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Schedule:    

   9.00  –  10.00     Registration         Welcome  –  Justine  Shaw      10.00    –  11.00       Opening  Keynote:  Dr.  Natalia  Cecire  (University  of  Sussex)  

Chair:  Dr.  Sara  Crangle  (University  of  Sussex)    

    “Overthinking  It  in  the  Hundred  Acre  Wood”        11.00  –  11.15     Coffee      11.15  –  12.45   Panel  1:  The  Defiant  Child       Chair:  Dr.  Pam  Thurschwell  (University  of  Sussex)          

Dr.  Jana  Funke  (University  of  Exeter):  Modernism’s  Queer  Child:  Bryher,  Boyhood,  and  the  Adventure  of  Development  

 Dr.  Ben  Nicholls  (King’s  College  London):  Reproduction  Line:  Making  Children  in  the  Work  of  Charlotte  Perkins  Gilman  

 Elly  McCausland  (York):  ‘The  Ill-­‐Made  Knight’:  Childhood  Trauma  and  Daydreams  of  Chivalry  in  Modernist  Arthuriana  for  Children    

 Helen  Tyson  (Queen  Mary  University):  ‘Little  Mussolini’  and  the  ‘parasite  poets’:  Modernism,  Psychoanalysis,  and  ‘the  Child’  

   

12.45  –  13.45   Lunch         Held  in  Arts  B274      

 Hannah  Proctor  (Birkbeck)  

 Children  of  the  Revolution:  The  Soviet  Child  and  the  Modernism  of  Reality  

 Hannah   Proctor   is   a   Doctoral   Candidate   at   Birkbeck,   working   on   the   Soviet   psychologist   and  neurologist  Alexander   Luria.   She  has  published  on   the   ideological   underpinnings  of   contemporary  neuroscience,  queer  theory,  psychoanalysis  and  the  history  of  Soviet  sexuality.      

Panel  Three  -­‐    The  Inscrutable  Child:  Chair:  Dr.  Vike  Plock  (University  of  Exeter)  

   

Dr.  Daniela  Caselli  (University  of  Manchester)    

Fluffy  Bunny  Modernism:  The  Child  in  Modernist  Experimental  Fiction  (Woolf,  Joyce  and  Beckett)    Daniela  Caselli   is   Senior   Lecturer   in   English   at   the   University   of  Manchester.   She   is   the   author  of  Improper   Modernism:   Djuna   Barnes’s   Bewildering   Corpus   (2009)   and   Beckett’s   Dantes:  Intertextuality   in   the   Fiction   and   Criticism   (2005).   She   has   co-­‐edited,   with   Daniela   La   Penna,  Twentieth-­‐Century  Poetic   Translation:  Literary  Cultures   in   Italian  and  English   (London:  Continuum,  2008)  and  edited  Beckett  and  Nothing:  Trying  to  Understand  Beckett  (2011).  Her  work  has  appeared  in  Textual   Practice,  Feminist   Theory,   and  Parallax.   She   is   currently  working  on  two  book  projects:  one  on  the  figure  of  the  child  in  modernism,  entitled  Modernist  Children,  and  the  other  (funded  by  the  British  Academy)  on  Dante  in  English-­‐speaking  modernism.  

Katherine  Kruger  (Sussex)    

Games  and  Play  in  the  work  of  Elizabeth  Bowen:    I  am  a  CHASE  funded  doctoral  candidate  in  the  first  year  of  my  research  with  the  School  of  English  at  the  University  of  Sussex.    My  research  is  supervised  by  Dr  Pam  Thurschwell;  the  primary  concern  of  my  research   is   to  scrutinize  what  versions  of   the  Romantic  child  exist   in  modern  and  postmodern  literature,   and   whether   the   Romantic   child   is   still   a   workable   ideal   for   conceptualising   and  representing  childhood.  

Dr.  Joe  Kennedy  (Sussex)  

‘He  spoke  simply,  and  without  innuendo,  as  one  stating  a  fact’:  Henry  Green  and  John  Wyndham’s  Affectless  Children  

 Dr   Joe  Kennedy   is  a  Teaching  Fellow   in  English  Literature  and  Cultural  Studies  at   the  University  of  Gothenburg  at  the  University  of  Sussex.    He  specialises  in  modernism  and  postwar  British  literature.    

