Saturday, January 14, 2012

CFP: Spatial Perspectives: Literature and Architecture, 1850 – Present (3/2/2012; 6/22/2012)




Spatial Perspectives: Literature and Architecture, 1850 – Present
Friday 22nd June 2012
University of Oxford, Faculty of English Language and Literature
Website: http://spatialperspectives.wordpress.com/

Keynote: Professor Douglas Tallack will deliver a keynote on “Tall Stories:  New York Skyscrapers in Art and Literature” and will discuss Hardy's reaction to “giants of the mere market” in The American Scene.

“I’ve felt that a book is like a building, and a building is like a book” -Steven Holl.

“Architecture will no longer be the social, the collective, the dominant art. The great poem, the great building, the great work of mankind will no longer be built, it will be printed” -Victor Hugo

“Perhaps because literature and architecture are the two most "visible" arts, since they organize both the everyday practices of reading and the everyday necessities of shelter, the crises and tensions that affect them seem strikingly parallel” -Philippe Hamon

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to foster a dialogue between literature and architecture by bringing together papers that encompass the diversity of thinking about these two disciplines and the ways in which they engage and interact. This will be the first conference to examine the intersections of architecture and literature globally over a broad timeframe.

We warmly encourage contributions from practising architects, architectural historians, creative writers, and scholars of literature. An edited collection of conference proceedings is planned. Papers are invited that address, but are not limited to, the following broad themes:

  • Textual spaces / spatial texts The language of built space / narrative and architecture
  • Mapping the city Icons and meaning
  • Interart analogues Visual cultures
  • Literature and architectural discourse Form, representation, and poetry
  • Writing the architect Writers that build
  • Interiors and design Architecture and Utopias / dystopias

 Please send abstracts of 300 words for 20 minute papers to literature.architecture@gmail.comby Friday 2nd March 2012. We look forward to receiving your proposal.

The conference is organised by Nicole Sierra (University of Oxford) and Terri Mullholland (University of Oxford).