

    
In the age of Trump, how does Lawrence help us understand the mutual attraction of leader and acolyte, the effects of charisma in personal and/or political relationships?

Lawrence wrote about charisma in personal and political relationships, and his contemporaries found him charismatic. Papers might consider how Lawrence represents charisma, how his ideas of leadership change, or how others responded to him.

Abstract and CV by 15 March 2017; Joyce Piell Wexler (jwexler@luc.edu).