Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Final Reminder: Registration for "Coastal Cultures" (3/3/2014; 3/14-15/2014)



Registration is ​now open:
Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, 1775–1914
Venues: English Faculty, University of Oxford & Magdalen College, Oxford
March 14-15, 2014
Closes: March 3, 2014

Description: The conference explores the diversity of experiences dependent on the coasts in the long nineteenth century. Papers will consider aesthetic responses by artists, writers and musicians, but also focus on everyday material practices. In keeping with the spirit of fluid exchange encouraged by coasts, the conference draws together scholars from across the disciplines of literature, art history, musicology, history, and geography.

Speakers include Rosemary Ashton, Margaret Cohen, Valentine Cunningham, Jane Darcy, Roger Ebbatson, Kate Flint, Nick Freeman, Nick Grindle, James Kneale, Leya Landau, Fiona Stafford, Christiana Payne, David Sergeant and Carl Thompson.

A recital will take place in association with the conference, with singers from the Guildhall School for Music performing works by Elgar, Stanford and Vaughan Williams, introduced by musicologist and concert pianist Ceri Owen.

The conference programme can be downloaded at the site below. To register, please go to http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/our-research/coastal-cultures-long-nineteenth-century-1775%E2%80%931914 Bursaries and concessionary prices available for postgraduates.

CFP: MLA '15 "C19 Interdisciplinary Arts Research" (3/15/2014; 1/8-11/2015)


MLA 2015 Special Session
Vancouver, Canada
January 8-11, 2015
Deadline: March 15, 2014

“C19 Interdisciplinary Arts Research: Challenges and Benefits”
Over the past few decades, the number of C19 literary scholars who have crossed disciplinary boundaries when conducting research for their projects has increased significantly. A common practice is engaging with other arts disciplines like art history/visual art (painting, sculpture, photography, etc.), music, dance, and theatre. This is often due to the nature of the time period in question, during which numerous individuals sought to erase the boundaries between the arts. While the advantages and disadvantages of interdisciplinary research itself have been discussed before, the experiences of those scholars conducting such research have not. This special session seeks to draw attention to the actual ‘on-the-ground’ experiences of C19 literary scholars who conduct interdisciplinary arts research, with a particular focus on the challenges and/or benefits they have encountered. In keeping with the MLA theme for 2015, we welcome papers that highlight memorable moments or encounters (positive and/or negative) of C19 literary scholars during the interdisciplinary research process.

Papers may touch upon the following topics:
  • Funding bodies
  • Institutions
  • Methodology
  • Resources
  • Publications
  • Terminology
  • Administration

Please submit abstracts of 300 words, a brief bio, and AV requirements (if any) to Daniel Brown (danielbrown@usf.edu) and Karen Yuen (kyuen@gc.cuny.edu) by March 15, 2014. The official brief CFP can be found on the MLA website under the MLA2015 CFP special session category.

CFP: MLA '15 "Victorian Travelers & Cultural Memory" (3/15/2014; 1/8-11/2015)


MLA 2015
Vancouver, Canada
January 8-11, 2015
Deadline:  March 15, 2014

"Victorian Travelers and Cultural Memory"
Dr. Andrea Kaston Tange is putting together special session for MLA 2015 seeks papers that consider how travel writings "rely on, create, reinvent, or consolidate collective memories of places/cultures/events in an age of colonial expansion." The panel chair would like to put together a panel that considers a range of perspectives and/or travel destinations. The 2015 MLA theme is memory, and this panel would like to think broadly about cultural memory as a kind of collective of impressions that shapes people's understanding of the foreign. Any kind of work that considers how travelers themselves depend upon cultural constructions or memories of other places and/or that investigates what travel writing does to help build consensus or invent "memories" of places for the benefit of armchair travelers would be welcome. 

300-word proposals and brief CVs can be sent to akastont@emich.edu via email; deadline. March 15, 2014. Indicate AV needs, please.

Please note that this is a CFP for a special session; Dr. Tange will submit a session proposal by April 1, and the panelists will be notified by early June about acceptance into the conference.

The official CFP can be viewed here: https://www.mla.org/cfp_review&id=7112&exit_page=cfp_main (but this requires an MLA member login).

Recruitment: Victorian Network Peer-Reviewers


Recruiting Peer-Reviewers
Victorian Network

Victorian Network is recruiting postgraduate peer-reviewers. They are looking for doctoral students who are interested in gaining experience and developing career-relevant skills in the publishing process. As peer-reviewer for Victorian Network, students will screen and blind-review manuscript articles (c. 2 articles per year).

