Call for Papers: Seminar on 'Re-presenting David Jones' for American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Georgetown (Washington, DC), 7-10 March, 2019.

 Organizer: Thomas Berenato
Co-Organizer: Anna Svendsen
Contact the Seminar Organizers

The centenary of the First World War has prompted new publications on and public interest in the life and work of the Anglo-Welsh poet and painter David Jones (1895-1974). In 2015 Chichester's Pallant House Gallery devoted a major exhibition to Jones, its magisterial catalogue by Paul Hills and Ariane Bankes attracting attention in the scholarly and popular press. English composer Iain Bell adapted Jones's war poem In Parenthesis (1937) for the Welsh National Opera in 2016. BBC Radio 4 featured Thomas Dilworth's biography of Jones, the fruit of three decades' research, as a Book of the Week in April 2017. Chapters in recent monographs by Anthony Domestico, Matthew Griffiths, and W. David Soud, among others, have considered Jones alongside his better-known peers. In late 2017 Brill presented a collection of essays addressing the question of Jones's status as a "Christian Modernist." In summer 2018 the journal Religion & Literature released a David Jones Special Issue and Bloomsbury Academic included an edition of Jones's unpublished prose in its Modernist Archives series, with an edition of his unpublished poetry to appear in December.


This seminar calls students and scholars of Jones to capitalize on and contribute to this growing corpus. Some spurs:
- Investigations of the vast Jones archives in North America and the UK
- Approaches to editing and exhibiting Jones's work and correspondence
- Jones among his Modernist peers
- Jones's inheritance and legacy
- Jones's cultural and aesthetic theories
- Jones and theology, religion, the Second Vatican Council, "the post-secular"
- Jones's politics, political theology
- Jones's women
- Jones's wars

Submit a 200-500-word abstract and 100-word bio by September 15, 2018​

Webpage :www.acla.org/re-presenting-david-jones

David Jones, Mehefin (June), 1949, National Museum of Wales 

Next Wednesday, 6 June, Anne Price-owen will be discussing the art and poetry of David Jones. The event takes place in the Brecon Beacons national Park at Coleg Trefeca, LD3 0PP
The itinerary is as follows:
10.45am Registration: Tea/Coffee & home-made biscuits!
11.00am A film showing of David Jones, and discussion on the Art of the painter-poet.
12.45pm LUNCH
2.00pm An illustrated talk concerning David Jones's Poetry and other Writings.
3.30pm Tea/Coffee & home-made cakes!
4.00pm Depart
The cost for the day is £22.00 pp., and includes all refreshments.
Anyone wishing to attend this event should contact Anne Price-Owen in the first instance at thedavidjonessociety@gmail.com

A new volume of previously unpublished prose by David Jones, edited by Kathleen Staudt, Anne Price-Owen and Tom Berenato is now available for pre-order. For more information see: 

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/david-jones-on-religion-politics-and-culture-9781474274135/

Poet and long time friend of the David Jones Society Hilary Davies will be offering a one-day course on 'The Poet as Priest: David Jones' at Sarum College on Friday 11 May. For a description of the course and further information visit the college website: 


www.sarum.ac.uk/event/the-poet-as-priest-david-jones
​

The David Jones Research Center at Washington Adventist University (Takoma Park, MD) was officially opened on 1 March 2018. As described on its webpage: 'this center is devoted to the study of the works of the poet and artist David Jones and associated subjects.  Its mission is to:

• foster original scholarship concerning David Jones and associated subjects
• support emerging scholars in the field
• facilitate focused research seminars to be held once per year with the aim of publication
• depending on interest and resources, organize or support further public lectures, exhibitions, and conferences'

The Center will hold an inaugural seminar 7-8 June, 2018 to discuss the current state of Jones Studies and the directions it could take. Paper proposals are due 7 April. For more information about the Center and the inaugural seminar CFP, see the Center's webpage: 

wauhonorscollege.org/djcenter/

​The New Poetics of Climate Change: Modern Aesthetics for a Warming World,
Matthew Griffiths (Bloomsbury, 2017)

From the Bloomsbury website: 'Climate change is the greatest issue of our time – and yet too often literature on the subject is considered only in the bracket of 'environmental' writing, divorced from culture, society and politics. The New Poetics of Climate Change argues instead that the emergence of global warming presents a fundamental challenge to the way we read and write poetry – the way we think – in the modern age.

In this important new book, Matthew Griffiths demonstrates that Modernism's radical reinvigorations of literary form over the last century represent an engagement with key intellectual questions that we still need to address if we are to comprehend the scale and complexity of climate change. Through an extended examination of Modernist poetry, including the work of T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Basil Bunting and David Jones, and their influence on present-day poets including Jorie Graham, Griffiths explores how Modernist modes can help us describe and engage with the terrifying dynamics of a warming world and offer a poetics of our climate'.

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-new-poetics-of-climate-change-9781474282116/