Katherine Mansfield and the (Post)colonial

 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR VOLUME 5 OF

Katherine Mansfield Studies

(THE PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL OF THE KATHERINE MANSFIELD SOCIETY)

on the theme of

Katherine Mansfield and the (Post)colonial 

Submissions are sought on the following:

·        Critical articles on the theme of this issue: ‘Katherine Mansfield and the (Post)colonial’

·        Creative pieces – poetry and prose with a connection to Katherine Mansfield

 This volume invites contributions which aim to reposition Mansfield in an as yet relatively unexplored field of post/colonial modernism, addressing themes and issues raised by Katherine Mansfield’s nomadic rootlessness as an ‘extraterritorial’ writer, her constant movement between European countries, her impetuous decisions to travel, together with her volatile feelings about home and belonging.  

Mansfield arrived in England, in 1908, one year after New Zealand became a Dominion, her ambivalence about her origins signalled by her self-appellation as ‘the little colonial’. But her perceptions of colonial life and settlement, as evidenced in many of her early sketches and subsequent stories, anticipate key issues of postcolonial writing and theory: race, identity, justice. Increasingly Mansfield has come to be seen as a writer who, in art as in life, transcends her era, hinting at future challenges to its imperialist assumptions. Articles in this volume draw on postcolonial and diasporic frameworks to examine in relation to Mansfield’s mobile, travelling subjecthood, her insights into colony and empire, formed from her earliest years.

In aiming to reposition Mansfield as a postcolonial/diasporic modernist, this volume also includes explorations of her literary influence on subsequent writers from her homeland of New Zealand, to most of whom, by virtue of her trajectory, she  was a model of exile, as well as other writers in both Europe and elsewhere. This reassessment of Mansfield as an artist investigates the extent to which she anticipates postcolonial discourses in her sympathetic engagement with the exploited and the outsider, and her ability, especially as a travelling subject, to challenge cultural codes and subvert social conventions.

  

Subthemes

 Mansfield and indigenous belonging

Mansfield, travel and transport(ation)

Mansfield, movement and the distancing self

Mansfield and (post)colonial childhood

Mansfield and the exile’s return

Mansfield and her (post)colonial legacy

Mansfield, race, ethnicity and identity

Mansfield and white settler ambivalence

Mansfield and roots/routes

Mansfield and (post)colonial cosmopolitanism

ARTICLES

 Submissions of between 5000–7000 words (inclusive of endnotes), should be emailed in Word format to the Guest Editor for this volume:

Professor Janet Wilson: kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org

Please also send:
·   a 50 word bio-sketch.
·   a brief abstract (150 words) summarising your article.
·   5 or 6 keywords.

CREATIVE WRITING

Pieces of creative writing on the theme of Katherine Mansfield – poetry, short stories (no more than 3000 words), etc, should be sent to the editors, accompanied by a 50 word bio-sketch:

kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org

 DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 31 October 2012

A detailed style guide is available from the Katherine Mansfield Society website:

http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/the-katherine-mansfield-studies-journal/