If you are interested in acting as peer-reviewer for Victorian Network, please send a 100-word statement about yourself and your research interests to victoriannetwork@gmail.com.


Saturday, February 22, 2014

Announcement: NAVSA 2014 Proposal Submissions (3/7/2014; 11/13-15/2014)



NAVSA 2014
November 13-15, 2014
London, Ontario, Canada
Deadline: March 7, 2014

The submission mechanism for proposals to NAVSA 2014 in London, Canada is finally ready.  Here is the link:

In light of the delay in getting the form up and running, Chris Keep has decided to extend the deadline to March 7.  We apologize for the wait.  We have been working to create a mechanism that will save future organizers time and money, centralizing the process and making it possible to export this data directly into a database without any time-consuming and error-prone data entry by hand.  Not surprisingly, we have had to deal with some debugging as we work on this new mechanism.  As far as we know, no other organization provides such a centralized mechanism—at least, not without paying third-party commercial providers.  

You can find out more information about the 2014 conference here:


Please note that, if you are submitting an entire panel, you will need to provide cvs and proposals for each of the people on your panel.  These need to be separate files and must all be in PDF format.  

Registration: BSLS 2014 (4/10-12/2014; 3/27/2014)



Registration Open
British Society for Literature and Science Conference 2014
University of Surrey, Guildford
April 10-12, 2014
Deadline: March 27, 2014

Keynote talks will be given by Professor Jim Al-Khalili (University of Surrey), Professor Bernard Lightman (York University, Toronto), and Professor Mary Orr (University of Southampton). The conference will finish with an opportunity to visit Down House, the home of Charles Darwin, on the afternoon of Saturday 12 April.

Accommodation: please note that those attending the conference will need to make their own arrangements for accommodation. Information on local hotels is available on the conference website.

Membership: conference delegates will need to register as members of the BSLS (annual membership: £25 waged / £10 unwaged). It will be possible to join the BSLS when registering for the conference.

To register for the conference please visit the University of Surrey online store at http://tinyurl.com/p92lleg. The deadline for registration is March 27, 2014.

Information about how to get to the University of Surrey is available here: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/about/visitors/travel/.

For further information and updates about the conference, please contact Gregory Tate (g.tate@surrey.ac.uk) or visit the conference website at http://tinyurl.com/pp6ubz5.


Registration: Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, 1775–1914 (3/14-15/2014)



Registration is ​now open:
Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, 1775–1914
Venues: English Faculty, University of Oxford & Magdalen College, Oxford
March 14-15, 2014

Description: The conference explores the diversity of experiences dependent on the coasts in the long nineteenth century. Papers will consider aesthetic responses by artists, writers and musicians, but also focus on everyday material practices. In keeping with the spirit of fluid exchange encouraged by coasts, the conference draws together scholars from across the disciplines of literature, art history, musicology, history, and geography.

Speakers include Rosemary Ashton, Margaret Cohen, Valentine Cunningham, Jane Darcy, Roger Ebbatson, Kate Flint, Nick Freeman, Nick Grindle, James Kneale, Leya Landau, Fiona Stafford, Christiana Payne, David Sergeant and Carl Thompson.

A recital will take place in association with the conference, with singers from the Guildhall School for Music performing works by Elgar, Stanford and Vaughan Williams, introduced by musicologist and concert pianist Ceri Owen.

The conference programme can be downloaded at the site below. To register, please go to http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/our-research/coastal-cultures-long-nineteenth-century-1775%E2%80%931914 Bursaries and concessionary prices available for postgraduates.


Thursday, February 20, 2014

CFP: Cosmopolitanism, Aestheticism, and Decadence, 1860-1920 (3/3/2014; 6/17-18/2014)


Cosmopolitanism, Aestheticism, and Decadence, 1860-1920
University of Oxford
June 17-18, 2014
Deadline: March 3, 2014

Plenary Speakers:
Dr Stefano Evangelista (Trinity College, Oxford)
Professor Jonathan Freedman (University of Michigan)
Dr Michèle Mendelssohn (Mansfield College, Oxford)

Over the past twenty years, the term "cosmopolitanism" has been the focus of intense critical reflection and debate across the humanities. For some, it represents a potential remedy for oppressive and antagonistic models of national identity and a means of addressing the ethical, economic, and political dilemmas produced by globalisation. Others consider it a peculiarly insidious form of imperialism, and argue that it advocates an untenable ideal of a privileged, rootless observer, detached from — and disposed to romanticise or commodify — very real injustices and inequalities. Meanwhile, the "transatlantic" has emerged as a popular critical framework and field of inquiry for historians and literary scholars. But the "transatlantic" is also sometimes perceived as a problematic category insofar as it can serve to reinforce the narrow focus on Anglo-American culture that the "cosmopolitan" ideal aspires to overcome. 

