Culture and Anarchy. Reading Matthew Arnold Today II
An on-line international conference
Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto, 12-13 April 2021
Call for papers

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Professor Laurel Brake (Professor Emerita, Birkbeck College, University of London)
Professor Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow)

It has been 150 years since Matthew Arnold published his groundbreaking work, Culture and Anarchy. His essays in book form are not only a powerful critique of Victorian society and values but also of modern ones. Contemporary political, economic and cultural issues provide an opportunity to revisit Arnold’s thought critically, to assess his enduring legacy, and to appraise the modern predicament in relation to distinguished cultural achievements from the past.

In the wake of the Brexit phenomenon, Victorian cultural superiority and idealism are worth exploring. Despite the invocation of ethnocentrism (e.g. Saxon-Celtic roots and Latin-French influences), Arnold strongly appealed to (English) national unity. The curtailment of the mechanic spirit would not only prevent unwarranted cultural uniformity but also provide the conditions for the continual improvement of the mind. Hence, it would be possible to find balance, light, and sweetness through cultural development in a society struggling with political turmoil, social change and the search for a sense of self. Like the Victorian sages, Brexiteers came up with new solutions to the country’s social and identity problems. Under the aegis of gaining back control over their lost national identity, Brexiteers recovered a national discourse based on myths, historical recreations, and constructed insights into a glorious past. The past, the present, and the future are thus unavoidably entangled, and all the more so in any reassessment of English (cultural) identity in the present.

Moreover, as part of an ongoing dialogue between researchers from the Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS) and the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES), this international conference aims to reflect on the meaning of Culture and Anarchy and other works by Arnold, with a special focus on their relevance for the present. The conference follows upon “Culture and Anarchy: From Arnold to Brexit”, an event that took place at the University of Lisbon in December 2019.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Arnold and modernity; Arnold’s modernity
• Arnold and the idea of the sage
• Arnold and other intellectuals – of his time and of our own
• Arnold and the theory/ies of culture
• the role and nature of cultural institutions
• culture and societal transition(s)
• anarchy, freedom and security
• unity and divisiveness in culture and society
• the liberal legacy and the question of equality
• culture, politics and religion
• translating Arnold; Arnold’s translators and translations
• the international reception of the work of Matthew Arnold
• Brexit and the search for identity
• the impact of Brexit on (British) society and culture

Submission process

Abstracts for individual (20-minute) or panel presentations in English or Portuguese are welcome. Please include the following information with your proposal:

• the full title of your paper;
• a 250-300 word description of your paper;
• 5 keywords;
• your name, postal address and e-mail address;
• your institutional affiliation and position;
• a short bionote (circa 7 lines).

In order to prevent technological difficulties, participants will be required to send the Organizing Committee a video recording of their papers, no less than a week in advance. The videos will be broadcast in accordance with the programme. Participants are expected to be on-line for the discussion periods of the conference.

Please send submissions and address all queries to: matthewarnold@letras.up.pt

Deadline for the receipt of proposals: 5 March 2021.
Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2021.
Deadline for registration: 31 March 2021.

Fees and registration

Registration fee: 40.00 euros
Student fee: 20.00 euros

Further information will be posted on the conference website: https://cetaps.wixsite.com/MatthewArnold2

Organizing Committee

Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa (CEAUL) | Iolanda Ramos (CETAPS/UNL) | Jorge Bastos da Silva (CETAPS/FLUP) | Teresa Malafaia (CEAUL) | Cristina Baptista (CEAUL) | Elisabete Silva (IP Bragança/CEAUL)

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RHOME - Representations of Home

ROAM - Representations of Home Creative Journal

Autumn 2020

Call for Creative Submissions:

As a result of the pandemic, the RHOME 2020 Conference on Dislocation (22-23 October 2020) has been postponed. However, the good news is RHOME will launch the first issue of its new creative journal, ROAM, later this year.

Now more than ever, in this time of social distancing and confinement, RHOME sees the need to continue its focus on the theme, the experience and the actuality of home, the place and abode that looms so large these days in the lives of everyone on the planet.

Our homes are being lived as never before, in different ways, as safe havens, sites of cosy domestic calm, or alternatively as places of containment, economic deprivation, even incarceration or violence. Many of us are separated from loved ones or deprived of our social gatherings and routines. We are also being challenged, being given time usually spent elsewhere to pass in our homes, to rediscover what our homes hold, explore new domestic skills, neglected hobbies, to sift and sort and to reassess our daily lives, what it is that makes up our selves, our values, and to recalibrate the interior and the exterior. This includes our broader social obligations, including to the less privileged and most threatened, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless in our home communities and abroad. While social distancing has imposed severe economic challenges on communities, travel restrictions have created new opportunities, a breathing place for nature and the environment, and re-evaluation of its place in our lives.

Our daily lives, with their humdrum of chores and challenges, are inspired by thought, creativity and the reinvention of forms, as evident in the social media. Randall Jarrell has written how poetry issues from “the dailiness of life,” (1955) and John Burnside how, at times of profound reassessment, it is a kind of “scavenging” (2018, 101) from our lives lived, in Rilke’s “here and below.”

In the spirit of our creative session in RHOME 2017, and in the light of these challenging new times, RHOME invites past and future participants to submit creative proposals inspired by home as it is being experienced in these days. The following themes might be addressed:

• home and seclusion, haven, safety
• home and containment, separation and exile
• home and self, affect, self-development
• home and community, egotism and altruism
• home and nature, the environment
• home and the body, health, illness, isolation

Creative pieces can be in the form of unpublished poems, short fiction, memoir, essay, photos or film. Proposals should be brief: prose should not exceed 1000 words, poetry ca. 25 lines (maximum 3 poems), film (5-10 minutes) and photos (maximum 3, high resolution, at least 2000 pix). Authors are welcome to record readings of their written work to be available on-line.

As part of the ongoing RHOME project, submissions will be considered for publication in RHOME’s on-line creative journal ROAM to be issued in Autumn 2020.

Submissions along with a bionote of 50 words should be sent to rephome[at]letras.ulisboa.pt by 31/08/2020 with a subject heading “ROAM 2020 Creative submissions”. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by 30/09/2020.

 

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Manuel S. Marques

Brian Hurwitz

Marie-France Mamzer

FLUL – Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa / School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon and Reitoria da Universidade de Lisboa / President’s Building of ULisboa