Writing practices have long been associated with withdrawal and retreat, often into nature. From Henry David Thoreau’s cabin in the woods to Virginia Woolf’s garden shed in Sussex, spaces of retreat appear central to creative practice. They promise time, focus, and a calmer environment removed from everyday distractions, raising the question of what constitutes an “ideal” space for writing and creative work.
This conference seeks to examine secluded, marginal, and sometimes remote spaces of retreat more closely, with a particular focus on writing as practice. What forms of writing emerge in such settings? How are writers shaped by spaces of withdrawal? Which strategies accompany retreat-based writing practices, for example, walking and writing or a particular attunement to surroundings?
In In the Dream House (2019), Carmen Maria Machado reflects on writing parts of her memoir during a residency at Yaddo in New York. Her experiences of retreat are marked by encounters with animals that emphasize both closeness to nature and exposure to it: wildfires and the unsettling screams of a fox complicate the ideal of the writing retreat. Retreats themselves also become the subject of fiction, as in Machado’s eerie short story “The Resident” (2018), where memories of girlhood resurface at a lakeside artists’ residency.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit a 200-word proposal along with a brief bio by March 26th to kirsten.v.hagen [at] romanistik.uni-giessen.deand (kirsten[dot]v[dot]hagen[at]romanistik[dot]uni-giessen[dot]de) and carolin.jesussek [at] uni-giessen.de (carolin[dot]jesussek[at]uni-giessen[dot]de).
The conference is jointly organized by the chair of French and Spanish Literature and Culture at the University of Giessen and the IPP (International PhD Programme “Literary and Cultural Studies”) at Justus Liebig University Giessen.