Home, Crisis and the Imagination

近年来，家已成为学术研究和大众兴趣的重要主题。对家的物质文化的研究揭示了生活经验的历史连续性和不连续性。在流行文化中，家庭或童年的家一直是文学回忆录（12 Edmondstone Street，大卫Malouf）和流行电视连续剧（The House that Made Me，Channel 4）的主题。与此同时，2001年9月11日的恐怖袭击以及美国国土安全部随后的发展，在全球不安全的时代重新激发了家庭与国家之间的共鸣。目前的世界经济衰退部分是由次级抵押贷款灾难和随后的大规模止赎浪潮引发的。通过危机的透镜，拟议中的研究网络旨在产生一个更充分的理解家和想象力之间的关系，在这个时候重新关注，并改造，家。我们相信，通过对“家与危机”的反思，我们可以深入了解这些简单而又能引起共鸣的术语是如何指代更复杂的范畴的，它们既支持又质疑关于家的地位的信念，作为一个物理位置，也是一个想象或代表性的空间。我们正在经历一个全球危机时期，危机在多个层面上运作，私人和公共，经济和政治，环境，宗教。当然，危机并不新鲜，了解以往经验的遗产可以给我们重要的教训，让我们了解历史上如何思考和管理危机。与此同时，通过对危机的关注来探索家的文学、视觉和物质文化，产生了一条共同的线索，通过这条线索，家的代表性力量的独特特征变得可见。我们特别感兴趣的是，家庭和危机之间的联系如何不仅可以在富有想象力的文本中表达出来-小说，诗歌，电影等-而且还可以通过家庭的许多物质人工制品和技术以及照片，家庭纪念品，信件等来表达。家庭是一个重要的场所，个人和社会通过它来理解他们的过去，并在规划他们的未来时呈现。这三个研讨会将带来不同的学科方法和方法进行对话，并在此过程中探索更广泛的“关心未来”主题的衍生意义。我们要问的是，我们如何能够通过了解和学习过去，并在现在汲取其智慧来关心未来。特别是，通过理论上知情的文学和文化文本的密切阅读，我们要检查想象力如何执行其重要的变革工作。我们认为，正如我们最近的研究所表明的那样，在考虑政治和其他背景时，基于人文的倡议可能具有巨大的价值，而这些背景可能更传统地属于社会科学的范畴。一种扩展我们个人专业知识的合作方法将使我们能够解决有关家庭，危机和想象力的关键问题，并询问人文工作如何最好地解决这些问题。通过我们给自己的职权范围，我们将寻求探索想象力作品在历史上代表国内危机的特殊方式，无论是在私人还是国际范围内。今天，越来越清楚的是，“国内”政策和全球压力在多大程度上是相互关联的，我们认为，问人文学科可以为解释危机或潜在灾难做出什么贡献是恰当的。小心，以及关心，似乎越来越成为一个优先事项。

Home has recently become a significant subject of both academic research and popular interest. Research into the material cultures of home has shed light on the historical continuities and discontinuities of lived experience. In popular culture the family or childhood home has been the subject of both literary memoirs (12 Edmondstone Street, David Malouf) and a popular television series (The House that Made Me, Channel 4). At the same time, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent development of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have reinvigorated the resonances between home and nation in a time of global insecurity. The ongoing world recession was in part precipitated by the subprime mortgage disaster and the subsequent massive waves of foreclosure on people's homes. Through the lens of crisis, the proposed research network aims to produce a fuller understanding of the relationship between home and the imagination at this time of renewed interest in, and transformation of, the home. We believe that a reflection on 'home and crisis' can give insight into how these simple yet resonant terms come to denote more complex categories, both upholding and contesting beliefs about the status of the home, as a physical location and an imagined or representational space.We are experiencing a period of global crisis operating at multiple levels, private and public, economic and political, environmental, religious. Crises are not new, of course, and understanding the legacy of previous experiences can teach us important lessons about how they have been thought about and managed historically. At the same time, exploring literary, visual and material cultures of home through a focus on crisis produces a common thread through which distinct features of home's representational power become visible. We are especially interested in how the links between home and crisis can be articulated not only in imaginative texts - novels, poems, films, etc. - but also through the many material artefacts and technologies of home and their representation by photographs, family memorabilia, letters, etc. As both a physical location and an object of representation, home functions as an important site through which individuals and societies make sense of their pasts and presents as they map their futures.The three workshops will bring different disciplinary approaches and methodologies into dialogue, and in doing so explore the ramified meanings of the wider 'Care for the Future' theme. We want to ask how we can care for the future by understanding and learning from the past, and drawing on its wisdom in the present. In particular, through theoretically-informed close reading of literary and cultural texts we want to examine how the imagination performs its vital transformative work. We suggest that, as our recent researches have shown, a humanities-based initiative can have huge value when considering political and other contexts that might more traditionally be the remit of social science. A collaborative approach that extends our individual expertise will allow us to address key questions about home, crisis and the imagination, and ask how work in the humanities can best address them. Through the remit we have given ourselves we will seek to explore the particular ways in which imaginative works have, over history, represented domestic crisis, whether on a private or international scale. Today it is becoming ever clearer how far 'home' policy and global pressures are interconnected, and we believe it is pertinent to ask what contribution the humanities can make to interpreting crisis or potential catastrophe. To be careful, as well as caring, would seem to be increasingly a priority.