Home, Crisis and the Imagination

最近，家已经成为学术研究和大众兴趣的一个重要主题。对家庭物质文化的研究揭示了生活经验的历史连续性和间断性。在流行文化中，家庭或童年时的家一直是文学回忆录(埃德蒙斯通街12号，大卫·马卢夫)和一部受欢迎的电视连续剧(《创造我的房子》，第四频道)的主题。与此同时，2001年9月11日的恐怖袭击以及随后美国国土安全部的发展，在全球不安全的时期重新唤起了家庭和国家之间的共鸣。目前的世界经济衰退在一定程度上是由次级抵押贷款灾难和随后大规模的止赎浪潮引发的。通过危机的视角，拟议的研究网络旨在更全面地理解家庭和想象力之间的关系，在这个对家庭重新产生兴趣和转变的时候。我们相信，反思“家庭和危机”可以让我们深入了解这些简单但有共鸣的术语是如何表示更复杂的类别的，既支持也反对关于家庭地位的信念，作为一个物理位置和一个想象或代表性的空间。我们正在经历一个在多个层面上运行的全球危机时期，私人和公共、经济和政治、环境和宗教。当然，危机并不是什么新鲜事，理解以往经历的后遗症可以教给我们重要的教训，告诉我们历史上是如何思考和管理危机的。同时，通过对危机的关注来探索家园的文学、视觉和物质文化，产生了一条共同的线索，通过这些线索，住宅的表现力的鲜明特征变得可见。我们特别感兴趣的是，家庭和危机之间的联系如何不仅通过富有想象力的文本-小说、诗歌、电影等-表达出来，而且通过家庭的许多物质文物和技术以及通过照片、家庭纪念品、信件等来表现。作为一个物理位置和表现对象，家是一个重要的场所，个人和社会通过它来理解他们的过去和现在，因为他们规划了自己的未来。三个研讨会将把不同的学科途径和方法引入对话，并在这样做的过程中探索更广泛的“关心未来”主题的不同含义。我们想要问的是，我们如何通过理解和学习过去，并在现在汲取它的智慧来关心未来。特别是，通过对文学和文化文本的理论知识的仔细阅读，我们想要检查想象力是如何执行其重要的变革性工作的。我们认为，正如我们最近的研究表明的那样，当考虑到政治和其他可能更传统地属于社会科学范畴的背景时，基于人文的倡议可以具有巨大的价值。扩展我们个人专长的协作方法将使我们能够解决关于家庭、危机和想象力的关键问题，并询问人文学科的工作如何最好地解决这些问题。通过我们赋予自己的职权范围，我们将寻求探索富有想象力的作品在历史上表现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之间的相互联系有多深，我们认为，有必要问一问，人文学科可以为解释危机或潜在的灾难做出什么贡献。在关心的同时，谨慎似乎也越来越成为优先事项。

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.