ENSFR

20-21 November 2015, University of Angers, France (in collaboration with Edge Hill University, University of Leuven, University of Le Mans, and University of Nantes)

There is a long tradition of haunting in short fiction, often appearing in the form of ghost stories, folk tales, fairy tales, and legends. Short narrative indeed appears to embrace the supernatural. Elizabeth Bowen explains, for example, in the preface to A Day in the Dark and Other Stories that while she uses “the supernatural” in her short stories, she considers it “unethical’ to do so in a novel. In “The Flash of Fireflies” (1968), Nadine Gordimer similarly observes how short fiction navigates the uneasy borders of the supernatural and the rational world, explaining how “Fantasy in the hands of short story writers is so much more successful than when in the hands of novelists because it is necessary for it to hold good only for the brief illumination of the situation it dominates.” Continue reading “Cfp ENSFR Conference “Haunting” (Angers 20-21 November 2015)”

17 December 201418 April 2017

CFP Lille Conference: Short fiction writers with a theory

Call For Papers: (Deadline 1 March 2015)

Short fiction writers with a theory: re-reading short fiction theory through the lens of new writing and new media

11-12 June 2015, Université Catholique de Lille, France

(In collaboration with the University of Angers, France and the European Network for Short Fiction Research)

We are all familiar with the writings of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Frank O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Flannery O’Connor on the short story. Their fiction has often been studied through the lens of their own critical essays, now considered essential elements in the heritage of short story criticism. The history of the short story indeed resounds with authorial declarations, ranging from Poe’s “single effect” to Anthony Burgess’s declared ambivalence about the form when announcing the new Journal of the Short Story in English in 1983 (JSSE 2). Continue reading “CFP Lille Conference: Short fiction writers with a theory”

30 November 201418 April 2017

International Conference: Digital Literary Studies

International Conference: Digital Literary Studies
Date: May 14-15, 2015
Location: School of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, Portugal

‘Digital Literary Studies’ is an international conference exploring methods, tools, objects and digital practices in the field of literary studies. The digitization of artifacts and literary practices, the adoption of computational methods for aggregating, editing and analyzing texts as well as the development of collaborative forms of research and teaching through networking and communication platforms are three dimensions of the ongoing relocation of literature and literary studies in the digital medium. The aim of this two-day conference is to contribute to the mapping of material practices and interpretative processes of literary studies in a changing media ecology.

Continue reading “International Conference: Digital Literary Studies”

About ENSFR

The European Network for Short Fiction Research was created as a joint initiative of researchers at Edge Hill University (U.K.), the Université d’Angers (France) and the University of Leuven (Belgium). We have now been joined by many other colleagues from all over Europe. Our broad aim is to foster and promote research on short fiction across different countries and institutions.

We aim to provide a forum and resources for European-based researchers into the practice, criticism and transmission of short fiction in its diversity of forms and to facilitate collaboration in both critical and practice-led research. We hold annual conferences on short fiction, hosted in different universities across Europe, and we facilitate and support many other conferences, workshops and seminars in the broad field of short fiction studies.