Submissions are invited for the eighth annual interdisciplinary conference of The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, June 8-11, 2006. Please send 300-word abstracts by December 15 to Roger Rothman (rrothman@bucknell.edu).

Acceleration, terminal velocity, downward-spiral, displacement, paralysis, collision, modernity.

From army “mobilization” in August 1914 to the liberation of death camps and nuclear annihilation in 1945, the interwar and war years witnessed political, economic, and cultural upheavals that in concert with technological revolutions in transport and warfare revolutionized the movement of masses and the creation of art, literature, film, and other media. New media such as the cinema, the newsreel, and the wireless enlarged viewers’ perceptions and eradicated distances, confronting audiences with new forms of literature and art.

This interdisciplinary conference will explore the contexts, manifestations, effects, and representations of motion and stasis during the years 1914-1945. What did it mean to live, work, create, and be killed at the center of these turbulent times? We are eager to explore the multiple ways in which the mobility and immobilities of the period found their way into cultural production.