Annual Lecture:
Darran Anderson
After London: what apocalyptic visions tell us about the city, from the medieval to the modern
Plenary Speakers:
Dr Caroline Edwards (Birkbeck)
Armchair Apocalypse, or, Why Destroying London in Speculative Literature is So Enjoyable?
Prof Rohan McWilliam (Anglia Ruskin)
The Cultural Work of the Victorian West End of London
Proposals are invited for papers, comprised panels, and roundtable
sessions, which consider any period or genre of literature about, set
in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and its
environs, from the city’s roots in pre-Roman times to its imagined
futures. While the main focus of the conference will be on literary
texts, we actively encourage interdisciplinary contributions relating to
film, architecture, visual arts, topography and theories of urban
space. Papers from postgraduate students and early career researchers
are particularly welcome for consideration. The following topics and
authors are intended to be an indicative but not exhaustive list:
Gaslight romance, the urban gothic, London noir, steampunk & speculative poetry
Future catastrophes, technological dystopias, nightmares of policing & surveillance
Taking flight into alternate geographies of nationhood, citizenship and urban belonging
Architectural caprice, replication and ruin in the development of the built environment
Stories of financial catastrophe, uncertain inheritance and precarious fortune
The search for ontological wholeness in a divided, doubled or allotropic city
The uncanny, arabesque and magical excrescences of the urban everyday
Dramatizing the life of hidden underworlds, anti-worlds & allegorical environments
The Weird: H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Lord Dusany, M. John Harrison
‘Elsewheres’: Doris Lessing, William Morris, J.G. Ballard, Jean Rhys, Anthony Burgess
Urban Gothic: Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Thomas De Quincey, Charles Dickens
Underworlds: Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Michael Moorcock, Michèle Roberts
Make-believe: J.M. Barrie, Cassandra Clare, Philip Reeve, Christina Rossetti, John Clute
Deadline: March 17th, 2017
Please submit proposals to http://literarylondon.org/annual-conference
For further information about the conference, please contact Dr Peter Jones at conference@literarylondon.org
For more information about the Literary London Society, please visit our website:
literarylondon.org
