Dr Xiaofan Amy Li, Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature, is co-organising a conference on ‘Play, Recreation, and Experimentation: Literature and the Arts since the Early Modern Times’, with Dr Helena Taylor (University of Exeter), to be held at Kent on 8-9 December 2017.

This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore relations between play, recreation, and experimentation by examining their articulations in literature and the arts (broadly understood as the visual arts, architecture, music/sound art, film) from the early modern period up to the present day.

There are many instances of engagement with the ludic and experimentation, e.g. early modern literature on the theme of playing with appearances (being and seeming); Duchamp’s Fontaine; Dada and Surrealist practices including cadavre exquis, collage, bricolage; Oulipo and pataphysics; postmodern pastiches and hybridity in architecture, and re-inventions of myth and history in contemporary fiction. Nevertheless, we intend to shed new light on these works and probe their implications for a theory of the ludic through considering the interactions and dialogues between play, recreation, and experimentation.

Proposals are sought for 20-minute papers. To submit, please send a 300-word abstract (maximum) and a short biography of the author with his/her affiliation and contact details to the conference organisers at playconference2017@gmail.com by midnight on 31 July 2017.

For a full list of themes, please see the conference website.