AWWE Annual Conference 2010

CREW's Dai Smith is among the keynote speakers at this year's annual AWWE conference.

Canons and Canon-Building: Framing the Literatures of Wales

26th-28th March 2010, Gregynog Hall

Do we need a canon of Welsh writing in English? What might be at stake in the choices made during the establishment of such a canon? The business, meanings and politics of post-devolution canon-formation will be the focus of the 22nd annual conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English at Gregynog Hall in Powys, Wales, UK from March 26–28, 2010.

This conference will examine the question of canonicity and its complex connections with issues of nationality, gender, class, race and sexuality in a Welsh context. The establishment of Welsh writing in English as an area of serious literary critical study, itself barely a generation old, has coincided with the recovery of other bodies of neglected writing by marginalised writers. Such recovery work, however, has involved the radical questioning of literary value judgements and the recognition of the social, economic, political and cultural influences which make any canon a fabricated construct.

Now just over a decade after Welsh devolution, the republication of out-of-print texts can still be seen as a political necessity in making available a literary heritage which has been neglected and forgotten and which contributes to a sense of national identity. Such republication offers exciting possibilities to literary criticism. But who should be included and on what grounds? What are the risks and tensions involved in the enterprise of canon-building and how might we negotiate them?

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