The Culture of Grub Street
The Second Biennial Meeting of the Defoe Society
14-16 July 2011
The University of Worcester, UK, will host the second biennial meeting of the Defoe Society on 14-16 July 2011. The society’s continued ambition is to attract contributions that range across the extraordinary variety of activities and writings of Daniel Defoe and his contemporaries. The conference’s aim is to encourage fresh examination of the socio-cultural and literary milieu of Grub Street and its “duncical” authors and “Scriblerian” enemies.
The Worcester meeting, which is scheduled to commence at 4:00 pm on 14 July, will be punctuated by three focal events: keynote lectures by Pat Rogers (University of South Florida) and Paula McDowell (New York University) and a President’s Roundtable on the topic of ‘Defoe bibliography’. Participants in the roundtable, chaired by Maximillian E. Novak (UCLA), include David A. Brewer (Ohio State University), J. Alan Downie (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Kit Kincade (Indiana State University) and Ashley Marshall (Johns Hopkins University).
We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers that address one of the panel topics listed below (abstracts for the panels may be found at www.worc.ac.uk/earlymodern), and for papers that engage with the field of Defoe Studies more generally. Paper topics do not have to adhere strictly to the conference theme or to focus on Defoe; it is anticipated that additional panels will be formed to accommodate paper proposals that do not address any of the proposed topics. The deadline is 31 January 2011.
• ‘The State of Wit in 1700.’ (John Richetti)
• ‘Defoe and Narrative.’ (Nicholas Seager)
• ‘Representations of the Civil Wars and the Restoration in the early eighteenth century.’ (Andreas Mueller)
• ‘Conduct, Discipline, and Punishment in the Work of Defoe and His Contemporaries.’ (Robert Mayer)
• ‘The Demonic and the Divine: Religion and the Politics of Grub Street.’ (Sharon Alker)
• ‘Natures as Nurturer and Nemesis: Ecocritical Readings of Defoe and His Contemporaries.’ (Lora Geriguis)
• ‘Enduring Grub Street.’ (Sören Hammerschmidt)
• ‘Defoe’s London in the Atlantic World.’ (Gabriel Cervantes)
• ‘Un-Locke-ing Defoe and His Contemporaries.’ (Geoffrey Sill)
• ‘Thriving on Crises’ (Stephen Gregg)
• ‘Gender in the Fiction of Manley, Haywood, and Defoe’ (Laura Stevens)
Please email a paper proposal of no more than 200 words to Dr Andreas Mueller at a.mueller@worc.ac.uk, stating, if appropriate, the panel for which the proposal is being submitted. Mail submissions should be sent to the following address: Division of English & Cultural Studies, University of Worcester, Henwick Grove, Worcester, WR2 6AJ, UK. Additional information concerning the conference, accommodation and travel may be found at www.defoesociety.org and www.worc.ac.uk/earlymodern.
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