Literature Matters Conference, 4-6 November 2024 (online)

Call for Papers: ‘Literature Matters’

Dates: 4-6 November 2024 (online conference)

Deadline for submissions: 26 July 2024

Why does reading and writing imaginative literature matter? We live in an era when the value of the Arts (economic, social, cultural, personal, spiritual, metaphysical, human development etc) is under renewed scrutiny and the benefits of literature – both reading and writing – are being appreciated from a range of perspectives, from medical humanities to psychology. There is increasing evidence that reading and writing imaginative literature can improve personal well-being, generate cultural understanding and empathy, combat prejudice, help us come to terms with past trauma, promote a deeper understanding of the past, and foster renewed engagement with the natural environment. Creating (writing) and consuming (reading) imaginative literature generates a huge amount of income in the cultural industries, from book production to cultural heritage, and from screenplays to digital media.

However, despite the all-pervasiveness of literature in shared culture and individual consciousness, the ways in which literature matters in both a personal and collective sense is still underappreciated and under scrutinised. This FREE 3-day online international conference encourages participants to interrogate the importance (or not) of literature and writing in the 21^st century. See the attached Call for Papers (DOC, 267kb) for further details. If you would like to propose an individual paper or panel to present at the conference, please submit a 300-word abstract and a brief biography (50 words) to the lead conference organiser Shafquat Towheed by 26 July 2024. We welcome proposals from individuals at all stages of their academic careers, including graduate students. We will aim to inform you of the outcome of your proposal submission in early September. The conference will be FREE to attend, but registration in advance will be required.

This conference is organised by colleagues in the Department of English and Creative Writing (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) together with colleagues in Languages and Applied Linguistics (Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies) at The Open University. The conference is funded by OpenARC, The Open University’s Arts Research Centre in the School of Arts and Humanities.

Conference Lead Organiser: Shafquat Towheed

Programme Committee members: Delia da Sousa Correa; Edmund King; Jonathan Gibson; Sara Haslam; Peg Katritzky; Joanne Reardon; Philip Seargeant; Jennifer Shepherd; Emma Sweeney; Alex Tickell; Nicola Watson; Molly Ziegler.