Call For Papers
Oxford English Graduate Conference 2024: (Re)Vision
Our Call for Papers is closed.
(Re)vision
From the ghostly sight of Julian of Norwich and Hamlet’s “mind’s eye” to the rapturous idyll of Coleridge’s Xanadu and the apocalyptic prophecies of Yeats’s “The Second Coming”—vision, its constraints, and revelatory possibilities have served as a creative wellspring for writers across time. Indeed, amongst the oldest and most formative motifs across literature is the visionary author, whose prophetic (in)sight transports us beyond the mundane. Meanwhile, simply adding the prefix “re” reminds us of another central yet undersung facet of authorship: revision. What drives textual (re)visions, and how do these in turn shape reception? We seek to explore literary (re)visions in all their connotations. (Re)vision can inspire or impede; clarify or complicate; restrain or renew; conceal or reveal.
This year’s EGO conference will take place on Friday 31st May 2024. We invite papers on the theme of “(Re)vision” across all periods, genres, and literary disciplines on topics including but not limited to:
- The writer as visionary or prophet; representations of oracles
- Dreams, fantasies, and supernatural visions
- The relationship between sight and insight; bodily and imaginative vision
- Physical sight and blindness, visual impairments
- Illumination and obscurity
- Gazes and gazing
- (In)visibility
- The author/reader as voyeur; concealment and exposure
- Speculative, utopian, or dystopian fiction
- The relationship between image and text
- Motivations for authorial and editorial revision
- Creative and exclusionary (re)visions; censorship, adaptations, translations
- Rethinking intellectual frontiers; literary periodisation, schools, and the canon
We welcome individual proposals for 20-minute papers, sent as a 200-word abstract alongside an additional short bio of 100-words including the contributor’s affiliation and research interests. We also encourage three-person panel proposals of 500-words with a short bio for each participant. We invite abstracts from all graduate students working in English and adjacent fields.
Please send all submissions, and any questions you may have, to oegcrevision2024@gmail.com by Friday 8th March 2024.