Aestheticism and decadence, which flourished as broad artistic tendencies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, speak directly to the issues at stake in contemporary debates about "cosmopolitanism" and "transatlanticism". This is firstly because they evolved out of transnational dialogues between artists, writers, and critics. But it is also because aestheticism and decadence tended to celebrate an ideal of a disaffiliated artist or connoisseur whose interests ranged freely across history, language, and culture, and who maintained an ironic distance from the conventional determinants of identity. Over the last two decades, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century aestheticism and decadence have become established and extremely lively areas of research in the fields of literary studies, cultural studies, and art history. Our conference aims to bring together established as well as emerging scholars in these fields, and to explore how the attractions and problems of "cosmopolitanism" illuminate, and can be illuminated by, current scholarly debates about aestheticism and decadence.

Possible topics for papers include, but are not restricted to: 
  • Border crossing/flânerie/tourism/expatriatism
  • Aestheticism/Decadence and the Ideals of World Citizenship/Literature
  • Cosmopolitan Communities and Identities
  • Cosmopolitan Forms and Formalisms
  • The Poetics of Cross-Cultural Influence/Translation
  • The Politics of Aestheticism, Decadence, and/or Cosmopolitanism
  • Networks of Artistic and Scholarly Exchange
  • Anti-cosmopolitanisms: Nationalism, Philistinism, and Xenophobia
  • Visual Culture and the Consumption of Art
  • Salons, coteries, and clubs
  • Print culture and the circulation of texts beyond national borders
  • Exile, Hospitality, Assimilation, and Strangers
  • Consumerism and Mass Culture
  • Elitism, Democracy, and Culture/Kultur
  • Transatlantic Fashion and the Circulation of Commodities
  • The ethics of Aestheticism, Decadence and/or Cosmopolitanism
  • World Religions, Alternative Spiritualities, and Cosmopolitan Secularisms
  • Regional Writing/Forms of Localism/Homelands
  • Cosmopolitan Detachment/Aesthetic Disinterest
  • Decadent/Aesthetic Cities
  • The aesthetics of particularity/universality
  • The pathologisation of Decadence/Cosmopolitanism
  • Transatlantic Celebrity/The Cult of the Artist
The committee will provide four fee-waiving places at the conference: two are reserved for graduate students who wish to attend and serve as conference reporters, and two are reserved for early career researchers (i.e., graduate students or scholars who have recently completed a PhD but do not currently have a supportive institutional affiliation) who wish to deliver a paper and would otherwise struggle to attend. If you would like one of these fee-waiving places, please write to us and briefly explain (in fewer than 500 words) how the conference relates to your research.

Please send proposals (of 500 words or fewer) as pdf or Word attachments to cosmopolitanism.conference@gmail.com by March 3, 2014. 

CFP: PAMLA '14 Special Session: George Eliot (3/31/2014; 10/31-11/2/2014)


Special Session: George Eliot
Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association 2014
October 31-November 2, 2014
Riverside Convention Center in Riverside, California
Deadline: March 31, 2014

Paper proposals are currently being accepted for a special session on George Eliot. This panel will explore the complex ideas and themes throughout Eliot’s work. Contributors are encouraged to submit work that examines the many facets of Eliot’s output, as she engaged the historical, literary, philosophical, and cultural trends of her day.

Deadline for submission: Proposals and abstracts of 300 words should be submitted via the online system athttp://www.pamla.org/2014 by March 31, 2014. Questions or inquiries can be directed to ccs071000@utdallas.edu.

