When he saw this Tom was so full of himself that he had to share the pleasure with somebody, so he turned to a woman sitting across the aisle.

“There it is, missus.”

Surprised, the woman looked across him at him.

“You what, love?”

Tom nodded towards the panorama through the front window.

“The North.”

The woman looked, saw nothing, then observing that they were alone thought it best to humour him.

“Yes, love. Very nice.”

And she stood up and went downstairs.

Barry Hines, First Signs, (London: Michael Joseph, 1972), p.89

 

‘Representing Gender in the North: 1945 to the present day’ is a one-day conference which is to be held at the Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield on 23 May 2018.

The conference focuses on prose, poetry, film, theatre, and television. Contributions are warmly welcomed from established scholars and post-graduate students alike. We invite abstracts of 300 words (please send to rlhughes1@shef.ac.uk) by 3 April 2018.

Topics for discussion include but are not limited to the following:

  • Representations of gender in the town or in the country
  • Ethnicity in the North
  • Northern authorship
  • LGBTQ representations
  • The post-industrial
  • Displacement and/or the returning native
  • Class
  • The teenager or the Bildungsroman
  • Stereotypes/stereotyping
  • Dialect and gender

For all enquiries, please contact Rachel Hughes: rlhughes1@shef.ac.uk

Conference website: https://representinggenderinthenorth.wordpress.com/