Tuesday 15 November 2016

CFP: AVSA 2017 Conference, "Victorian Materialities", Deakin University, Australia (Deadline extended: 27 Feb 2017)

Call for Papers
Victorian Materialities, AVSA Conference 
Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
14-16 June 2017
Keynote speaker: Alexis Easley (University of St Thomas)
Deadline now extended to 27 February 2017.

In The Buried Life of Things: How Objects Made History in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2014), Simon Goldhill observes that the profusion of objects inhabiting a Victorian drawing room “speaks insistently not simply of a history of taste, but also of the interconnected forces of the industrial revolution, which changes the modes of the production of things, and the imperial project, which changes the modes of circulation of material objects and their owners”. This interdisciplinary conference on “Victorian Materialities” takes up the “material turn” in Victorian Studies to examine the cultural meanings and significance attached to material objects by contemporaries. It aims to explore how objects both produced and reflected Victorian culture. In an era in which the industrial revolution rapidly urbanised Britain and escalated the production and consumption of goods, “things” came to have an increasingly intimate, and sometimes porous, relationship with human experience since the material world was almost always open to self fashioning. A critical focus on material objects can reveal a wealth of information about their users.

We invite papers that explore any aspect of Victorian material culture. Possible topics include:
- The expansion of commodity culture and department stores
- The circulation of goods throughout the British Empire
- Colonialism and “portable property”
- Displays and practices of collecting
- The Great Exhibition
- Periodicals and advertising
- The book as material object
- Cosmetics, clothing and bodies
- Dirt, cleanliness, and sanitation
- The Victorian household and domestic objects
- Visual culture (photographs, paintings, illustrations)
- Representation of objects in literature
- The Victorians and industry
- Space, architecture and design
- Science and technology
- Material culture and gender
- Affect, emotion and sensation

Please send abstracts of 250 words to Michelle Smith michelle.s@deakin.edu.au  along with a brief biographical note of approximately 100 words. 

Thursday 3 November 2016

CFP: "Family Ties" Symposium, 12-14 February 2017, University of Otago, Dunedin

Adam Walker and  His Family by George Romney (1796-1801)
(c) National Portrait Gallery, London
Family Ties: Exploring Kinship and Creative Production in Nineteenth-Century Britain
12-14 February 2017, Dunedin New Zealand

Plenary Speakers:
Judith Pascoe, University of Iowa
Devoney Looser, Arizona State University

Conference website

In 1800, poet and playwright Joanna Baillie dedicated her Series of Plays to her physician brother Matthew Baillie for his “unwearied zeal and brotherly partiality”; Matthew himself had recently edited the anatomical research of their uncles, John and William Hunter. At century’s end, Oscar Wilde cited his mother Jane Wilde’s translation of Sidonia the Sorceress (1849) and his great-uncle Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) as his “favourite romantic reading when a boy.” Family played an important role in the literary and artistic productions of the long nineteenth century, from the Burneys to the Brontës, and the Rossettis to the Doyles. Critical approaches ranging from Noel Annan’s “Intellectual Aristocracy” to Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory have provided useful ways of assessing and contextualising the role of family in the creative production of writers and artists, but still the role of the family remains underexplored.

Invitation for submissions
We invite submissions for “Family Ties,” a three-day symposium at the University of Otago and Otago Museum focused on British literary and artistic families in the nineteenth century. Topics for 20-minute papers might include:

Interdisciplinary Influences
Collaborations and/or Dissents
Authorial Identity/ies
Communities and Networks
Families and Emotions
Redefining Family Units
Stages of Life (births, marriages, deaths)
Reimaginings of nineteenth-century families
Families, Creativity, and Empire
Economics of Family Authorship
Literary and Artistic Legacies
Little-known Relations
Generational Influences
Please send abstracts of 250-300 words by 15 November to Dr Thomas McLean and Dr Ruth Knezevich at familyties@otago.ac.nz.

