Call for Presentations

Letters and ConflictThe 5th Global Meeting: The Writing ProjectCall for Presentations 2016Thursday 1st September – Saturday 3rd September 2016Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Research on letters is one of the most exciting subjects of interdisciplinary enquiry to have emerged over the last few years. The epistolary has developed into a field of interest to scholars in history, linguistics, literary and literacy studies, media theory, art criticism and digital humanities, and has proven to be a fertile ground of encounter between these perspectives. Building on earlier successful conferences which have focussed on the private and public spheres, gender and the role of letters in building intellectual, political and literary communities, we are issuing a call for papers on Letters and Conflict. We are looking to bring together a group of people who have the widest possible backgrounds and interests to share and exchange on the issue of conflict (within the context of letter writing) that concerns us all today. Such inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary dialogue has the aim of both enriching current thinking on these themes and ultimately opening up new areas of discourse for debate and scrutiny on an international level.

Both letters and conflict should be understood in the broadest possible sense, from the letters of soldiers in ancient wars to an email from a drone operator. It could also include legal conflict, letters of espionage, political debate, letters which inform on political deviants or letters of defamation and blackmail. Conflict could also be taken in an emotional sense: letters of divorce or separation and letters of inner conflict or psychoanalysis. Far from wanting to focus solely on the research value of such letters, we welcome input from those who receive and deal with them in a professional or other capacity.

We look forward to your submission, as individual papers or pre-formed panels, on any interpretation of the theme of letters of conflict from any discipline and any geographical area. We also welcome alternative styles of presentation, practitioner activities and submissions from outside academia. These might include but are not limited to:

·         Importance of epistolary communications in ancient or modern warfare

·         Political prisoners, POWs and written messages to family, friends

·         Protest letters and their contribution to seminal issues

·         Epistolary communities versus government

·         Open letters to newspapers concerning terrorism, war

·         Defamation of character, hate mail, blackmail

·         Letters circulating during civil conflict

·         Family disputes or dynastic power struggles

·         Censorship during time of war or imprisonment

·         Environmental protest in epistolary form

·         Role of letters in augmenting or appeasing conflicts

·         Recently discovered unopened correspondence from past wars

·         Re-introduction of the use of letters in modern wars and conflicts

·         Technologies and means of letter exchange in times of war

·         Letters of political refugees or exiles

·         Provocative or angry letters to editors and reaction

·         Letters of conflict embedded in novels, films, plays

·         War correspondence of generals, commanders or heads of government

·         Epistolary documents uncovered at military forts or camps

The Project Team particularly welcomes submissions of pre-formed panel proposals.

Call for Cross-Over Presentations

The Letters and Conflict project will be meeting at the same time as a project on Space and Place and another project on Food. We welcome submissions which cross the divide between both project areas. If you would like to be considered for a cross project session, please mark your submission “Crossover Submission”.

What to Send:300 word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday 15th April 2016.All submissions be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed.

You will be notified of the panel’s decision by Friday 29th April 2016.

If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 5th August 2016.

Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: Letters and Conflict Abstract Submission

Organising Chairs:

Linda McGuire: linda.mcguire@escdijon.edu

Rob Fisher: lettersconflict@inter-disciplinary.net

This event is an inclusive interdisciplinary research and publishing project. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

A number of eBooks and paperback books have been published or are in press as a result of the work of this project. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

Ethos

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation. Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.