The second annual conference of the Edwardian Culture Network will be
held in the Rendall Building, University of Liverpool, on the 10-11th
April, 2014. There will be over 20 papers, including a keynote lecture
by Jonathan Wild (University of Edinburgh). The conference fee is £12.

At the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, how useful is
it to think about the Edwardian era as ending decisively in 1914?
Indeed, how helpful have conventional boundaries of periodisation been
in our understanding of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century
British culture?

Rather than viewing 'the Edwardian' as a fixed and isolated historic
moment, this conference seeks to open up new ways of thinking about the
premonitions and echoes of the Edwardian age. Just as the 1880s and
1890s can be interpreted as 'proto-Edwardian', so too the Edwardians can
be seen to have anticipated many issues and debates of the present day,
from coalition governments to trade unions, immigration acts to women's
rights.


PROGRAM

THURSDAY 10th April

9.00-9.45 Registration

9.45-10.15
Introduction

Panel One: Empire and War
10.15-12.25

Patrick Longson
Before the German Menace: British Imperial Anxiety before 1896'

Paul Stocker
The Imperial Spirit: The Edwardian Era, Empire and British Fascism

Andrew Glazzard
"And Now I Build Destroyers!" The Economics of War in Edwardian Fiction

Michael Robinson
Derogatory Perceptions of the Irish soldier during the Great War,
1914-1918: An Edwardian Legacy of Anti-Irishness?

12.25-1.15 Lunch


Panel Two: Art and Conquest
1.15-3.00

Robert Brown
Painted Geisha's or 'Coloured Conquest'? : Edwardian exhibitions and the
Japanese Empire

Melanie Polledri
The Imperial Stage: British sculptural representations of its Colonised
Peoples following the Victorian Scramble for Africa

Samuel Shaw
Aliens at Prayer: The Representation of Jewish Life in London's East End
c.1905
3-3.30 Tea


Panel Three: Making it New
3.30-4.30

Sophie Martin
A Rhetoric of Newness and continuity in Edwardian Art Criticism

Kathryn Lamontagne
Maude Petre: Modernism, Domesticity, and Damnation for the 'New Woman'
in Catholic Britain?

4.30-5 Closing remarks and discussion


FRIDAY 11th April

Panel Four: Periodisation / 21st Century Edwardians [Parallel Panels]
9.15-10.15

Session One:
Sally Bruce-Lockhart
Between the Wars: The Edwardian Era as the Middle Coda between the Boer
War and 1939

Rosie Snajdr
Cultural Revisions based in Predictions: How the War shaped Pre-War
Culture in Britain

Session Two:
Jack Sargent
The Time When 'Only Young Men Kissed': Contemporary Gay Nostalgia for
the Aesthetics of Illicit Homosexuality in the Works of Alan
Hollinghurst.

Ben Roberts
Civic ritual, public festivity and Edwardian event fatigue: setting an
example for twenty-first century national celebrations


Panel Five: Health and the Body
10.20-12.00

Anne Fernihough
title tbc

Ian Miller
Medical Ethics and Hunger Strike Management: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives

Anthony Patterson
Getting Sex Square with the Rest of Life: Sex and Health in H.G. Wells's
New Machiavelli (1911) and Hubert Wales's The Yoke (1909).

12.00-12.45 Lunch


Panel Six: The Neo-Edwardian
12.45-2.15

Margaret Stetz
John S. Goodall and the Politics of Late-Twentieth-Century Edwardianism
for Children

Julia Gillen
Writing Edwardian postcards: a revolutionary social networking
phenomenon

Sarah Edwards
1912: heritage television, official history and marriage


Panel Seven: Femininity
2.20-3.20

Nadine Muller
Modernity & Mourning: Writing the Edwardian Widow

Viv Gardner
From Matinee Hats and the K.O.W. Brigade to Flapper Furies: responses to
the 'feminisation' of theatre spectatorship, 1900-1918

3.20-3.50 Tea

3.50-5.00
Jonathan Wild
title tbc


For registration and further information:
http://edwardianculture.com/conference/