Call for Papers for Collection of Essays
THATCHERISM AND THE ARTS OF DISSENT
We tend to consider Margaret Thatcher's years at Downing Street
as an unmitigated success for Conservatism--a decisive transformation
of English policy and its "common sense." Yet the picture of
Thatcher's England presented by the arts was of a dysfuntional nation-
state. In retrospect, artistic production seems to have provided
the primary means to visualize rage and dissent; it challenged
Tory dreams of England's past and future glory by portraying the
messy, racist reality that served for England's present. Whether
registering the present in its full complexity, or imagining
a post-imperial England for perhaps the first time, artists
resisted the Tory imperative to retreat into the pristine, imaginary
past. Our hope is to register the diversity of dissent while bearing
in mind that artists work under conditions not fully of their making
(or the PM's making, for that matter). The challenge of this
collection will be to suggest dissent in its variety, without
romanticizing it, remaining alert to the many contexts that situate
our response to texts or media images.
POSSIBLE TOPICS:
British Feminism after Thatcher, popular culture & the "new racism,"
the end of empire and ethnic absolutes, multiracial vs. Heritage
cinema, the Empire writes back, the representation of Thatcher in
popular culture, the New drama vs. the New Globalism, pop culture and
its discontents
SUBMISSION INFO:
We welcome submissions from a diversity of theoretical appproaches
and encourage contributors with an interdisciplinary focus. Please
send inquiries, completed papers, or proposals with estimated
completion dates by May 1st, 1999 to Barry Faulk, Department of
English, Florida State University, Johnston Bldg, Tallahassee, FL
32306 (e-mail: bfaulk@english.fsu.edu) or Lauren Onkey, Department
of English, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306 (e-mail: lonkey
@gw.bsu.edu).
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or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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