News

Revolutionaries in Hastings - a call for papers

Published 4 April 2011
Event 20 September 2011

Raymond Williams and Robert Tressell in Hastings: celebrating 50 years of The Long Revolution and the centenary of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

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 is pleased to announce 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 seeks to create a multi-disciplinary forum in which academics, researchers, trade unionists and local historians can explore the impact and legacy of the two men on contemporary research, practice and activists.

There will be three keynote speakers

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'

We are keen to invite submissions from researchers across the social sciences, literary and cultural studies and from practitioners and activists concerned with these issues. We invite submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

Williams, Tressell and the South East
Culture and Society in the New Millennium
Working Class Fictions
Williams the Literary Critic
Williams and Cultural Studies
Class and Education
The Great Money Trick in the age of austerity
Socialism and the novel

Submissions may be in a variety of formats including posters, verbal presentations and workshops. Please send abstracts of 150 words to Sarah Chapman s.j.chapman@brighton.ac.uk including with your submission your presentation title and format, author names, institutional affiliations and email addresses and an indication of which of the above themes your presentation addresses.

The abstract deadline is Monday 4 July 2011.