Masculinity and the Metropolis
An Interdisciplinary Conference on Art History, Film, and Literature

Call For Registration
University of Kent, Canterbury 22nd – 23rd April 2016

This interdisciplinary conference, hosted by the University of Kent, takes as its starting point the range of complex and contradictory engagements between masculinity and the developing metropolis since the beginning of the twentieth century. Throughout this period the metropolis maintained a paradoxical status as a place of liberation and possibility, but simultaneously as one of alienation, sin, and oppression. The conference will explore responses to the modern city in visual art, film, and literature and will elucidate what this media can tell us about masculinity as it both asserts itself and registers its own anxieties in subsequent representations of the city. Papers from delegates and keynote speakers will navigate these positive and negative conditions, which encouraged complex responses within the framework of masculinity.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Deborah Longworth, University of Birmingham
Dr. Hamilton Carroll, University of Leeds
Dr. Gabriel Koureas, Birkbeck, University of London

FRIDAY 22nd April

09.00 – 09.30 Registration – Keynes College, University of Kent Lobby

09:30 – 09:45 Welcome Remarks - Keynes College Lecture Theatre 2

09.45 – 11.00 Keynote Speaker

Deborah Longworth, Senior Lecturer, Department of English Literature,
University of Birmingham

11.00 – 11.15 Coffee and tea

11.15 – 12.45 Panel Sessions

Panel 1: Spaces - Keynes College Lecture Theatre 2

· At home in the city? Francis Bacon and queer intimacy in post-war
London, Dr Greg Salter, Birkbeck, University of London and CAPA

· Men Forced Underground, Dr György Kalmár, University of Debrecen,
Hungary

· George Oppen’s Lyric Vertigo (or, Bringing Aesthetic Theory into
Modernist New York), David Hobbs, New York University

Panel 2: Flânerie - Studio 2 Jarman Building, School of Arts

· Using Benjamin's 'flâneur’ and de Certeau's ‘bricoleur’ to
explore the city-centred stories of Sherlock Holmes, Nicola Rose,
University of Huddersfield

· Flight or Fight: Movement in the Metropolis in Peter Ackroyd’s
Hawskmoor, Dominic Dean, University of Warwick

· Crises of Masculinity in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s İstanbul, Dr Emre
Çağlayan, University of Brighton

12.45 –13.45 Lunch - Keynes College

13.45- 15.15 Panel Sessions

Panel 3: Black American Masculinities - Keynes College Lecture Theatre 2

· Performing Black Masculinity in 1960s Harlem: Shirley Clarke’s The
Cool World’, Dr Rosa Nogués, Chelsea College of Arts

· “Living every day scared”: Disorientation, Incrimination and
Black Masculinity in Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go, Alex Pavey,
University College London

· “Nothing but rubber heels”: Mobility, Virility and the Projected
Female Gaze in the Automotive Cities of Black American Popular Song (1948 –
1963)’, Michael Docherty, University of Kent

Panel 4: Displacement - Studio 2 Jarman Building, School of Arts

· “Delectable Transgressions” and the Neither/Nor in Hanif Kureishi’s
Something to Tell You, Hayley Toth, University of Huddersfield

· “Dark Strangers”: West Indian Men and Mixed Race Relationships in
the Post-War Metropolis, Anna Maguire, King’s College London

· British Muslim Masculinities in the (English and Scottish)
Metropolis: Regionality and Masculinity in Brick Lane (2003) by Monica
Ali and Psychoraag (2004) by Suhayl Saad’, Peter Cherry, University of
Edinburgh

15.15 – 15.30 Coffee and tea - Keynes College

15.30 – 17.00 Keynote Speaker - Keynes College Lecture Theatre 2

Dr Gabriel Koureas, ‘Male Terrors in the Metropolis’, Senior Lecturer,
Department of History of Art, School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London

19:30 Conference dinner

SATURDAY 23rd April
09.30 – 11.00 Keynote Speaker - Keynes College Lecture Theatre 2

