'Dylan Unchained': The Dylan Thomas Centenary Conference 2014

A major conference to mark the centenary of Wales's famous (or infamous) literary son will take place 3-5 September 2014. 'Dylan Unchained' will hope to attract new and exciting readings of Thomas's work, and might involve looking at his work from psychoanalytic, postcolonial, feminist and deconstructionist perspectives; it might involve reclaiming the regional specificity of his work from those who locate him as an international modernist; it could, alternatively, involve seeking to tear him away from nationalist attempts at Welsh or British canon formation in order to underline the transnational and hybrid character of his work; it might seek to place him amongst his contemporaries, or his literal or metaphorical ancestors; it might look at his influences across literary traditions and languages; it might involve seeing his review of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood as key moment in the re-gendering of modernism, or his review of Amos Tutuola’s Palm-Wine Drinkard as a key moment in the global impact of Anglophone African literatures; it might involve close and detailed readings of his work and analyses of his poetic practice; or it might draw on more distanced forms of reading which address locations of publication, sales, readership and dissemination; it might think of Thomas as late Romantic, or as early Beat; it might consider Thomas’s voice in the age of mechanical reproduction, or his texts in the age of digital humanities. Thomas is a figure who transcends the ‘now’ to which he incessantly returned in his work.

Possible topics for paper or panel proposals might include, but are no means limited to:

·        Poetics and language
·        Theories of the body / gender studies
·        Radio, film and the mass media
·        Popular culture
·        Modernism in the 1930s
·        Visual art
·        Translation
·        Impact in the USA/ Europe / internationally
·        WWII, elegy and the ‘Blitz sublime’
·        The journal, Wales, and other friends (Glyn Jones, Lynette Roberts, Vernon Watkins, Keidrych Rhys)
·        Representing childhood and nostalgia
·        The gothic-grotesque and surrealism
·        The ‘First Flowering’ and Anglo-Welsh poetry
·        The short story
·        Regionalism and nationalism
·        Thomas and music (jazz, classical etc)
·        Trauma
·        Legacy and present influence (Plath, Hughes, W. S. Graham, etc.)

Please send abstracts for 20 minute papers (max 300 words), and a short biography, to dylanthomascentenary@swansea.ac.uk . Proposals for panels of three are also welcome.  The deadline for abstracts is 14 February 2014.  Please contact the conference organiser, Kirsti Bohata, at the above address if you have any queries.

In/dependent Wales Conference 2014

2014The Association for Welsh Writing in English annual conference in 2014 will take the theme of In/dependent Wales. The forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence has re-ignited discussion over the contentious issues of national identity, independence and union (or lack of) across the UK.

Lacking political independence, Welsh identity has long articulated itself through literature and culture. AWWE 2014 seeks to explore the numerous ways in which the Welsh writers, in both languages and across a broad historical period, have positioned themselves in relation to larger structures of power: colonialism; the British state; the British state; Europe; industrial capitalism; patriarchy; cultural institutions and/or literary traditions.

The conference invites contributions on any topic relating to Welsh writing and in/dependence. Contributions are encouraged from across disciplines, historical periods, and methodological approaches. Topics might include, but are by no means limited to:

• In/dependent bodies
• Wales and Britishness, Wales and Empire]
• Wales in comparative contexts
• Imperial, colonial and postcolonial Wales
• Union, devolution, independence
• Minority culture, stateless nations
• Nationalism and postnationalism
• Exiled voices, expatriate communities
• Margins, borders and spaces in-between
• Cultural nationalism
• Journalism and political writing
• Institutional independence, public arts funding
• Gender and nationhood      

Abstracts of 250 words for twenty-minute papers should be submitted to independentwales@bangor.ac.uk by Friday 10 January 2014. Proposals for panels of three twenty-minute papers are also welcomed. Applicants will be informed by 24 January.

Organised by Dr Tomos Owen, Dr Andy Webb and Professor Tony Brown (Bangor University).
Follow 'In/dependent Wales' on Twitter! @AWWEIndieWales

Thomas on Thomas!

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN WELSH WRITING IN ENGLISH

Wednesday, October 23, 4-5.30 p.m., KH 216

 

 

 

‘’”Yr Hen Fam”: R. S. Thomas and the Church in Wales.’

 

By Professor M. Wynn Thomas (Swansea University)

 

 

R S Thomas- 'Laboratories of the Spirit'

One of the most exciting events marking R S Thomas's centenary will be taking place in Swansea this November. Professor M Wynn Thomas will chair an evening of discussion on R S Thomas's religious poetry will the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The event will take place on 1st November at 6.30pm, Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea University. More information can be found here:

http://learnedsocietywales.ac.uk/sites/default/files/lab%20of%20spirit.pdf

Launch of the International Journal of Welsh Writing in English

This Wednesday (16th) Swansea University will be hosting the launch of the new International Journal of Welsh Writing in English (formerly Almanac). The programme of events is as follows:

6pm- Wine Reception
6.30pm- Opening remarks (Dr Alyce von Rothkirch and Helgard Krause)
6.45pm- 'R S Thomas at 100' (Dr Daniel Westover)
7.45pm- break
8.00pm- M. Wynn Thomas Prize (Chair: Prof Damien Walford Davies)
8.20pm- Panel Discussion: Welsh Writing in English- New Horizons

The evening will take place in the Callaghan Lecture Theatre, with Prof M Wynn Thomas as Chair. It will be an important night for Welsh Writing in English- so try and make it!

CREW Postgraduate Discussion Group

Welcome back to another year! We hope to keep CREW as vibrant as ever, with the CREW Postgraduate Discussion Group kicking off again this October. The first seminar will be led by PhD student Kieron Smith, who will treat us to a screening of one of John Ormond's films, followed by a short talk and general discussion. This will be held in the CREW room at 2pm on the 9th October. We hope to make these fairly regular throughout the academic year. All welcome/Croeso i bawb!