New directions in Gothic Revival studies worldwide
The 2012 A.W.N. Pugin bicentennial conference

This conference will be the primary international academic event marking the bicentenary of the birth of the architect A.W.N. Pugin, bringing the field’s leading scholars worldwide to a broad-based conference in Canterbury. It will also be the first conference on the British Gothic Revival's international impact that incorporates North America, and the first significant international conference on the subject since ‘Gothic Revival: religion, architecture and style in Western Europe’ (Leuven, 1997).

There will be opportunities to visit key Pugin sites immediately before and after the conference. In association with the Pugin Society, The Victorian Society and the Landmark Trust we will offer visits to the Grange and St Augustine’s in Ramsgate. Further tours and walks will be organised over the following week to Gothic Revival sites in Birmingham and Staffordshire.

The academic sessions of the conference will be held on 13-14 July 2012 at the University of Kent in Canterbury. The conference will feature plenary addresses by

Professor Emeritus Stephen Bann
Bristol University
Pugin and the French Connection

Professor Barry Bergdoll
The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design of the Museum of Modern Art in New York
Pugin and the paradoxes of historicism

Dr Margaret Belcher
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Pugin’s Letters

and

Professor Thomas Coomans
ASRO, Catholic University, Leuven
Pugin and Belgium Worldwide: from Les vrais principes and the St Luke's Schools to missions in Congo and China

We invite submission of paper proposals, for delivery as 20-minute conference talks, on Pugin and topics related to the post-1830 Gothic revival, with a view to showcasing the best of current work in the intersecting fields that make up Gothic studies in architecture. Contributions on Pugin’s cultural legacy in non-British contexts, e.g. Ireland, continental Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, etc. are equally welcome. We are interested in making this conference interdisciplinary and, so, are keen to consider papers not only from Architectural History but also History, Art History, English and American literature, Religious and Cultural Studies.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

- The Gothic Revival before and after 1830, including twentieth-century revivals
- Architecture’s social agency from Pugin onwards
- Architecture’s role in historical revivalism
- Re-theorising Pugin’s functionalism
- How Gothic architecture provides a tool to analyse the nineteenth century
- Literary versus architectural Gothic
- Spectrality, spiritualism, and the revival of Gothic
- the space of cultural memory / the sense of place

Abstracts should be not longer than 250 words.

This conference is organised by CREAte, the Centre for Research in European Architecture of the Kent School of Architecture, University of Kent, following our successful hosting of the AHRA conference on Scale last year. An international peer review board appointed by CREAte will review submissions. Professor Martin Bressani (McGill University) and Professor Dr Jan De Maeyer (KADOC, Leuven University) will act as external academic advisers to the review process. A book with edited versions of conference papers is under active consideration.

Last day for submission of abstracts: 30 September 2011
Notification of acceptance of abstract: 31 December 2011

Website: http://www.kent.ac.uk/architecture/GothicRevival2012

Please submit your abstract to: GothicRevival2012kent.ac.uk

For enquiries, please contact: Dr Timothy Brittain-Catlin, CREAte, tjb33kent.ac.uk