Investigating the Middlebrow

One-Day Conference, Sheffield, 23rd June 2007

9:30 / Registration and coffee - room 1024 Owen Building
10:00 / Session 1
room 1034 / Dr Jayne Waterman (Ashland University, Ohio)
'Beyond Derision and Shame: Origins, Early Histories, and Transitions of the Anglo-American Middlebrow'
Sabine Hillen (University of Antwerp)
'Literature Beyond Legitimacy'
Dr Catherine Clay (Nottingham Trent University)
'Delighting in Modern Fiction: Women Writers and Critics in Time and Tide'
Chair: Dr Mary Grover (Sheffield Hallam University)
11:30 / Coffee break - room 1024
The conference now splits into two parallel sessions
11:45 / Session 2 A
room 1034 / Dr Jonathan Wild (University of Edinburgh) 'Writing for Profit: Michael Joseph, the "Middlebrow" and the Interwar New Writing Public'
George Simmers (Oxford Brookes University) 'Failing as a Middlebrow: the Early Novels of Richard Blaker'
Chair: Dr Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester)
11:45 / Session 2 B
room 1039 / Dr Sophie Blanch (University of Sussex)
'Comic Strategy and the Politics of Polite Laughter in the Feminine Middlebrow'
Juliane Roemhild (La Trobe University, Melbourne)
'Betwixt and Between - the diary novels of Elizabeth von Arnim'
Chair: Erica Brown (Sheffield Hallam University)
12:45 / Lunch - room 1024
1:45 / Session 3 A
room 1034 / Dr Lisa Regan (University of Liverpool)
'The Fantasy of Africa: Gender, Adventure and Imperialism in Winifred Holtby's The Land of Green Ginger (1927) and Mandoa, Mandoa! (1933)
Kristin Ewins (St Hilda's, Oxford)
'Politicised Middlebrow in the 1930s'
Dr Pam Hirsch (University of Cambridge)
'Phyllis Bottome and The Mortal Storm'
Chair: Prof Chris Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University)
1:45 / Session 3 B
room 1039 / Dr Nicola Humble (Roehampton University)
'The Queer Pleasures of Reading: Camp and the Middlebrow'
Sarah Davison (St Anne's College, Oxford)
'Middlebrow Parody and Literary Modernism'
Chair: Prof Alison Light (Newcastle University)
3:15 / Coffee break - room 1024
3:30 / Session 4 A / Dr Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester)
'Psychoanalysis and Psychology in Mid-Twentieth Century Writing'
Dr Esme Miskimmin (University of Liverpool)
'The Case of Dorothy L. Sayers'
Chair: Kirsten Law (Sheffield Hallam University)
3:30 / Session 4 B / Wendy Pollard (Independent Scholar)
'Aesthetes and Spivs: Post-War Adjustment in Pamela Hansford Johnson’s ‘Helena’ Trilogy'
Dr Nicola Beauman (Independent Scholar)
'"Yes - oh dear yes - the novel tells a story": the narrative strengths of Dorothy Whipple's fiction'
Chair: Dr Sophie Blanch
4:30 / Short break
4:40 / Round-table discussion
room 1034 / Nicola Beauman (Independent Scholar), Nicola Humble (Roehampton University), John Baxendale (Sheffield Hallam University), Jonathan Wild (University of Edinburgh), Alison Light (University of Newcastle).
Chair: Dr Faye Hammill (University of Cardiff)
5:30 / End - Drinks room 1024
6:30 / Dinner