CFP: MLA 2015 "New Approaches to Science & Technology in Victorian Studies" (3/14/2014; 1/8-11/2015)


MLA 2015
Vancouver, Canada 
January 8-11, 2015 
Deadline: March 14, 2014

"New Approaches to Science and Technology in Victorian Studies"
This panel seeks new approaches to science and/or technology (including but not limited to those listed below) to readings of Victorian literature and culture, and in papers focused on the impact these new approaches may have for the field of Victorian Studies:

  • Victorian literature / culture
  • STS (science, technology, society)
  • philosophy of science / technology
  • history of science / technology
  • technoculture
Please submit a 500-word proposal a 1-page CV by 14 March 2014 to Jessica Kuskey (jkuskey@ucsc.edu).

Reminder: 2014 Victorians Institute Conference (5/15/2014; 10/24-25/2014)



2014 Victorians Institute Conference
Winthrop University, Charlotte, NC
October 24-25, 2014 
Deadline: May 15, 2014

"The Mysteries at Our Own Doors"
Henry James once said of Wilkie Collins: “To Mr. Collins belongs the credit of having introduced into fiction those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors.” Indeed, through the fiction of Collins (and others) the Victorian Era saw the rise of the detective novel as an art form.  Moreover, it also produced a wealth of poems, novels, and prose works that concerned themselves with mysteries, secrets, enigmas, and the unknown. Sensing that they stood on a threshold, that the shadowy borders of new knowledge and understanding lay almost within reach--at their “own doors,” as James said--Victorian authors struggled with a variety of mysteries arising from their interests in science, religion, the occult, mesmerism, identity, sexuality, race, class, and the Empire. We invite papers on any of these topics. Papers or panels on poetry, prose, nonfiction, or visual art are welcome, as are presentations on the pedagogy of teaching Victorian literature.

Possible topics might address:
  • detective fiction
  • poetic mysteries
  • spiritualists and mesmerists
  • mysteries of gender and sexuality
  • the mysterious Other
  • death
  • crime;
  • ghosts, vampires or monsters
  • religion
  • Victorian science and medicine
  • industry and technology
  • archeology and paleontology
  • illustrations and media adaptations
  • language and hybridity
  • history and discovery
  • new worlds and cultures
  • travel and empire
  • pseudonyms
  • biography
  • photography
  • music
  • journalism
  • the mysteries of unveiling Victorian literature and culture to undergraduates
  • how Victorian mysteries can be discovered and solved in online classrooms, and other topics related to Victorian studies.

The keynote speaker is Marlene Tromp, Professor of English and Women’s Studies and Dean of Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Tromp’s many publications include Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-Transformation in Victorian Spiritualism (SUNY, 2006), and she has edited such works as Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in the Nineteenth Century (Ohio State UP, 2007). https://newcollege.asu.edu/directory/marlene-tromp

Please send 300-500 word proposals for papers and a 1-page c.v. to Casey Cothran via email at viconf@winthrop.edu  by May 15, 2014.

Selected papers from the conference will be refereed for the Victorians Institute Journal annex at NINES.

Limited travel subventions will be available from the Victorians Institute for graduate students whose institutions provide limited or no support. Please visit www.vcu.edu/vij for information about the conference, the Victorians Institute, and the Victorians Institute Journal.


Special Issue: Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies "Gender and Journalism" (4/7/2014)


CFP: Special issue of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies
“Gender and journalism: Women and/in the news in the nineteenth century”
Deadline: April 7, 2014

The recent surge in scholarly interest in the nineteenth-century periodical press, hand in hand with ambitious digitization projects allowing us ever-expanding access to primary materials, has increased our ability to analyse and discuss the dynamic parameters of women’s involvement with the industry.  As the nineteenth century dawned, women reporters were rarities, although celebrity journalists such as the poet and novelist Mary Robinson found a home in the daily press.  In the second half of the century, an increasing number of women found employment in the press often limited to the more or less cosy corners of journalism, particularly women’s pages, fashion and society columns, and the children’s corners of weekly and monthly periodicals.  By century’s end, a fully fledged women’s political press had emerged, and papers like the Women’s Penny Paper/Woman’s Journal devoted extensive space to reporting news of women’s advances.  Despite their long-persisting exclusion from the ‘masculine’ domain of news reporting (and limits on the social acceptability of their news reading), women had also been making, breaking, and shaping the news throughout the nineteenth century.  

Barbara Onslow’s Women of the Press in the Nineteenth Century (2000) offered a significant early guide to the breadth of nineteenth-century women’s involvement with the periodical industry, and re-introduced many once-feted but long-forgotten names.  Subsequent studies have delved into the riches and many facets of that involvement; for example, Alexis Easley’s recent Literary Celebrity (2013) analyses the gendering of authorship and fame in the second half of the nineteenth century.  This special issue of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies will concentrate on women as contributors to, consumers of, and subjects of the multi-faceted construction of news and news reporting across the nineteenth century.  The editors wish to preserve a focus on news production, as distinct from women’s more general involvement in magazine writing and the creation of miscellanies, but the editors welcome broad interpretations on ‘news production’.  

