Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story Bandol, France, 10-12 June 2016

Conference organised by the Katherine Mansfield Society Hosted by the town of Bandol, France Supported by the New Zealand Embassy, Paris and the University of Northampton, UK

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS Professor Enda Duffy University of California, Santa Barbara, USA Professor Ailsa Cox Edge Hill University, UK

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS This international conference celebrates the centenary of Katherine Mansfield’s visit to Bandol, where ‘The Aloe’ (the first draft of ‘Prelude’), was completed, Jan-March 1916. The genesis of this story bears witness to Mansfield’s development as a modernist writer, with her everyday subject matter and privileging of modernity, her focus on small, seemingly insignificant details at the expense of comprehensive description, her preference for the vignette which provides the reader with only fleeting glimpses of people and places, and her preoccupation with colour and her emphasis on surfaces and reflections. Her employment of multiple, shifting perspectives which are both subjective and fractured also displays an affinity with Impressionism, as does the attention she pays to the ephemeral effects of artificial and natural light, weather effects, and seasonal changes. Like painting in watercolours, short story writing may seem a deceptively easy task for those who have not attempted it, and this goes part way to explain the dismissive tone taken by so many critics towards the genre.

H. E. Bates was an early-twentieth-century critic who understood this difficulty: ‘[t]he short story is the most difficult and exacting of all prose forms; it must not be allowed to foster the illusion […] that its very brevity makes it easy to do’. Clare Hanson makes the claim that the short story has often been the ‘chosen form of the exile […] who longs to return to a home country which is denied him/her’, Mansfield’s work being an obvious example of this tenet. Even today, the short story is perceived to be a lesser genre, contributing to the view held by some critics of Mansfield as a minor writer. Yet, the development of her own particular free indirect discourse form of writing, linking it to literary impressionism, culminated in her position as one of the most important early exponents of the modernist short story. Her techniques include the use of symbolism and humour; themes incorporate violence, war, death, childbirth, relationships – especially in marriage – together with feminist and sexual issues. Suggested topics for papers might include:

• The modernist short story • KM as practitioner of the short story genre • KM’s development as a short story writer • KM in the South of France • KM as commentator on the short story • KM and her legacy to the short story form • Literary influences on KM as a short story writer • Artistic and musical influences on KM as a short story writer • KM, the short story and the marketplace • Reception of KM as a short story writer

Abstracts of 200 words, together with a short bio-sketch, should be sent to the conference organisers: Dr Gerri Kimber, University of Northampton, UK Professor Janet Wilson, University of Northampton, UK at kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org Submission deadline: 31 March 2016.

Adaptation Conference, Lille 2016: Call for Papers

Adaptation, Revision, Translation: From Life to Art, from the Page to Stage and Screen

June 17-18, 2016 at Lille Catholic University

Reflecting upon the new edition of her Theory of Adaptation published in 2013, Linda Hutcheon feels that the first version of her study only looked at adaptation “in terms of repetition with variation.” She now sees “new forms and platforms” and wonders “where to draw the line at what we call an adaptation?” In an endeavour to fuel the body of work already available on adaptation theory, this conference means to explore a variety of avenues. Contributors are welcome to work on textual manipulations: short stories being turned into novels, the use of myth, legends and of the epic tradition in children’s books or “original rewritings” such as Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1998).

History or real crime finding their way into fiction or film also have their place here, whether in detective fiction classics like F. Tennyson Jesse’s A Pin to See the Peepshow (1934) or glamorous historical bestsellers like Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001). As Linda Seger points out, “adaptation is a transition, a conversion, from one medium to another. All original material will put up a fight, as if it were saying ‘take me as I am’.” How novelists and screenwriters resist that temptation and engage in the necessary reconceptualising in order to create a storyline and a work of art is an essential part of our subject.

It will also be interesting to reflect, in a more traditional way, on adaptations of fiction into film and, in a less conventional way, on fiction that derives from film. We shall thus see in what ways Kamilla Elliott’s comments in Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate can be taken further for, according to her, “if art draws from real life, then an art adapting another art is one step further away from real life as a representation of a representation.” Other points of entry would be to dive into the relationship between plays and musicals (My Fair Lady being the classic example of the genre) or from a story or event to painting, sculpture or graphic art. As Hutcheon’s study suggests, adaptation is interactive in that it enables “the knowing audience” to envisage “adaptation as adaptation.” The remakes of famous films – re-adaptations – such as The Great Gatsby could lead to discussions on revision as a means of introducing the young public to classics. Other forms of adaptation such as fan fiction or new translations of famous works could also be taken into consideration. The word “adaptation” will thus be understood in a broad sense, making interdisciplinary approaches possible.

Abstracts of about 500 words should be sent to Suzanne Bray (suzanne.bray@univ-catholille.fr) and Gérald Préher (gerald.preher@univ-catholille.fr) before January 15, 2016 along with a short biographical note.

Academic panel: Suzanne Bray (Lille Catholic University), Cindy Hamilton (Liverpool Hope University), Jacqui Miller (Liverpool Hope University), Gérald Préher (Lille Catholic University)