Call for Papers: Northern Identities: Constructions of Space, Place and Region

RHN 93/2013 | Call

Organisers: Huddersfield University; Manchester Metropolitan University

27 September 2013, Huddersfield, UK

Deadline: 16 August 2013

 

Northern Identities: Constructions of Space, Place and Region
An Interdisciplinary, Post-Graduate and Early-Career Researcher Conference

Keynote Speakers: Dave Russell and Melanie Tebbutt

The North of England is an area that easily evokes clichés and stereotypes of its population, rooted in the region’s industrial heritage. Yet the North also has areas of rolling hills and moorland that has provided the background to a long, pre-industrial history. Within these dichotomies of the industrial and the rural, are built constructions and representations of ‘the North’ and ‘Northernness’.

This is a theme that has been explored by academics such as Neville Kirk (ed), Northern Identities, Historical Interpretations of ‘The North’ and ‘Northernness’ (2000) and Dave Russell, Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination (2000). There is also a growing scholarship which addresses questions of space, place, and Northern identity, from an interdisciplinary perspective, such as Katie Wales, Northern English: A Social and Cultural History (2006) and Christoph Ehland (ed), Thinking Northern: Textures of Identity in Northern England (2007), which has helped to broaden existing debates. With this in mind, the time is right for a critical re-evaluation of Northern identity and how the borders of region are imagined and defined. This one-day conference invites post-graduate and early-career researchers to discuss the issues and complexities that arise in constructions of ‘the North’ and Northern identity.

We invite abstracts, of no more than 500 words, for twenty minute papers, that relate to the following themes:

  • Physical and Imagined Spaces of the North: Rural and Industrial
  • The North-South Divide: Antipathies, Friendships, Collaboration and Division
  • The Construction of the Northerner in Literature, Music, Print and Film
  • The Construction of Northern Identity in Sports, Leisure and Pastimes
  • Gendered Identities of the North
  • International Perspectives of Northern Identity

 

Closing date for submissions: Friday 16th August, 2013. Please send abstracts to: Stephen Etheridge and Rebecca Andrew

Twitter Hashtag #NorthID13

Conference website: northernidentities.wordpress.com

Source: events.history.ac.uk