Possible avenues for exploration might include:
  • Early and little known women reporters
  • Pioneering women correspondents: Flora Shaw; Emily Crawford; Florence Dixie
  • Women in the news: Princess Caroline; Mrs Maybrick; other causes célèbres.
  • The reporting of divorce cases and its impact on social attitudes and matrimonial law
  • Women as readers and consumers of news
  • Women and censorship
  • Newspapers and the working class woman
  • Changing definitions of news: Women and celebrity news; women and sensationalism
  • Early papers targeted at women (such as The Lady’s Newspaper and The Queen)
  • Women’s involvement with mainstream papers (such as theTimes and the Illustrated London News)

Articles presenting international perspectives on women and/in the news are warmly welcomed.

Please send articles of 5-8,000 words to both the guest editors, by April 7, 2014 (earlier submission is encouraged). Please confine all identifying and contact information to a coversheet, for the purposes of double-blind reviewing.  Please also adhere to MLA style, and use endnotes rather than footnotes. Finally, please include a short (150 word) bio with your article submission.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Birbeck Forum: Spring 2014 Programme (3/2014)



Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies
Spring 2014 Programme

In the first week of March the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies will feature two talks:

  • Monday March 3, 2014 (6-8 p.m.)--Angela Dunstan (Kent): “Sculptography, Sculpturing Machines, and Inanimate Sculptors: Sculpture, Authenticity and Replication in Victorian Literature”
The Victorian experience of sculpture was mediated by the desire to get 'very much nearer to the actual touch of the artist,' as Edmund Gosse termed it. This talk will consider how this desire for the sculptor's touch escalated in parallel with the perception that sculpture was becoming divorced from its creators' hands, seeming more inherently replicable than its sister art by virtue of its capacity to be recast. The nineteenth-century saw the development of a series of machines which threatened to eradicate the human touch from what had long been characterised as a mechanical art. By retracing the history of these 'sculpturing machines' and the literature they inspired, this paper provides a productive context for understanding the many nineteenth-century texts preoccupied with replication, reproduction and multiple incarnations. Taking Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved as a central text, and drawing on novels by George Eliot, Henry James and Vernon Lee, my paper will argue that these novels powerfully engage with late nineteenth-century angst surrounding the reproduction of sculpture and the corresponding suspicion of its circulation in multiple incarnations.

  • Tuesday March 4, 2014 (6-8 pm)--Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan): 'Facing Facts: The Tichborne Affair in Victorian Visual Culture'
Organized by the Birkbeck History and Theory of Photography Research Centre (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/research/photography)
This talk investigates the role of visual display in the celebrated nineteenth-century trials in Britain of Arthur Orton, widely known as the 'Tichborne Claimant.' Familiar to historians as a cause that attracted popular working-class support and propelled the reformation of the Court of Chancery in 1875, the Tichborne trials (18711874) were also, I argue, an important landmark in the history of portraiture, photography and modern visual culture.

Future Spring Term events include:
  • Wednesday March 12, 2014 (6-8 pm)--Vladimir Jankovic (Manchester): “Climate Fetishism in the Long Nineteenth Century?”
  • Wednesday March 192014 (6-8 pm)--Dennis Denisoff (Ryerson): “The Eco-Politics of Women's Pagan Desires”
Unless otherwise noted, all sessions take place in the Keynes Library (Room 114, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD). The sessions are free and all are welcome, but since the venue has limited space it will be first come, first seated.

For more information, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/research_cncs/our-events/birkbeck-forum-for-nineteenth-century-studies-spring-term-2014
Please email c19@bbk.ac.uk to join our mailing list or to obtain further information about the series.

Workshop: Frankenstein Bicentennial Project (2/28/2014; 4/28-30/2014)


Frankenstein Bicentennial Workshop
Arizona State University
April 28-30, 2014
Deadline: February 28, 2014

No work of literature has done more to shape the way humans imagine science and its consequences than Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s enduring tale of creation and responsibility. In Frankenstein, Shelley established the creature and creator tropes that continue to resonate with contemporary audiences and influence the way we confront emerging technologies, conceptualize scientific research, imagine the motivations and ethical struggles of scientists and weigh the benefits of research with its unforeseen pitfalls.

