The European Society for the Study of English 2024 Conference

Description

Panel on the theme "Imagining the Railway in the Twentieth Century"

Additionaldescription

That the arrival of the railway changed people’s perception of the world has been well established since Schivelbusch’s pioneering work. There is a substantial body of scholarship documenting the nineteenth-century railway’s influence on the experience of travel and its impact on literature, cinema, the visual arts, etc. By contrast, scholars have been less interested in the history of the railway in the twentieth century, when, after a long period of dominance, the train was challenged by the automobile and aeroplane. Trains did not disappear, however, but were invested with new imaginative possibilities, charted in works such as Greene’s Stamboul Train and Morrison’s Jazz.

This seminar looks to explore the significance of the railway in the twentieth century from literary and cultural perspectives. We welcome proposals that focus on the relationship between the twentieth-century railway and English-language literature, cinema, the visual arts and/or other cultural modes.
Themes to be explored could be, but are not limited to:

• the railway and (literary) form
• gender and sexual identity
• (post)colonial perspectives
• railway and war
• long-distance travel
• commuting
• spaces of the railway
• the railway’s impact on landscape and environment
• comparisons between literary and visual depictions of the railway

Period	26 Aug 2024 → 27 Aug 2024
Event type	Conference
Location	Lausanne, SwitzerlandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International