 

 

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13.45  –  15.00   Panel  2:  The  Child  and  the  State       Chair:  Dr.  Dennis  Duncan  (Oxford  University)    

Dr.  Beryl  Pong  (Cambridge  University):  Semicolonial  Filiation:  Katherine  Mansfield  and  the  Short  Fictions  of  Childhood    Dr.  Veronica  Barnsley  (Sheffield  University):  ‘As  sweet  as  can  be’:  Modifications  of  the  Child  and  Mother  in  Anti-­‐colonial  Women’s  Writing    Hannah  Proctor  (Birkbeck  University):  Children  of  the  Revolution:  The  Soviet  Child  and  the  Modernism  of  Reality  

   15.00  –  15.30     Coffee        15.30  –  16.45   Panel  3:  The  Inscrutable  Child       Chair:  Dr.  Vike  Plock  (Exeter  University)          

Dr.  Daniela  Caselli  (University  of  Manchester):  Fluffy  Bunny  Modernism:  The  Child  in  Modernist  Experimental  Fiction  (Woolf,  Joyce  and  Beckett)      Katherine  Kruger  (University  of  Sussex):  Games  and  Play  in  the  Work  of  Elizabeth  Bowen    Dr.  Joe  Kennedy  (University  of  Sussex):  ‘He  spoke  simply,  and  without  innuendo,  as  one  stating  a  fact’:  Henry  Green  and  John  Wyndham’s  Affectless  Children    

   16.45    –  18.00       Closing  Keynote:  Prof.  Douglas  Mao  (John  Hopkins  University)    

“Childhood’s  Ends”        18.00    –  19.00       Wine  Reception  

         

 *  The  organisers  are  gratefully  indebted  to  the  Sussex  Centre  for  Modernist  Studies  for  their  

kind  sponsorship  of  this  event  *  

 Helen  Tyson  (QMUL)  

 ‘Little  Mussolini’  and  the  ‘parasite  poets’:  Modernism,  Psychoanalysis,  and  ‘the  Child’  

 Helen  Tyson  is  an  AHRC-­‐funded  PhD  student  and  Teaching  Associate  in  the  Department  of  English  at  Queen   Mary   University   of   London.   Her   PhD,   Reading   the   Reader   in   Modernist   Literature   and  Psychoanalysis   focuses   on   the   conceptualisation   and   imagination   of   reading   in   modernism   and  psychoanalysis.  This  project  is  supervised  by  Jacqueline  Rose  and  Peter  Howarth.    Alongside  working  on  her  PhD,  Helen  has  taught  undergraduate  courses  on  literary  theory  and  the  novel,   psychoanalysis   and   literature,   poetry,   and   academic   writing.   Helen   is   a   co-­‐editor   of   the  recently   published   book   English   Studies:   The   State   of   the   Discipline,   Past,   Present,   and   Future  (Palgrave,  2014).        

Panel  Two  -­‐  The  Child  and  the  State:  Chair:  Dr.  Dennis  Duncan  (Oxford  University)  

     

Dr.  Beryl  Pong  (Cambridge  University)    

Semicolonial  Filiation:  Katherine  Mansfield  and  the  Short  Fictions  of  Childhood    I  am  a  Research  Fellow  at  Jesus  College,  University  of  Cambridge.  Previously,  I  was  at  the  University  of   Toronto   as   a   Social   Sciences   and   Humanities   Research   Council   Postdoctoral   Fellow.   I   am  completing  a  project  on  British  literature  and  culture  during  the  Second  World  War,  parts  of  which  can  be  read  in  Journal  of  Modern  Literature  and  Literature  &  History.  I  am  also  the  incoming  editor  of  the  20th  Century  and  Contemporary  Literature  Section  of  Literature  Compass.  

 

Dr.  Veronica  Barnsley  (Sheffield)  

‘As  sweet  as  can  be’:  Modifications  of  the  Child  and  Mother  in  Anti-­‐colonial    

Women’s  Writing    

Veronica  Barnsley   is  University   Teacher   in  Contemporary   Literature  at   the  University   of   Sheffield.  She  is  working  on  a  monograph  on  postcolonial  children  in  South  Asia,  due  for  completion  in  2016.    Veronica  has  published  articles  on  topics  including  anti-­‐colonial  modernism  and  postcolonial  film  in  Feminist   Theory,  The   Journal  of   Postcolonial  Writing  and  The   Journal   of   Commonwealth  Literature  and  is  a  founder  member  of  the  Northern  Postcolonial  Network.    

 

 

 

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 Opening  Keynote  Speaker:  Dr.  Natalia  Cecire  (Sussex)  

 “Overthinking  It  in  the  Hundred  Acre  Wood”  

 In   1934,   in   the  midst   of   an   address   at   St.   George’s   Hospital  Medical   School,  W.   Langdon   Brown,  Regius  Professor  of  Physic  at  Cambridge  University,  took  a  moment  to  weigh  in  on  the  travesties  of  literary  modernism,  as  embodied  by  T.  S.  Eliot,  D.  H.  Lawrence,  and  Gertrude  Stein,  “one  of  the  most  notorious  exponents  of  the  ‘cocky-­‐locky  henny-­‐penny’  style  of  writing,  which  was  formerly  reserved  for  the  delectations  of  the  nursery.”  Brown  was  neither  the  first  nor  the  last  critic  to  call  modernism  childish,  nor  was  he  alone  in  succumbing  to  the  delicious  temptation  to  imitate  the  thing  he  decried.  Reading   A.   A.   Milne’s  Winnie-­‐the-­‐Pooh  (1926)   and  The   House   at   Pooh   Corner  (1928)   against   Ezra  Pound’s  ABC   of   Reading  (1934),   among   other   texts,   this   talk   argues   that   narratives  of   elementary  language   and   literacy   that   centered   on   the   figure   of   the   child   articulate   an   alternate   mode   of  primitivism  in  modernist  art  and  literature.    