The Frankenstein Bicentennial Project – a global, interdisciplinary network of people and institutions headquartered at Arizona State University – will celebrate the bicentennial of the writing and publication of Frankenstein from 2016-2018 with exhibits, performances, scientific demonstrations, writing contests, film screenings, installations, public conversations and educational experiences that use the Frankenstein myth as a touchstone for science education, ethics and artistry.

From April 28-30, 2014, ASU will host a National Science Foundation-funded workshop to build a community of scholars across a wide variety of fields to collaborate on the project, to begin designing and planning public programs, intellectual endeavors and tangible outcomes like journal issues, books or performances as part of the Bicentennial celebration. The committee will accept at least 5 applicants to participate in the workshop, along with approximately sixty ASU faculty and invited guests. We will give preference to early-career researchers in relevant fields, but senior scholars should not be dissuaded from applying. All allowable, workshop-related travel expenses (e.g., economy round-trip airfare, 2-3 nights at the workshop hotel, transfers and meals).

If you are interested in participating in the workshop, the committee invites you to submit an application at http://frankenstein.asu.edu/apply. You will be asked to submit a 1-2 page CV and a cover letter discussing your interest in Frankenstein and what you could contribute to the workshop. You will also be asked to select which of our eight working groups you are most interested in:·
Exhibits and Installations:Frankenstein and the Creation of Life·
Frankenstein: A Critical Edition for Scientists and Engineers·
“It’s Alive!” Frankenstein on Film·
Monsters on Stage: Frankenstein in Theater and Performance·
“MOOCenstein” – Frankenstein Goes Global·
Engineering Life: Distributed Demonstrations· 

Reinventing the Dare: Frankenstein, Science Fiction and the Culture of Science·
Bringing Nonfiction to Life: Frankenstein and Science Writing

CFP: Transatlantic Fame in 19th c. Britain & America (3/31/2014; 7/4-5/2014)


Celebrity Encounters: Transatlantic Fame in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America
University of Portsmouth, UK
July 4-5, 2014
Deadline: March 31, 2014

Building on recent scholarship that has demonstrated that the discourses, practices and conditions associated with twentieth- and twenty-first-century celebrity culture were already in place in America and Europe by the end of the eighteenth century, this conference explores the transatlantic dimensions of nineteenth-century constructions of fame and fandom. It considers the ways transatlantic celebrity affected relationships between, and the identities of, celebrities and fans, and facilitated a questioning of geographically located notions of identity, race, gender and class. In the context of new forms of communication, transport and media that irrevocably altered celebrity cultural exchanges across the Atlantic, this conference focuses on the nature of celebrity encounters and the complexities of relationships between famous Americans and their British fans; British lions and their American devotees; and British and American celebrities.

Possible topics include:
  • Anglo-American celebrity encounters in nineteenth-century British and/or American literature or culture
  • Transatlantic fandom as a subject in nineteenth-century British and/or American literature or culture
  • American celebrities/fans in nineteenth-century Britain
  • British celebrities/fans in nineteenth-century America
  • The transatlantic reception of British and/or American writers and artists
  • Gender, race, nationality and class in transatlantic celebrity exchanges

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
David Haven Blake (The College of New Jersey)
Tom Mole (University of Edinburgh)
Richard Salmon (University of Leeds)

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words, together with a brief biographical note listing your affiliation, to: paraic.finnerty@port.ac.uk. The deadline for submission is March 31, 2014.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

CFP: VLU "The Victorian Household" (5/16/2014; 11/26-29/2014)



Victorians Like Us (VLU)
University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES)
November 26-29, 2014
Deadline: May 16, 2014

“The Victorian Household: Power, Policies, and Practices”
The Victorian household has been celebrated as a unique platform for the assertion of the British middle class and its values, as well as of both private and public politics. Within its sphere, gender, class, economic and political issues intersected as the household provided the background for social practices ranging from the kitchen to the parlor, from the street to the Houses of Parliament. Furthermore, those practices encouraged reading, intersected in various ways with the British Empire and all in all formed the backbone of Victorian culture.

