May 14th 2015

Topographies: Places to Find Something

--interdisciplinary conference addressing literary and visual topographies

After we flew across the country we

got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West

This conference approaches the meaning

and importance of topography or
topographies, in response to the increased
usage of this primarily geographic term
in a variety of disciplines, ranging from
the arts and humanities, to modern
languages, to social, neurological and
physical sciences.

Sharon Olds, Topography

The purpose of the conference is to

address thoroughly what we might
mean by topography, and how (and
even if) ideas and principles of
geographic description and
measurement can enable us, as scholars of various disciplines, to understand topographies as
places to find something.
We are honoured to host Wai Chee Dimock (William Lampson Professor of American and
English Literature at Yale University), who will deliver the plenary lecture, and keynote
speakers Andrew Ginger (Chair in Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University of
Bristol) and Robert Vilain (Professor of German and Head of Modern Languages at the
University of Bristol). We also welcome poets Niall Campbell (winner of the Edwin
Morgan Poetry Award in 2014), Holly Corfield Carr (Poet-in-Residence at the Bristol
Poetry Institute), Tony Williams (academic and poet) and Alan Fentiman (documentary
and filmmaker) for an evening of poetry and film at the Watershed.
Abstracts for papers will be welcomed on a variety of topics, including, but not limited to:

Literary geographies * Mapping the mind and madness * Poetry and place *
Dreamscapes * Ontology and place * Embodiment, Performance, Place * Ecocriticism * Urban and rural topographies * Topographies of water, soil, sand
and air * Topographies of terror * Otherworld topographies * Colonial and
post-colonial spaces * Topographies of death, illness and decay * Palimpsests
and heterotopias * Cartographic and visual spatial practices * Topographies of
faith * Topographical bibliography * Cosmography * Geology and deep time
Contact course convenors Emily Derbyshire (emily.derbyshire@bristol.ac.uk) and Andrew
Giles (ag12981@bristol.ac.uk) with abstracts of no more than 200 words before 23 March
2015.

https://placestofindsomething2015.wordpress.com/