Tuesday, May 22, 2012

In the Footsteps of Katherine Mansfield

CALL FOR PAPERS: INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
Hosted by the British Residents Association and the English Department of the University of Geneva, together with the Katherine Mansfield Society

CRANS-MONTANA, SWITZERLAND - 22-23 SEPTEMBER 2012
 To be introduced by the New Zealand Ambassador

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS - Witi Ihimaera, Angela Smith, Gerri Kimber

 In 1921 and 1922 Katherine Mansfield was in search of a cure for tuberculosis, travelling to both Switzerland and France.  She spent two separate periods in Switzerland during this time, totalling approximately twelve months. For four of these she stayed in hotels in Montreux and Sierre, and the remainder of the time she and her husband John Middleton Murry rented the Chalet des Sapins in Montana-sur-Sierre (now known as Crans-Montana). There she wrote some of her most celebrated stories, including ‘At the Bay’, ‘The Doll’s House’ and ‘The Garden Party’. It was also in Switzerland that she read the book Cosmic Anatomy, whose esoteric philosophy would ignite a desire for a spiritual cure from the physical symptoms of her tuberculosis, leading her ultimately to Gurdjieff’s community in Fontainebleau, where she would die in January 1923, aged just 34.

 This symposium seeks a reassessment of Mansfield’s time spent in Switzerland. Possible topics for discussion might include, but are not limited to:

Mansfield and Switzerland
Mansfield’s stories written during her stay at Montana.
Comparisons between Mansfield and other writers living at Montana such as S. Corinna      Bille, Elizabeth von Arnim and Rainer Maria Rilke
The relationship between Murry and Mansfield in Switzerland
The relationship between Mansfield and Ida Baker (LM) in Switzerland
Mansfield and gender
Mansfield and spirituality
Mansfield and travel
Mansfield and tuberculosis
Mansfield’s personal writing

 Please send a 250 word abstract to  Simone Oettli at simone.oettli@unige.ch  or Farrol Kahn at fkahn@aviation-health.co.uk before 8 June 2012

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