SECOND INTERNATIONAL DORIS LESSING CONFERENCE

DORIS LESSING: NATION, POLITICS AND IDENTITY

The Second International Doris Lessing conference will take place in the School of Cultural Studies on Friday 6^th - Sunday 8^th July 2007.  The conference is supported by the Doris Lessing Society and the Contemporary Women’s Writing Network (an English Association Special Interest Group).

Doris Lessing is one of the country’s best-known novelists.  Since 1950 when her first novel was published, her fiction has confronted the ‘big issues’ of the twentieth century, such as the violence of war and colonialism, class and race inequality, the appeal of nationalism and changes in the role of women.  As we enter the twenty-first century Lessing is still writing thought-provoking and challenging fiction.  Her latest novel is a post-apocalyptic tale (or ecological fable) of ice age and climate change.

We are delighted to announce that Doris Lessing will be the guest of honour, giving a short talk introducing the conference.  

Keynote speakers will be:

Professor Clare Hanson (University of Loughborough, UK)

Professor Hanson is the author of A Cultural History of Pregnancy: Pregnancy, Medicine and Culture in Britain 1750 – 2000 (Palgrave, 2004). Previous publications include a study of the short story, books on Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf and a number of articles about Doris Lessing. She has also published a monograph on the woman's novel (Hysterical Fictions: the Woman's Novel in the Twentieth Century, 2000).  She will be speaking on Lessing’s treatment throughout her writing career of pregnancy and maternity.

Professor Dennis Walder (Open University, UK),

Professor Walder has published widely on topics ranging from Dickens to V.S. Naipaul and Athol Fugard. He is also Director of the AHRC-funded joint project (with Bob Owens) on ‘The Colonial and Post-Colonial History of the Book’.  He is the author of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (Blackwell, 1998) and Athol Fugard (Northcote House, 2003).  He will be speaking on memory, identity and narrative in the southern African writing of Doris Lessing.

Professor Virginia Tiger (Rutgers University, US),

Professor Tiger is the author of The Unmoved Target: William Golding’s Later Fiction. (Marion Boyars, 2003).  She has published extensively on Doris Lessing, including editing Critical Essays on Doris Lessing  with Claire Sprague (G. K. Hall, 1986) and more recently ‘Ages of Anxiety: The Diaries of Jane Somers’, in Spiritual Explorations in the Works of Doris Lessing, ed. Phyllis Perrakis (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000).  She is on the editorial board of Doris Lessing Studies.

The first formal call for papers will go out in January 2006 and will be available on this site. 

The conference will be themed around Nation, Politics and Identity, allowing exploration of Lessing’s involvement in left-wing politics, her status as a post-colonial writer and her key role in second-wave feminism.  While wanting to encourage as broad a range of possible contributions as possible, we plan to have panels / sessions on the following:

Post-colonial criticism and theory;

Left-wing politics;

Gender identity and second-wave feminism, including the reception of The Golden Notebook;

Genre, including autobiography, science fiction and fandom, and gothic, fantasy and romance;

Trauma and the body;

Aging and memory;

Terrorism;

Becoming ‘animal’;

Pregnancy, maternity and culture.

We plan to publish a selection of papers in a number of places, including Doris Lessing Studies, the journal of the Doris Lessing Society.

For further information please contact Dr Susan Watkins

s.watkins@leedsmet.ac.uk

 See also Call for Papers