Home

Preliminary Information

We are now able to post some preliminary information about the IAUPE conference in Rome in July 2023. As previously announced, the Medieval Symposium will take place on Monday 10 July, and the main conference will run from Tuesday 11 July through until Friday 14 July. The final event will be a conference dinner in the evening of Friday 14 July at the Grand Hotel Gianicolo. The Medieval Symposium will take place at the Villa Maria campus of Australian Catholic University, Largo Giovanni Berchet, 4, Rome, 00152. This is located in the Trastevere district of Rome. The main conference will be split between the ACU campus and the Hotel Ripa, Via degli Orti di Trastevere, 3, Rome 00153. Parallel sessions will take place at the Hotel Ripa, which has a suite of well-equipped seminar rooms, while plenary sessions and receptions will be held at the ACU campus.

Speakers & Sessions

Confirmed plenary speakers for the conference are the eminent medievalist, James Simpson, who is Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard; the librarian of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Richard Ovenden, author of the recent highly praised Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack; and Jette Hansen Edwards, professor of applied English linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, an expert on the rise of global English.

There will also be a plenary session on the future of English Studies, led by Regenia Gagnier (University of Exeter), and other conversations with contemporary authors, including the celebrated Waanyi (Indigenous Australian) writer Alexis Wright, whose new novel Praiseworthy is scheduled for publication in April 2023. We are also planning a conference reception and dinner, and other optional leisure activities in Rome. Rome has never before hosted the IAUPE conference (though it did meet in Venice in 1965), and we think this event next year will offer the opportunity for a vibrant and timely conference at a time of multiple challenges for English studies all across the world

Proposing a Paper

In line with the procedure for previous conferences, there will be a number of special sections organized by designated coordinators, who will be responsible for the selection of panel participants. Normally, each section will sponsor two panels, each of 90 minutes duration, which will allow for two or three presenters to participate in each panel. IAUPE members who are interested in speaking at the conference are invited to contact the relevant section chair (or chairs) by 30th September 2022, enclosing a short abstract (around 200 words) of their proposed paper. We anticipate finalizing the conference programme by 15th November, so as to allow ample time for travel arrangements to be made.

Section Chairs

The section chairs for IAUPE 2023 are as follows:

Section 1. Old English Language and Literature

Daniel Anlezark (The University of Sydney):

Section 2. Middle English Language and Literature

Helen Fulton (University of Bristol):
Lawrence Warner (King’s College, London):

Section 3. Early Renaissance Literature

Silvia Bigliazzi (University of Verona):

Section 4. Shakespeare

Gordon McMullan (King’s College, London):

Section 5. Late Renaissance and Milton

Richard McCabe (Merton College, University of Oxford):

Section 6. The Long Eighteenth Century

Dorothee Birke (The University of Innsbruck):
Peter Sabor (McGill University, Montreal):

Section 7. Romanticism.

William Christie (Australian National University):
Simon Haines (Ramsay Centre, Sydney):

Section 8. The Long Nineteenth Century.

Regenia Gagnier (University of Exeter):

Section 9. Early American Literature

Laura Stevens (University of Tulsa):
Carmen Birkle (University of Marburg):

Section 10. American Literature after 1900.

Aimee Pozorski (Central Connecticut State University):

Section 11. Modern Literature

Janice Pilditch (University of Waikato):
Sabine Volk-Birke (Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg):

Section 12. Literary Theory

Ingo Berensmeyer (University of Munich):
Mark Byron (University of Sydney):

Section 13. Sociolinguistics and Language Studies

Marina Dossena (University of Bergamo):

Section 14. Bibliography and Textual Criticism

Grace Ioppolo (University of Reading):
Paul Eggert (University of New South Wales, Canberra):

Section 15. Digital Humanities

William Kretzschmar (University of Georgia):
Peter Stokes (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris):

Section 16. Australian Literature.

Igor Maver (University of Ljubljana):
Philip Mead (Univ. of Melbourne/Univ. of Western Australia):

Section 17. Contemporary World Literatures in English

Liliana Sikorska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan):

For proposals relating to the Medieval Symposium, to be held on Monday 10 July 2023, please contact one of the section chairs for Old English Language and Literature or Middle English Language and Literature, as given above. Further information on the Medieval Symposium can be found here.

Conference Organizers

Planning Committee

  • Paul Giles (Australian Catholic University, Melbourne)
  • William Christie (Australian National University)
  • Philip Mead (University of Western Australia/University of Melbourne)
  • Stefania Nuccorini (Universita degli studi Roma Tre)

Conference Assistants

  • Conference Coordinator: Jason Smeaton (Australian Catholic University, Melbourne). <> Email here.
  • Ruggero Bianchin (University of Glasgow, Scotland)
  • Giulia De Luca (Universita degli studi Roma Tre, Italy)
  • Benedikt Gnosa (Bonn University, Germany)
  • Silvia Pettini (Universita degli studi Roma Tre, Italy)

As you will know, Murray McGillivray has regrettably recently had to resign from the role of IAUPE Secretary General and Treasurer on the grounds of ill health. IAUPE wishes Murray well, of course, and thanks him for his service. Kathleen Harrington, who has recently retired from the US Air Force Academy () has been appointed Interim Secretary General and Treasurer until the Rome conference in July 2023. Preparations for the Rome conference itself are not affected.