Dr Hamilton Carroll, ‘“I Get All the News I Need On the Weather Report”:
Risk, Terror, and the Subject of Contemporary Fiction’, Associate
Professor of English (American Literature and Culture), University of Leeds

11.00 – 11.15 Coffee and tea

11.15 – 12.45 Panel Sessions

Panel 5: New York Poets - Keynes College Lecture Theatre 2

· Feminine Marvelous and Tough: Masculinity and New York School
Memoir, Josh Schneiderman, CUNY Graduate Center

· “As unpleasantly definitive as statuary”: Monuments and Camp Bodies
in Frank O’Hara and Eileen Myles, Dr Jordan Savage, University of Essex

· “This other gang”: towards a definition of the post-New York
School, Dr Diarmuid Hester, Kingston University

Panel 6: Crisis of Masculinity - Studio 2 Jarman Building, School of Arts

· Circulations: Useless Men In Postsocialist Chinese Cities, Dr Pamela Hunt, SOAS University of London

· New York City and Traumatized Masculinity in Spike Lee’s 25th Hour,
Dr Valerio Coladonato, American University of Paris

· Lost in Tokyo and Besieged in Shanghai: the Emasculated Chinese Man
in Yu Dafu and Weihui’s Stories, Flair Donglai Shi, Oxford University

12.45 – 13.45 Lunch

13.45 – 15.15 Panel Sessions

Panel 7: Boxing - Keynes College Lecture Theatre 2

· Vorticism and the ‘Boxing Wave’ of 1914, Dr Bernard Vere, Sothebys
Institute of Art

· Satire and the City: The Construction of Place as Criticism of the
Male Identity Crisis in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, Dr Imola
Bülgözdi, University of Debrecen, Hungary

Panel 8: Queer New York - Studio 2 Jarman Building, School of Arts

“Clones Go Home”: Masculinity on the Move in NYC, Dr Thomas Morgan-Evans,
University College London

The Myth of the Gay “Golden Age” New York, Lois Walker, Liverpool John
Moores University

Stonewall, Seedbed and the Contestations of Masculinity: Vito Acconci and
the New York of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dr Benjamin Greenman,
Glasgow School of Art

15.15 – 15.30 Coffee and Tea

15.30 – 16.30 Panel Discussion - Keynes College Lecture Theatre 2

Keynote Speakers and Professor Phil Hubbard, Professor of Urban Studies,
University of Kent, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research

16.30 – 17.30 Wine Reception – Keynes College

Registration:
Postgraduate students / University of Kent Staff and Students: £15
Other researchers: £30
Conference Dinner: £30

Registration is required prior to the conference and will close on the 1st of April. Please follow this link to register and book your place for the conference dinner (optional): http://store.kent.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=158&prodvarid=184

Accommodation in Canterbury:
On Campus Accommodation: http://www.kent.ac.uk/conference
Premier Inn: http://www.premierinn.com/gb/en/hotels/england/kent/canterbury/canterbury-city-centre.html
Abode Canterbury: http://www.abodecanterbury.co.uk/
The Falstaff Hotel: http://www.thefalstaffincanterbury.com/index.html

Getting to the University of Kent, Canterbury:
Rail/Bus/Road Directions: https://www.kent.ac.uk/locations/canterbury/directions.html
All hotels are in the city centre approximately a 20 minute bus or 10 minute taxi ride to the University. After arriving at the University please come to the main lobby of Keynes College to pick up your welcome pack between 9am and 9:30am on April 22nd.

Website: https://masculinemetropolis.wordpress.com/
Contact: masculinemetropolisgmail.com

Organizers
James Finch, History of Art
Hannah Huxley, Centre for American Studies
Sara Janssen, Film
Margaret Schmitz, History of Art

With a special thanks to our sponsors: The University of Kent’s Humanities Faculty Research Fund, History of Art and Visual Cultures Research Centre, Aesthetics Research Centre, the Centre for Film and Media Research, and the Centre for American Studies.