by Sunday 15 January 2017

This is an open call for papers for a pre-constituted panel at the
English: Shared Futures conference which will take place in Newcastle
Upon Tyne, UK, 5th-7th July 2017.

 Contemporary Women’s Writings: Archiving for the Future’

Session Chair: Rosie White

How is contemporary women’s writing being remembered now and how will it
be remembered in the future?  This panel will address current work on
archival materials regarding contemporary women writers.
Regarding contemporary writing the writer in question may still be
alive, organising her own archive and the creation of her own legacies.
What are the implications of using private materials/reading personal
diaries by and about a living subject? How reliable is archived material
curated by the writer herself?  These issues raise questions about the
dichotomy between the deceased – and at times more fetishized – writer
and the living author who can still approach her archive with some sort
of agency
Where are contemporary women writers’ archives being lodged and how is
women’s writing being preserved and recorded for future generations? 
What does ‘the archive’ mean for contemporary women’s writing?  Whose
work is being archived and who remains absent from such a record?
We invite contributions from academics working on the archived materials
of contemporary women writers, addressing issues such as access to and
availability of materials, copyright negotiations and archival absences.  

We also invite abstracts which address issues such as the gender
politics of archival work in contemporary literary studies, the role of
the archive in canon formation and the technology of archives in an
online environment.

Please send 300 word proposals to rosemary.white@northumbria.ac.uk by 15th January 2017, with a short biographical note.