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The Founding Fathers of LSE: socialism and the irrational

Saturday 23 September 2017 9.00am to 6.00pm

Hosted by the Language Centre and the H. G. Wells and Shaw Societies

Thai Theatre, New Academic Building,

Speakers

Professor Michael Cox

Professor Emeritus, International Relations (LSE)

Elizabeth Crawford

Researcher and writer

Chair

Dr Olga Sobolev

Language Co-ordinator (Russian)

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 Leighton and Helen Tierney will 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 Cart in 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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