Brontë Society Conference: Under an African Summer’s Sun
A closer look at one of Charlotte's ‘little books,’ now on view at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Organisers of the Brontë Society Conference have issued a call for papers for its 2025 edition, Under an African summer’s sun: Re-mapping the Brontës: Place, Race and Empire.
It will be held at Bradford Arts Centre (currently the Kala Sangam Arts Centre which is undergoing a multimillion-pound capital redevelopment) on September 6 next year, coinciding with the celebrations of Bradford as UK City of Culture in 2025 and will focus on the significance and heritage of place and cultural diversity in the Brontës’ lives and work.
"As children, the young Brontës’ imaginations travelled far and wide too, moving from Ireland to Africa," say the conveners, "a region which formed the basis for the fictional worlds of Glasstown and Angria. However, they also wrote during a time of Empire and Western colonialism, the legacies of which continue to be felt today and which have come under increased and necessary scrutiny in recent years." Figures in their work such as Bertha Mason in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Heathcliff in Emily’s Wuthering Heights have already come under scrutiny, and the one-day conference looks to further these discussions.
Conference paper proposals are welcomed from academics, postgraduates and enthusiasts and a suggested list of topics includes (though is not restricted to)
• Bradford and the Brontës
• Africa and the Brontës
• Ireland, Irish migrant cultures, Irish diaspora and the Brontës
• The Brontës and legacies of Western colonialism
• The Brontës and Britain’s black history
• Decolonising the curriculum and museum collections
• Colonialism and material culture
• Slavery and the Brontës
• Forms of whiteness, racism and colonialism
• The Brontës and comparative literature
• Brontë afterlives and the legacies of land, race and colonialism.
Proposals of no more than 300 words for 20 minute papers should be submitted to Diane Fare (diane.fare@bronte.org.uk) by 31 December 31, 2024.
The conference will find further life in a special issue of Brontë Studies, the official journal of the Brontë Society, in 2026.
