International conference of the Société d’études Anglaises Contemporaines (SEAC)

Paris Diderot University, 2425 October 2014

 

State of Britain :

Representing / Writing Britain in the 20th and 21st Centuries

 

Conference programme

 

Friday 24th October

Amphi Turing, Sophie Germain building

 

 

09.45: Registration

09.15: Welcome address by Antoine Cazé, Vice-provost of Paris Diderot University for the Humanities

 

Morning session: A Modern Sense of Crisis

Chair: Anne Besnault-Levita (University of Rouen)

09.30: Christine Reynier, Paul Valéry University — Montpellier 3: “‘The Condition of England Question’ and Post-World War I British Women Novelists: Rebecca West, Radclyffe Hall, Vita Sackville-West and Winifred Holtby”

09.55: Effie Yiannopoulou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki:“Framing Englishness in Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy

10.20: Isabelle Brasme, Université of Nîmes: “Looking Back to Look Ahead: Parade’s End as a Modernist Condition of England Novel.”

10.45: Discussion

11.00: Coffee break

11.15: Corina Stan, Leiden University / Duke University: “England (as if) through the Eyes of a Foreigner: Orwell’s ‘Masquarade’ among the Poor of London”

11.40: Claire Hélie, University of Lille: “From Picket Lines to Poetic Ones: the 1984-1985 Miners’ Strike and the Idea of a ‘Condition of England Poetry’”

12.05: Discussion

 

12.20: Lunch

 

Afternoon session: Experimenting With / Around the Condition of England Narrative

Chair: Georges Letissier, University of Nantes

14.00: Christian Gutleben, University of Nice — Sophia Antipolis: “Serious Play: the Representation of the Thatcher Years in Malcolm Bradbury’s Cuts, David Lodge’s Nice Work and Alan Hollinghurst’s Line of Beauty

14.25: Mine Özyurt Kiliç, Doğuş University, İstanbul: “‘Can We Talk About This?’ and ‘How May I Speak in my Own Voice?’: Maggie Gee Rewriting the Condition-of-England Novel”

14.50: Discussion

15.05: Coffee break

 

15.20: Anne-Marie Smith Di Biasio, Catholic University of Paris: “Hester’s Estrangement: Searching for a Language out of Post-War Britain: Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea (2011)”

15.45: Jean-Michel Ganteau, Paul-Valéry University — Montpellier 3: “The Wake of Dispossession: Patrick Neate’s Jerusalem

16.10: Discussion

Keynote lecture.

Chair: Catherine Bernard, Paris Diderot University

16.30: David James, Queen Mary, University of London: “Decentring Englishness”

* * *

Saturday 25th October

Amphi Turing, Sophie Germain building

 

Morning: Britain’s Imagined / Experienced Communities

Chair: Jean-Michel Ganteau, Paul-Valéry University — Montpellier 3

09.30: Marc Porée: école Normale Supérieure (rue d’Ulm): “‘It’s all in the mind’ (of Britain): a Reading of Will Self’s Umbrella

09.55: Fanny Delnieppe, University of Avignon: “A Past Perfect Rather Than a Perfect Past: Julian Barnes’s Reflective Nostalgia in England, England

10.20: Discussion

10.35: Coffee break

11.00: Catherine Lanone, Sorbonne Nouvelle University — Paris 3: “From E.M. Forster’s Howards End to Zadie Smith’s NW: Mapping Contemporary London”

11.25: Lauren Elkin, Paris Diderot University: “‘Anyone over thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure’: Class Mobility and Public Transport in Zadie Smith’s NW

11.50: Cyrielle Garson and Madelena Gonzalez, University of Avignon: “‘What a Carve up!’: the Eclectic Aesthetics of Postmodernism and the Politics of Diversity in some Examples of Contemporary British Verbatim Theatre”

12.05: Discussion

12.20: Lunch

Afternoon: Global / Local (Re)identifications

Chair: Charlotte Gould, Sorbonne Nouvelle University — Paris 3

14.00: Julie Morère, University of Nantes: “British Fashion Photography Now: Questioning British Identity”

14.25: Ellen Dengel-Janic, University of Tübingen: “The Heritage Film: Britain as a Topography of Nostalgia”

14.50: Discussion

15.05: Coffee break

15.20: Round table: “Recent Developments in British Literature”. Liliane Campos, Michelle Ryan-Sautour.

17.00: End of conference