Academia Belgica (Rome) * 12-14 September 2013
Universiteit Gent – Katholieke Universiteit Leuven – Università di Perugia
Keynote speakers: Adrian Hunter (University of Stirling), Christine Reynier (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3), Raffaele Donnarumma (Università di Pisa)
The modernist period (1900-1940) is a time when the short story came into its own as an intricate, flexible and highly respected literary genre. Across Europe, writers experimented with the form in ways which have come to shape the short story until the present day. Within the changing publication contexts of the time, moreover, writers also devised new approaches to publish short stories together within a collection, sequence or cycle. In the first half of the twentieth century, finally, several writers and critics also sought to define the short story as a genre and to distinguish its characteristics from both earlier forms of shorter prose and from the novel.
This conference hopes to address all these different guises, debates and contexts of the short story in the modernist period, across different countries and literary traditions. Its primary aim is to reflect on the modern short story and short story collection from a theoretical perspective, but it also seeks to contextualise this theoretical approach through a number of case studies from different literary traditions. By bringing together scholars from these different traditions, the conference also aims to trace cross-references, intertextual links or general influences in a broader comparative perspective.
The conference is organised by the departments of literary studies of the universities of Ghent, Leuven and Perugia. It will take place in the Academia Belgica in Rome.
The program can found at the following link:
http://www.shortstoryandmodernism.ugent.be/programme
Theme: Unbraiding the Short Story