The most recent approaches to the various themes encompassed by the Victorian Era – which may even include the challenge to the concept itself and its traditional time frame – have underlined a trend that points towards a current rereading and a contemporary appropriation of the very dynamic output of that period. Often controversial, but always productive, these approaches stress the interdisciplinary potential for interpretation of the characteristics of the age and often underline the strands of radical thought which encouraged aspirations for upward social mobility. Thoughts on “betterment” or “self-help” were expressed not only in politics, religion, literature and philosophy, but also in innovative esthetics and were accompanied by the action of new unheard voices, in this period of deep cultural change. These approaches also stress the belief that 21st century attitudes are more indebted to Victorian efforts and achievements, not least its concern about human nature and Humanity, than may be commonly perceived. Furthermore, the echo of the period’s fashions, its modes of exhibition, the emergence of museums and libraries, and the practices of collecting constitute further fields of knowledge and interpretation worth looking at with 21st century eyes.

We welcome the proposal of 300 word abstracts, for 20 minute long papers, on topics and themes of interest including, but are not restricted to, the following (proposals should refer the panel participants wish to be included in):

1. The Victorian household. The home
  • Who holds the power in the household? Gender roles and issues and the Victorian family;
  • How to govern the home. Economy, sustainability, social concern and the challenge to overcome poverty;
  • Unheard voices in the home. Children and the subaltern;
  • Fashion, style, art and interior decoration;
  • The city: urban development, social practice, utopian visions.

2. Culture
  • Libraries, paper and book circulation, the publication of popular fiction and anthologies;
  • Practices of collecting / practices of reading and the emergence of art galleries and museums;
  • The Victorian era in literature, cinema and the arts: people, ideas and things;
  • The power of science: social Darwinism and eugenics;
  • Victorian values and morality;
  • Contemporary representations and appropriations of new Britain;
  • Victorians at home and abroad.

3. Politics
  • Marriage, divorce and the regulation of child paternal power. Legislative production during the Victorian Era;
  • Legislation and education;
  • Ideology(ies) and party politics: individualism and collectivism;
  • Perspectives on Empire and imperial expansion;
  • Democracy and parliamentary reform.

The conference will also comprise a social and cultural program, which will be announced in the conference website in due time. The Organizing Committee expects to publish the essays delivered at the conference in a peer-reviewed international publication.

Fees: 100 euros; (early birds: 80 euros if registration is completed until 16 May); students (50 euros).

Abstracts and other queries should be sent to victorians.lx.2014conference@gmail.com by May 16, 2014. Please include name, institutional affiliation, a short bio note and contact information (download the template hereTemplate Victorians)

CFP: PAMLA "The Victorians & Literary Theory" (3/31/2014; 10/31-11/2/2014)


Special Session, PAMLA 2014
Riverside Convention Center in Riverside, California
October 31-November 02, 2014
Deadline: March 31, 2014

"The Victorians and Literary Theory"  
Proposals may address British Victorian fiction, poetry, drama, or non-fiction, but the emphasis should be on literary/critical theory and/or the history of literary criticism.  In keeping with the conference theme of "Familiar Spirits," this special session aims to reflect on the continuing value of Victorian literature to those who engage with literary theory.

Submission Deadline: The deadline for proposing papers to the approved sessions will be March 31, 2014. Proposals should be submitted via the online submission form to be available at the following address: http://www.pamla.org/2014/.  Questions may be directed to Al Drake at ajdrake@ajdrake.com.

Registration: British Society for Literature & Science (3/27/2014; 4/10-12/2014)



Registration Open
British Society for Literature and Science Conference 2014
University of Surrey, Guildford
April 10-12, 2014
Deadline: March 27, 2014

Keynotes: Professor Jim Al-Khalili (University of Surrey), Professor Bernard Lightman (York University, Toronto), and Professor Mary Orr (University of Southampton).

The conference will finish with an opportunity to visit Down House, the home of Charles Darwin, on the afternoon of Saturday 12 April.

Accommodation: please note that those attending the conference will need to make their own arrangements for accommodation. Information on local hotels is available on the conference website.

Membership: conference delegates will need to register as members of the BSLS (annual membership: £25 waged / £10 unwaged). It will be possible to join the BSLS when registering for the conference.

To register for the conference please visit the University of Surrey online store at http://tinyurl.com/p92lleg. The deadline for registration is March 27, 2014.

Information about how to get to the University of Surrey is available here: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/about/visitors/travel/.


For further information and updates about the conference, please contact Gregory Tate (g.tate@surrey.ac.uk) or visit the conference website at http://tinyurl.com/pp6ubz5.