The Bildungsroman: form and transformations
A conference hosted by the Novel Network at the University of Sydney, 22-25 November 2018
This conference will explore the past and present condition of the Bildungsroman, with its myriad transformations and diversifications not only in the novel proper but also in memoir, film and long-form television. It will bring together exciting work in disciplines often separated by periodising and disciplinary paradigms and gather experts in prose fiction, film and television from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries and from a range of language areas to concentrate on this key narrative form. The novel of the emotional and social development or formation of a young person as they learn to make their way in an often hostile world, the Bildungsroman was a key form taken by the European novel from the early 19th century. How has it made its way across transhistorical formations and transgeneric remediations?
Keynotes:
Nancy Armstrong, Gilbert, Louis & Edward Lehrman Professor of English, Duke
‘Why the Bildungsroman no longer works’
Joseph Litvak, Professor of English and Chair of Department, Tufts
‘Black Comedy and the Bildungsroman: Fran Ross’s Oreo’
Katie Trumpener, Emily Sandford Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Yale
‘Actors, Puppets, Girls: Little Women and the Collective Bildungsroman’
The conference programme is now available here:
Registration is now open. You can register at this link:
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