The Founding Fathers of LSE: socialism and the irrational
Hosted by the Language Centre and the H. G. Wells and Shaw Societies
Thai Theatre, New Academic Building
Saturday 23 Sep 2017 9am - 6pm
H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw were founders of LSE and both took up controversial, often conflicting positions on internationalism and revolution, war, feminism, democracy, human rights and much else.
This conference will bring together experts from LSE and the H. G. Wells and Shaw Societies.
The speakers will look at Wells and Shaw as public intellectuals and also their impact in the context of women's suffrage in Great Britain and Ireland.
09:00 - 09:30 Registration and coffee
09:30 - 10:15 Professor Michael Cox(LSE): 'Wells and Shaw: Fifty Years as Public Intellectuals'
10:15 - 11:15 Panel session 1: Ideas and Forms
Michelle C. Paul (St Mary’s University, Twickenham): ‘Satire and Status: Bernard Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island’
Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín (Universidad de Extremadura, Spain): ‘Wells, Shaw, et al.: The Language of the Dystopian Future’
Michael Sherborne (H. G. Wells Society): ‘Wells and Shaw in Plato’s Cave’)
11:15 - 12:15 Panel session 2: Heartbreak House: The First World War and After
Frances H. Assa: ‘Wells and the Wild Asses’
Brenda Tyrrell (Miami University, Ohio): ‘The Other Great War: Wells, Shaw, and England’s Postbellum Mental State’
Anne Wright (Shaw Society): ‘Zeppelins over England, the Hand of God, and the Sense of an Ending: Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House and H. G. Wells’s Mr Britling Sees It Through’
12:15 - 13:30 Buffet lunch, with an opportunity to view the special display in the LSE Women’s Library of documents relating to Wells, Shaw and women.
13:30 - 14:15 Elizabeth Crawford: 'Surrounded by Suffrage: Situating Shaw, Wells and the LSE in Suffrage Sites'
14:15 - 14:35 Alexis Leightonand Helen Tierneywill give a brief presentation about their show ‘Mrs Shaw Herself’, based on the life of Charlotte Shaw and soon to be performed at Ayot St Lawrence
14:35 - 15:35 Panel session 3: Dictatorship and Democracy
Soudabeh Ananisarab (Birmingham City University): ‘Democracy and Dictatorship: The Apple Cartin Malvern’
Olga Sobolev and Angus Wrenn (LSE): ‘Interpreting the "Writing on the Eastern Wall of Europe": G. B. Shaw – H. G. Wells and the Myth of Russia’
Mika J. Vale (Durham University): ‘Strategies of Containment: Wells, Russell, and Russia’
15:35 - 16:00 Tea/coffee
16:00 - 17:00 Panel session 4: Religion and the Limits of Reason
Gianluca Guerriero (University of Leeds): ‘Souls and Surgeries; H. G. Wells and the Afterlife of "Under the Knife"’
Alice McEwan (Shaw’s Corner, National Trust): ‘Exploring Shavian Religious Feeling through Art: Bernard Shaw’s Marian Imagery’
Deaglán Ó Donghaile (Liverpool John Moores University): ‘Rioting and Revolution in When the Sleeper ‘Awakes’
17:00 - 17:45 Round Table discussion
18:00 Conference ends
Organisers: Emelyne Godfrey and Patrick Parrinder (H. G. Wells Society); Olga Sobolev and Angus Wrenn (LSE)
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