EXTENDED DEADLINE: Strange Atmospheres: The Seventh International Flann O’Brien Conference

Call for Papers, Other Conferences

The deadline for paper submissions to Strange Atmospheres: The Seventh International Flann O’Brien Conference has been extended to 31 January, 2023.

The Department of English at Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj, 27–30 June 2023

Keynote Speakers

  • Joseph Brooker (Birkbeck College, University of London)
  • Flore Coulouma (Université Paris Nanterre)
  • Paul Fagan (Maynooth University)
  • Heather Laird (University College Cork)

Call for Papers

The conference title, Strange Atmospheres, foregrounds a concept that sits uneasily on the semantic boundary between environment, embodied space, and mood. Often bending to the fantastic, the uncanny, the fake and unconvincing, O’Brien’s style is itself characterised by a constant apprehension of the ways in which the atmospheric and the literary fertilise each other. The symposium will provide the occasion to reflect more fully on these aspects of his work. The conference organisers invite proposals for 20 minute presentations on any topic relevant to the symposium theme. Special consideration will be given to the following topics in Flann O’Brien studies:

  • Reflections on atmosphere as setting and atmosphere as mood
  • Pathetic fallacy and the correspondences between space, place and feeling 
  • Ecocritical approaches
  • Radio transmissions and wireless communication
  • Ideas of extended agency and extended subjectivity
  • Politicised environments
  • Localised and universal spaces
  • Gothic spaces, horror and the uncanny 
  • Life without borders
  • Apocalyptic overtones
  • Ghost cities
  • Social, professional and urban spaces
  • Literary discourse and the weather
  • Modernist environments and ecological thought
  • Non-humans and posthumans in O’Nolan’s fiction

Please send abstracts and a short bionote to the organisers at seventhflanncluj@gmail.com by January 31st, 2023.

Selected talks will be published in a special issue of The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies (open-access at the Open Library of Humanities).

Full details about the CFP are available here.