Call for Chapters: Infrastructure in Interwar Britain

Call for Chapter Proposals

Infrastructure in Interwar Britain

Editors: Michael McCluskey (Northeastern University)

Luke Seaber (University College London)

As David Edgerton observes in The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History (2018), much of Britain’s infrastructure was built in the 1930s. Until now, however, no study has looked into the construction of infrastructure during this period and its impact culture in Britain. The chapters in this edited collection aim to address this absence by providing case studies of the diverse elements of “infrastructure” and the ways in which they were used, imagined and challenged by writers, artists, film-makers, engineers and planners—among others.  We seek submissions that approach “infrastructure” from a range of disciplines and that examine the many components of infrastructure in the 1920s and ’30s. These include the networks that infrastructure supported (transportation, communication, economic, information, interpersonal); the connections they made possible (local, national, international); the disruptions they caused; and the poems, plays, books, films, protests and practices they inspired. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Roads
• Railways
• London Underground
• Aviation
• Electricity­­­
• Telecommunications
• Radio and the BBC
• Health
• Leisure
• Transportation
• Messengers
• Education­­­­­­
• Commerce