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In and Out of Europe – British Literary and Cultural Discourses of Europe in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries

University of Basel, September 15-17, 2016

Conference Programme

Thursday, September 15

15:30            Registration open

16:45-17:00  Welcome (Ina Habermann)

17:00-19:00  Podium: BREXIT means BREXIT, or does it?
Short inputs and Podium discussion with
 - Edwin Constable, (University of Basel, Vice President for Research)
 - Jakob Dittmar (Malmö University) and Richard Stinshoff (University of     
   Oldenburg)
 - Stefan Howald (Journalist, Zurich)
 - M.G. Sanchez (Writer, Gibraltar)

19:00            Reception

Friday, September 16

Section 1: Medializing Europe – Discourses of Europe in Literature and Film

09:00-10:00  Keynote 1: Lara Feigel, King’s College London,
                    ‘This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do':
                    Hopes and fears for a united Europe in Britain after the Second World War’

10:00-10:30  Break

10:30-12:00  Panel 1: Travelling and Writing the Continent

                        Chair: Blanka Blagojevic

                        Barbara Wünnenberg, Europe as Seen by an Englishwoman: Cicely Hamilton’s Inter-war Journeys

Janine Hauthal, Black (in) Europe: Transcultural Discourses and Afroeuropean Visions of ‚the Continent’ in Contemporary Black British Travel Writing

12:00-14:00  Lunch Break

14:00-15:30  Panel 2: Challenging Englishness

                        Chair: Daniela Keller

Ed Dodson, Barnes’ ‚Brexit’: Satire, Nostalgia, and the ‚Embedded Assumptions’ of Race in Julian Barnes’ England, England (1998)

Christian Schmitt-Kilb, ‚When a World Ends’: Norman Conquest, Apocalypse and Englishness in Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake (2014)

Lisa Bischoff, British Fiction and the EU: The Dystopian Nightmare of a European Superstate

Section 2: Britain and Europe in a Historical Perspective

16:00-17:00  Keynote 2: Robert Holland, King’s College London,
                    ‘A country ill at ease? Britain and Europe in Brexit Perspective’

17:00-18:00  Panel 3: European Waters

                        Chair: Blanka Blagojevic

                        Melanie Küng, From Getaway to “Get away!” – The Cultural Crisis at the Dover Gateway

                        Susanna Sargsyan, From British Mediterranean to Post-EU Britain:
 From British Cyprus to  European Cyprus

19:00            Conference Dinner

Saturday, September 17

09:00-10:30  Panel 4: The East in the West

                        Chair: Susanna Sargsyan

Blanka Blagojevic, ‘I love Checkpoint Charlie’: British Cultural Discourses of the Iron Curtain

Anna Maria Tomczak, A ‚Generic’ Eastern European as the Other: Rose Tremain’s The Road Home

Jonatan Jalle Steller, Aggressive Expansion: British Post-Cold War Society in Skyfall and Spectre

10:30-11:00  Break

Section 3: Perspectives on Europe

11:00-12:00  Keynote 3: Menno Spiering, Universiteit van Amsterdam,
                    ‘I Don’t Want to be a European’: The European Other in British Cultural Discourse

12:00-14:00  Lunch Break

14:00-15:30  Panel 5: Images of Germany

                        Chair: Melanie Küng                 

Judith Vonberg, ‚Extr’ord’nary people, the Germans’: Germans as Aliens in Post-War British Popular Culture

Daniela Keller, Staging 'Frenemy' Territory: Germany and Physics in Recent British Fiction

15:30-16:00  Break

16:00-17:00  Panel 6: European Politics

                        Chair: Michelle Witen

Marlene Herrschaft, ‚Co-operation Between Stable Democratic Nations’? Imagined Communities in the Conservative Party’s Discourse on EU Enlargement

                        Klaus Stolz, The Discursive Role of Europe in a Dis-United Kingdom

                        Ellen Dengel-Janic, Europe and the City: Immigrant Perspectives on London in John 
Lanchester’s Capital (2012)

17:00            End of Conference