Conference information
Raymond Williams and Robert Tressell in Hastings: celebrating 50 years of The Long Revolution and the centenary of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Tuesday 20 September 2011 | Havelock Road building, Hastings TN34 1BE
2011 marks the centenary of the death of Robert Tressell and 50 years since the publication of Raymond Williams’ The Long Revolution. The University of Brighton in Hastings hosted a one day conference on Tuesday 20 September 2011 to celebrate the contribution of Williams and Tressell to literary and cultural studies, communications and social and political theory.
The conference also addressed their relationship to Hastings, a town in which both spent a key part of their working lives. We sought to create a multi-disciplinary forum in which academics, researchers, trade unionists and local historians could explore the impact and legacy of the two men on contemporary research, practice and activists.
Keynote speakers for the day
- Professor Stuart Laing, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Brighton, author of Representations of Working Class Life
- Howard Brenton, whose adapation of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists for stage was performed at Liverpool Everyman and Chichester Festival Theatre
- Professor Ian Haywood, University of Roehampton, author of Working-class Fiction: From Chartism to ‘Trainspotting’
Conference schedule
9.30am Registration - tea and coffee
10am Welcome - Margaret Wallis
10.05am Raymond Williams Society - David Laing
10.15am Keynote speaker - Professor Stuart Laing
11/61/11: Tressell/Williams/Hastings
Chair - Margaret Wallis
11am Papers - parallel sessions
12.30pm Lunch
1.15pm Keynote speaker - Howard Brenton
Staging Tressell
Chair - Professor Deborah Philips
2pm Papers - parallel sessions
3.30pm Coffee break
3.45pm Keynote speaker - Professor Ian Haywood
Tressell's Beano
Chair - Dr Mark Erickson
4.30pm Final plenary - Margaret Wallis
4.45pm Wine and canapes
5.30pm Close