Biography:  

Natalia  Cecire  is  a  lecturer  in  English  and  American  literature  at  the  University  of  Sussex,  specializing  in  experimentalism,  history  of  science,  media,  childhood,  and  gender  and  sexuality  studies.  She  has  previously   taught   at   the   University   of   California,   Berkeley,   Emory  University,   and   Yale   University,  and  supports  overthinking  it.  

 

Closing  Keynote:  Prof.  Douglas  Mao  (John  Hopkins  University)    

“Childhood’s  Ends”    

Biography:  

Douglas   Mao   is   Professor   of   English   at   Johns   Hopkins   University.   His   most   recent  monograph,  Fateful   Beauty:   Aesthetic   Environments,   Juvenile   Development,   and   Literature   1860-­‐1960,  traces   Victorian   and   modernist   considerations   of   the   possibility   that   beautiful   physical  environments   would   encourage   the   growth   of   beautiful   souls.   Professor   Mao   is   also   the   author  of  Solid  Objects:  Modernism  and  the  Test  of  Production;   the  co-­‐editor,  with  Rebecca  Walkowitz,  of  the   essay   collection  Bad   Modernisms;   and   the   editor   of   the   Longman   Cultural   Edition   of   E.   M.  Forster’s  Howards  End.  He  has  been  president  of  the  Modernist  Studies  Association  and  has  held  a  Guggenheim  Foundation  Fellowship.  He   is  currently   the  editor  of  Hopkins  Studies  in  Modernism,  a  book  series  from  Johns  Hopkins  University  Press,  and  is  at  work  on  a  book  about  utopia.    

 Panel  One  -­‐  The  Defiant  Child  

Chair:  Dr.  Pam  Thurschwell  (University  of  Sussex)      

Dr.  Jana  Funke  (Exeter  University)    

Modernism’s  Queer  Child:  Bryher,  Boyhood,  and  the  Adventure  of  Development      Jana  Funke   is  an  Advanced  Research  Fellow   in  Medial  Humanities   at   the  University  of  Exeter.   She  works  on  late  nineteenth-­‐  and  early  twentieth-­‐century  literature  and  sexual  science.  Jana  is  the  co-­‐editor   of  Sex,   Gender   and  Time   in   Fiction  and  Culture   (Palgrave,   2011)   and   has  published   various  articles  and  chapters  on  modernism  and  the  history  of  sexuality.  Her  forthcoming  volume  The  World  and  Other  Works  by  Radclyffe  Hall   (Manchester   University   Press,   2015)  presents   a  wide   range  of  previously   unpublished   writings   by   Radclyffe   Hall.   She   is   also   working   on   a   monograph   entitled  Sexual  Modernism:  Femininity,  Subjectivity,   and  Sexual   Science.   Jana   is  a  participant  on  the  AHRC-­‐  and  Wellcome-­‐Trust-­‐funded  New  Generations  in  Medical  Humanities  Programme  (2014/2015)  and  has   been   awarded   a  Wellcome-­‐Trust   Joint   Investigator   Award   to   lead  with   Professor   Kate   Fisher  (History,   University   of   Exeter)   a   5-­‐year   research   project   on   “The   Cross-­‐Disciplinary   Invention   of  Sexuality:  Sexual  Science  Beyond  the  Medical”  (2015-­‐2020).          

Dr.  Ben  Nicholls  (KCL)    

Reproduction  Line:  Making  Children  in  the  Work  of  Charlotte  Perkins  Gilman    Ben  Nichols  recently  completed  a  PhD  in  English  at  King’s  College  London.  His  research  is  published  or  forthcoming  in  the  Henry  James  Review  and  GLQ:  A  Journal  of  Lesbian  and  Gay  Studies.        

Elly  McCausland  (York)    

‘The  Ill-­‐Made  Knight’:  Childhood  trauma  and  daydreams  of  chivalry  in  modernist  Arthuriana  for  children  

 Elly   McCausland   is   a   third-­‐year   PhD   student   at   the   University   of   York.   Her   thesis   examines  adaptations  of  Thomas  Malory’s  Morte  D’Arthur   for  children  from  the  mid-­‐nineteenth  to  the  mid-­‐twentieth   centuries,   focusing   on   the   socialization   of   middle-­‐class   boys   into   idealized   forms   of  masculinity  through  the  presentation  of  chivalry  and  adventure.