Friday, October 28, 2011

Updated CFP: British Women Writers Conference 2012, (6/7-10/2012)


We have updated the BWWC 2012 CFP to include information for special session coordinators and those who wish to apply to a special session. Please see details below.

Thank you,
BWWC 2012 Conference Committee
Prof. Jill Heydt-Stevenson (director), Kelli T. Jasper (co-chair), Kirstyn Leuner (co-chair)

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In 2012, the 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers Conference (BWWC) will commemorate its 20th anniversary in Boulder, Colorado, by focusing on the theme of “Landmarks.” Rich in both physical and metaphorical significance, landmarks form loci by which we organize history and chart the development of individuals, nations, and cultures. We therefore invite papers that explore how women writers and their texts engage with an ever-changing geography that is both material and abstract. These conference papers should address the people, places, events, and texts that have made their marks on history, and/or the processes and implications of marking, mapping, reading, preserving, overwriting, or erasing. Likewise, we wish to investigate land as space and place, acts and effects of landing or arriving, marks of land upon people and cultures, geographical and imaginative landscapes, liminal no-(wo)man’s-lands, and the state of being landed (or not) with property.

Please send a 500-word abstract to bwwc2012@colorado.edu by January 15, 2012. Papers should address the conference theme and apply it to 18th-century, Romantic, or Victorian texts. See the conference website for more details: www.bwwc2012.com.

Coordinating a Special Session:
If you wish to coordinate a special session relating to the theme of “Landmarks,” please submit a 200-word proposal that describes and provides rationale for your proposed session topic. The Conference Committee will review your proposal and notify you if your session has been approved. We will post approved special sessions under the CFP on the conference website.
By Nov. 25: Submit a 200-word special session topic description to bwwc2012@colorado.edu.
By Dec. 1: The Conference Committee will notify you of acceptance or rejection.

Applying to Participate in a Special Session:
In December, we will post a list of approved special sessions on our website under the CFP. Those wishing to apply to a special session (please apply to only one) should submit two copies of the abstract: one to the session organizer and one to bwwc2012@colorado.edu. On your abstract you must clearly state to which special session you have applied. Those abstracts not accepted to the special session will be returned to the general submission pool for consideration in other panels.
By Jan. 15: Submit 2 copies of your proposal, one to special session organizers and one to the Conference Committee.
By Feb. 15: Special session organizers will notify the Conference Committee about their decisions. Send to: bwwc2012@colorado.edu.
By March 15: We will notify all applicants of acceptance or rejection.

Possible topics include:
  • Landmark Events and Ideas: Historical moments; defining milestones; turning points; crises or victories; anniversaries; stages; experiments; memories or visions; aesthetic debates; scientific discoveries; technologies
  • Landmark Works: Publication and reception; authorship or readership; emerging genres; histories or chronicles; canon formation; travel writing
  • Geographical Land Marks: Historical or tourist sites; borders and national boundaries; high points and burials; property and ownership; memorials, monuments, museums; ruins and traces
  • Making Marks: Print culture; media; diaries and personal writings; glosses, annotations, and marginalia; building, development, or enclosure; landscaping and gardening; architecture; fashion and costume design; cosmetics and tattoos; creating space and place; epitaphs, cemeteries, tombs
  • Reading, Interpreting, or Imagining Lands/Marks: Physiognomy or phrenology; psychics; reading practices; sciences of navigation; distance and time; fictional worlds
  • Mapping/Preserving Marks: Maps and cartography; emblems; classification systems; libraries, museums, collections
  • Marks of Land on People: Farming and agriculture; gentility and nobility; industry; food and foodways; defining the local, national, imperial, native, or foreign
  • Contested Marks and Marks of Difference: Stealing/transplanting landmarks; marks of faith or creed; religious practices; the supernatural; commerce, currency, credit; ownership; identity politics or marginalization