Writing Home: Literatures of Place & Belonging, c.1300-1600
25th-26th July 2019, University of Liverpool
What makes a home? Is it as our four walls and families, neighbours and neighbourhoods? Our parishes, towns, cities, and countries? Our values, cultural practices, and experiences? Or is home where we have come from, where we are, and maybe, hopefully, where we are going? Join us in July at the University of Liverpool for a two-day conference exploring how home took shape in the literatures of the late medieval and early modern periods. We will consider how ideas of home changed over time in response to religious, political, and economic upheaval, civil unrest, and human and cultural migration.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Physical and conceptual parameters of home.
- How these parameters shifted during translations & redactions
- Migrant experiences & home-building practices.
- Writing home abroad or in exile.
- The relationship between smaller and larger units of home & belonging (e.g. the household and the parish; the parish and the city; the city and the country, etc.).
- Sensing home: somatic experiences of belonging.
- Literary representations of domesticity and the household.
- Reading homes in miscellanies (patronage, organising principles, signs of readership and manuscript culture).
- The ‘beginnings’ of home in origin narratives, foundation myths, and genealogies.
- Legendaria and folktales: literatures that enrich the history of home.
- Performing home on stage and at court.
We welcome abstracts for 20-minute papers related to the themes outlined above. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short biography of around 100 words to homeuol@liverpool.ac.uk. The deadline for submissions is Tuesday 30th April 2019.
We are hoping to receive funding for a limited number of small bursaries available for early career researchers to contribute to travel and accommodation costs. If you could like to be considered for these, please put a note in your bio and we will contact you with further information. Applicants must not have access to institutional funding.
We look forward to hearing from you.
