Intersections Conference

“Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique … point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.” - Herman Hesse

Friday 9 March 2012
Institute of English Studies, Senate House, University of London

The UCL English Graduate Society invites abstracts for 20-minute papers for this year's Intersections conference. The day will be a forum for discussion of cultural and ideological exchange, both within literature and between literature and other disciplines. Proposals are invited for contributions that deal with any of the following:

• Literary influence
• Collaborative authorship
• Interdisciplinary approaches to literary studies
• Cross-cultural exchange
• Polyglot studies
• Interactions between authors and their readers, publishers and editors
• The intersection as an image in literature

The Intersections conference aims to solicit a range of papers united by a common view of literature as built upon collaboration, influence, and interchange. Unique literary experiences occur at 'point[s] at which the world's phenomena intersect': these points might be located in the confrontation between literature and science, at a crossroads in a literary landscape, or on a page annotated by its readers. We
hope that delegates will relish this opportunity to interrogate such diverse types of intersection both with and within English literature.

The conference will take place at the Institute of English Studies at Senate House, and will occur in conjunction with a Royal Holloway sponsored lecture by Jacques Rancière, whose work on intercultural exchange has changed scholarly understanding of the intersection between politics and art.

Please submit 300-word proposals for 20-minute papers by 13 January 2012 to: uclgraduateconference@gmail.com.

Proposals for panels of three 20-minute papers are also welcome. We welcome panels that include researchers from a variety of institutions or disciplines.

“I give away myself to you, and dote upon the exchange.” - William Shakespeare

“For me, a poem is the crossroads of my thoughts, my feelings, my imaginings, my wishes, & my verbal sense: normally these run parallel.” - Philip Larkin