Library
CFP: Investigating the Middlebrow One-Day Conference, Sheffield Hallam University, 23rd June 2007
NOTE: This is not about the monobrow.
According to the OED, the term ?middlebrow? first made an appearance in 1925, in Punch: ?it consists of people who are hoping that some day they will get used to the stuff that they ought to like.? Perhaps so, but while considering the stuff they ought to like, that controversial figure, the general reader, was buying what it did like, creating best-sellers of novelists as diverse as Elizabeth von Arnim, Warwick Deeping, Winifred Holtby, J.B. Priestley, and Stella Gibbons. These widely-read novelists, contentiously labelled ?middlebrow?, have received very little critical attention, and today the ?middlebrow? continues to be used to mark particular types of popular literature as unchallenging and of little cultural or intellectual value.
What does it mean to be labelled ?middlebrow?? Is it a question of readership? Q.D. Leavis explicitly identified the growth of the ?middlebrow? as an unfortunate consequence of women forming the majority of library users; while 50 years later Bourdieu argued that ?middlebrow? culture, in its eternally reverential relationship to ?legitimate culture?, was illegitimate simply because it was the taste of the middle-class, not because of any intrinsic qualities.
This conference invites papers on any aspect of the middlebrow. Topics could
include:
·the pleasures of reading
·the role of sentiment
·historicizing the middlebrow
·the gender of modernism
·taxonomies of taste
·cultural capital
We particularly welcome papers focussing on analyses of little-studied middlebrow novels, films, novelists or film-makers.
Proposals of 400 words for 20-minute papers should be sent via email to Erica Brown and Mary Grover at [email protected] by 24th November 2006.
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Library
CFP: Investigating the Middlebrow One-Day Conference, Sheffield Hallam University, 23rd June 2007
CFP: Investigating the Middlebrow One-Day Conference, Sheffield Hallam University, 23rd June 2007
NOTE: This is not about the monobrow.
According to the OED, the term ?middlebrow? first made an appearance in 1925, in Punch: ?it consists of people who are hoping that some day they will get used to the stuff that they ought to like.? Perhaps so, but while considering the stuff they ought to like, that controversial figure, the general reader, was buying what it did like, creating best-sellers of novelists as diverse as Elizabeth von Arnim, Warwick Deeping, Winifred Holtby, J.B. Priestley, and Stella Gibbons. These widely-read novelists, contentiously labelled ?middlebrow?, have received very little critical attention, and today the ?middlebrow? continues to be used to mark particular types of popular literature as unchallenging and of little cultural or intellectual value.
What does it mean to be labelled ?middlebrow?? Is it a question of readership? Q.D. Leavis explicitly identified the growth of the ?middlebrow? as an unfortunate consequence of women forming the majority of library users; while 50 years later Bourdieu argued that ?middlebrow? culture, in its eternally reverential relationship to ?legitimate culture?, was illegitimate simply because it was the taste of the middle-class, not because of any intrinsic qualities.
This conference invites papers on any aspect of the middlebrow. Topics could
include:
·the pleasures of reading
·the role of sentiment
·historicizing the middlebrow
·the gender of modernism
·taxonomies of taste
·cultural capital
We particularly welcome papers focussing on analyses of little-studied middlebrow novels, films, novelists or film-makers.
Proposals of 400 words for 20-minute papers should be sent via email to Erica Brown and Mary Grover at [email protected] by 24th November 2006.
- Edited Volume: Essays In Popular Culture Call For Papers
Edited Volume: Essays in Popular Culture Call for Papers Date: We are seeking contributions for an edited volume tentatively entitled Collected Essays in Popular Culture. The academic field of Popular Culture has been active since the 80s, and it might...
- Cfp: Beyond The Book: Contemporary Cultures Of Reading
CFP: Beyond the Book: Contemporary Cultures of Reading A conference at the University of Birmingham, UK 1 & 2 September 2007 Keynote Speakers: Janice Radway (Duke University) & Elizabeth Long (Rice University) Book groups, Lit Blogs, on-line bookstores,...
- Cfp: Children's And Young Adult Literature And Culture
CFP: Children's and Young Adult Literature and Culture Southwest/Texas Popular & American Culture Associations 28th Annual Conference Albuquerque, NM February 14-17, 2007 Hyatt Regency Albuquerque Any aspect of Children's or Young Adult Literature...
- Cfp: Beyond The Book: Contemporary Cultures Of Reading
CFP: Beyond the Book: Contemporary Cultures of Reading September 1-2, 2007 Location: United Kingdom Deadline: January 15, 2007 First Call for Papers Beyond the Book: Contemporary Cultures of Reading A conference at the University of Birmingham, UK 1 &...
- Cfp: Models Of Partnership In Digital Research
CFP: MODELS OF PARTNERSHIP IN DIGITAL RESEARCH SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY, 28 JUNE 2006 Incorporating computing into our work impacts on some of the central tenets of humanistic endeavour, one of these being the nature of how work gets done. Research...