While the long nineteenth century is not immediately associated with playfulness, scholars recognise it as a period that revolutionised play, whether as an end (Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1944) or a reimaging (Matthew Kaiser, The World in Play, 2011). Games were ubiquitous throughout the period, hundreds of dedicated recreational spaces (museums, playgrounds, parks) were established, and a new cult of leisure took root that reshaped both public and private life. Structured or spontaneous, subversive or conformist, innate or transformative, play offers a mode of looking at the broader cultural and societal dynamics of the long nineteenth century as well as our own era. We invite papers of 15 minutes on the topic of play in the long nineteenth century (1789-1914) in all its forms and in a global context. We encourage broad interpretations of the topic and invite submissions that explore its fluid and multifaceted nature. We welcome playful and creative approaches. The journal encourages multi- and interdisciplinary papers from across the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities and invites contributions from those at any career stage, including PGRs and ECRs.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Leisure and recreation
• The politics of play; access to play
• Theatricality and spectacle
• Comedy
• Music
• Spaces for play: playgrounds, the nursery, parks, the music hall, the seaside, etc.
• Education and play; child development
• Public/private pleasure
• Play and sexuality
• The commodification of play
• Literary playfulness; the aesthetics of play
• Toys and games: board games, gambling, imaginative games, sport, etc.
• Decadence; hedonism
Abstracts (up to 300 words) and biographies (up to 100 words) should be submitted together in one document by Monday 25th November 2024 to rrr@soton.ac.uk. Please indicate your full name, discipline and institutional affiliation in your correspondence.
CfS RRR Conference 2025, Play (1).pdf
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