Conference: The Life of Birds in Literature
When
23-24 May 2014
Where
Adolf-Reichwein-Campus (AR)
Gebäudeteil X (ZIMT)
Raum AR-X104
About
Of all the animals big and small that make their appearance in literature, birds hold a special appeal for scholars. For the orniphile, there is much to admire about birds, including the beautiful plumage of many species and the unfailing sense of orientation and physical stamina of migratory birds, but it is the melodious sequences of sounds emitted by songbirds that align them with poets.
Poets have therefore invoked them as their muses, appealing also to their flight capacity to take them above the human world on “the viewless wings of poesy” (Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”). Birds have served as allegorical figures (Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls) and symbols (dove, eagle). Beyond rhetorical uses, they themselves have been the subjects of poetry from John Clare to Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ted Hughes. In recent years, as the (near-)extinction of several avian species is felt by many to be the most apparent loss of biodiversity on this planet, birds have begun to feature prominently also in fiction (Jonathan Franzen, Freedom).
This conference brings together scholars from the fields of literary and cultural studies as well as ornithologists to engage with literary and real-world figurations of birds from a variety of critical angles.
If you would like to attend the conference as a guest, kindly register for participation by sending an e-mail message to egbert@anglistik.uni-siegen.de .
Programme
Thursday, 22 May 2014
19.30 Conference Warming at 9bar (Markt 27, 57072 Siegen, 0271/31 39 169)
Friday, 23 May 2014
14.00-14.15 Opening Address and Introduction (Marie-Luise Egbert, Siegen)
14.15-15.15 Panel I: Poetic Figurations of Birds: Romantic to Victorian
Burkhard Niederhoff (Bochum): “Wordsworth’s ‘To the Cuckoo’ and the Metonymic Imagination”
Ulrike Zimmermann (Freiburg): “‘The Bird of Paradise I seek, I find not anywhere’: Birds in Late Victorian and Post-Darwinian Poetry”
15.15-15.30 Coffee Break
15.30-16.30 Panel II: Funny Birds
Larissa Budde (Siegen): “‘Not many good parts in literature for birds’:Reading the Albatross in Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and Hunt Emerson’s Comic Book Adaptation”
Franziska Burstyn (Siegen): “Flornithology for Beginners: A Bird’s Eye View of Nonsense Literature”
16.30-16.45 Coffee Break
16.45-17.45 Panel III: Poetic Figurations of Birds: The Twentieth Century
Soelve Curdts (Düsseldorf): “‘Inviolable Voice’: Romantic Conceits of Modernity”
Tim Hancock (U of Ulster/Coleraine): “‘A migrant solitude’: Seamus Heaney’s Release from ‘Domestic Obligation’ in ‘Sweeney Redivivus’”
18.00-18.30 Guided Tour of the Siegen Biology Lab:
Nina Kniel (Siegen): “Does Mate-Choice Copying Support the Evolution of New Male Traits in the Zebra Finch Taeniopygia guttata castanotis?”
20.00 Dinner
Saturday, 24 May 2014
6.00 Guided Bird-Watching Tour around Haardter Berg (AR Campus)
9.00-10.30 Panel IV: Ecocritical Perspectives on Bird Life
Pia Florence Masurczak (Freiburg): “‘Nature Gone Awry’: The Representation of the ‘Natural’ in The Birds”
Julia Franzkoch (Siegen): “The Mockingjay as a Dystopian Bird in The Hunger Games”
Cezara Nicola (Freiburg): “Reversed Cultural Ecology: Opportunistic Avian Species in Literature of the Remote and Recent Past”
10.30-11.00 Coffee Break
11.00-12.00 Panel V: The Real Life of Birds: Ornithological Perspectives
Klaudia Witte (Siegen): “How Climate Change Affects the Migratory Behaviour of Birds”
Arndt Wellbrock (Siegen): “Life on the Wing: The Common Swift Project of the Siegen Biology Section”
12.00-12.30 Final Discussion
13.00 Lunch and Departure
Conference Organizer
PD Dr. Marie-Luise Egbert
Associate Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures
Fakultät I / Seminar für Anglistik
egbert@anglistik.uni-siegen.de