The symposium coincides with “Keeping it in the Family: British and Irish Literary Generations 1770-1930,” an exhibition at Otago’s Special Collections, and precedes the 16–19 February RSAA conference in Wellington, New Zealand. There are direct flights between Dunedin and Wellington, and we hope many participants will attend both events. “Family Ties” is made possible by generous support from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund. It will be an opportunity to share the first results of the three-year Marsden funded project, “Global Romantics: How the Porter Family Shaped Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature.”

Tuesday 23 February 2016

CFP: Special Edition of AJVS: Pre-Raphaelitism in Australasia (abstracts due 29 Feb 2016)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Paolo and Francesca
da Rimini
1867. National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne.
CFP – Special Edition of AJVS: Pre-Raphaelitism in Australasia 

The Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies is pleased to announce a Special Issue on ‘Pre-Raphaelitism in Australasia’ to be published in late 2016. Inspired by Medieval Moderns: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Exhibition and Symposium at the National Gallery of Victoria in July 2015, this Special Issue invites papers from both the Symposium and others conducting research in this field.

Australasian collections of Pre-Raphaelite works are now recognised by the wider international community as integral to the understanding of the movement. The NGV’s rich holdings are especially renowned as they include many important works by Edward Burne-Jones, William Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and others.

In addition to important holdings of major British Pre-Raphaelite works, there is an increasingly well-documented body of Australasian artists and writers who knew, worked with and were inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites.  Publication of new work in this field will enhance understandings of how the concepts, techniques and ideals of Pre-Raphaelitism were interpreted and developed in the colonies.

To that end, we invite papers exploring the visual culture, literary, or historical aspects of Pre-Raphaelitism or the related Arts and Crafts movement in Australasia. Papers should be 5-7,000 words in length, and we strongly encourage illustrations, although authors will need to arrange permissions themselves and provide documentation to the editors.

The special issue is being guest-edited by Alison Inglis and Nancy Langham-Hooper together with AJVS editor Meg Tasker, and will be published on the open-access Online Journal System hosted by Sydney e-Scholarships Publishing. http://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/AJVS.

Contributors are invited to send an abstract of 250-300 words to preraphaelites2016ajvs@gmail.com by 29 February 2016.  Full papers will be due by 4 April, and must be submitted online, with abstract. New users will need to create a login and password at: http://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/AJVS/login

Thursday 18 February 2016

Call for Chapters: International Migrations in the Victorian Era (Ed. Marie Ruiz) [Abstracts due 1 April 2016]

Call for Chapters: International Migrations in the Victorian Era, Leiden: Brill, 2017.
Edited by Marie Ruiz (Université Paris Diderot, LARCA)

Migration in the Victorian era has been identified as a paramount feature of the history of worldwide migrations and diasporas. Contrary to popular belief, the Victorian era was not only marked by an
extensive exodus from Britain to the USA and the British colonies, but the Victorians also experienced a great degree of inward migration with the arrival of Catholic Irish, and oppressed Jews and Germans among others. Inward, outward and internal movements were sometimes a  response to economic hardships and employment opportunities, but this  cannot solely explain the extent of international migrations in the Victorian era.

In the Victorian period, mass migration played a significant role in shaping the nation’s identity, as well as Britain’s relationships with the outside world. This raises the question of the impact of migrations on the Motherland, as the Victorian migration trends also attracted numerous immigrants and transmigrants, who ended up remaining in Britain rather than emigrating to the USA or the British colonies. Yet, while the origins of these immigrants and transmigrants are now difficult to trace, the question of their potential impact on
the Victorian society needs to be addressed. Fears of racial degeneracy permeated the Victorian discourses on migration, and demographic and social balances were expected to be reached through people's displacements.

