CFP: Katherine Mansfield and Antipodean Modernism, University of New South Wales, January 2015

7 August 2014

Call For Papers

Katherine Mansfield and Antipodean Modernism

The Katherine Mansfield Society Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Conference, held in conjunction with the Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia

29 January 2015
University of New South Wales
Keynote Speaker: Emeritus Professor Angela Smith (Stirling)

When Wyndham Lewis described Katherine Mansfield as ‘the famous New Zealand Mag.-story writer’ in September 1922, it was not meant as a compliment. Yet this disparaging remark gives a hint as to what makes her such a fascinating figure today. In the context of the recent scholarly extension of modernism’s borders in terms of geography, gender, class, and time, as well as such diverse new interests as the roles of literary networks, periodicals, and popular and material cultures, Mansfield is more important than ever.

These developments encourage new approaches to Katherine Mansfield, new ways of reading her not only as a short-story writer but as also an editor, a literary critic, a translator, and a poet. Recent criticism has also turned to considering Mansfield as a transnational modernist, whose antipodean origin influenced and affected her even after she emigrated to Europe, and whose legacy continues to inspire succeeding generations of writers and artists in New Zealand and beyond. This, the third annual Katherine Mansfield Society postgraduate and early career researcher conference, aims to explore the place of this complex literary figure in terms of both modernist and antipodean writing: the ways that she and her works have crossed national, professional, and linguistic boundaries. Proposals are invited, on these topics or any other topic related to Mansfield, from postgraduate students and early career researchers. Please submit abstracts of 250 words with a brief biography of 50 words tomansfield.unsw@gmail.com by 29 September 2014.

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