This edited volume aims at offering a global perspective on international migrations in the Victorian era including emigration, immigration and internal migration within Britain. Papers relating to the following themes, though not exclusively, are welcome:

Child migration
Civilising missions
Community migrations
Cultural and artistic migrations
Emigration and philanthropy
Emigration and Trade-Unions
Emigration societies
Factors determining migration
Family migration and individual migration
Female migrants and reproductive labour
Female migration in the Victorian era
Forced migration
Free passages to the New Worlds
Impact of demographics on migration
Impact of industrialisation on migration
Indentured migration
Internal migration / rural exodus
Invisible migrants
Inward migration/outward migration
Labour transportation
Land grants
Middle-class migration
Migrant stories and diaries
Migration and Empire-building
Migration and patriotism
Migration and surplus populations
Migration in the press
Migration and the Transport Revolution
Migration and xenophobia
Migration in the visual arts
Migration on screen: representing Victorian migration
Migration regulations and public policies
Migration within the British Isles
Missions and missionaries
Networks of migrations
Patterns of migration
Ports of emigration
Poverty-related migration
Promoting migration
Religious migration
Seasonal and permanent migrations
Servitude migration
Settlement patterns
Trade migration
Transmigration through Britain
Voluntary migration / involuntary migration


350-word abstracts, along with short academic biographies, should be  submitted to mariejruiz@yahoo.fr. The deadline for submission of abstracts is April 1, 2016.

Tuesday 2 February 2016

Deadline extension: AVSA 2016, "Victorian Margins", 7-9 July 2016 (17 Feb 2016)

Extended deadline: Call for papers: AVSA 2016, "Victorian Margins",  Ballarat, Victoria, 7-9 July 2016 (Abstracts now due 17 Feb 2016)
Keynote speaker:  Prof. Joseph Bristow (UCLA)

In 2016, AVSA will join the Australasian Historical Association conference in Ballarat from 5-8 July, with a stream of AVSA papers and Keynote scheduled on 7-8 July, and a program of local sightseeing on Sat 9 July.  This is a welcome opportunity to connect with Australasian colleagues in history with shared interests in the long 19th century, and for AVSA members to visit one of Australia's finest Victorian cities. The conference will be held in Ballarat's historical precinct.  Delegates may wish to allow time to explore local sites such as the Ballarat Mechanics' Institute's extensive library of 19th-century books, periodicals and newspapers.

AVSA's Keynote Speaker will be Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA), on “Homosexual Blackmail in the 1890s,” drawing on research for his new study of Oscar Wilde’s two criminal trials.
Papers (20 minutes) or panel proposals (2-3 papers) are invited on the AVSA conference theme ‘Victorian Margins’ – some possible angles include:

geographic margins (in the UK; in the Empire; elsewhere)
marginalised groups (marginalised by ethnicity; class; sexuality; region; nationality)
temporal margins (1830s; fin de siecle)
marginalised forms of culture
economic margins (profits and losses; costs and benefits)
margins as gaps
margins as liminal spaces
marginal values
marginalia
margins and centres

The AVSA stream committee welcomes papers relating to Victorian Margins from any discipline in the humanities. Proposals consisting of an abstract (400 words), together with a brief author bio/note of affiliation (particularly for postgraduates) , should be submitted to Meg Tasker m.tasker@federation.edu.au by 17 February 2016.

Those who would like to have their papers considered for an issue of the Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies on the theme, please indicate this with your abstract and aim to have the paper in a suitable form for publication as well as oral delivery by the time of the conference.  Thanks!

The Australian History Association theme is ‘From Boom to Bust.’ AVSA members may offer papers on either theme, or neither, but all paper-givers must be financial members of either AVSA or AHA.  Registration details available early in 2016, and venues will be in Ballarat CBD.



Please note that this joint conference is being organised by the Collaborative Research Centre for Australian History at Federation University, with Dr Jolanta Nowak as Administrative Officer.  General enquiries to:  aha2016@federation.edu.au please.

Thursday 28 January 2016

CFP: NAVSA 2016, 'Social Victorians', Phoenix, AZ (2-5 November 2016) [Deadline 1 February 2016]

Social Victorians
November 2-5, 2016
Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel, Phoenix, AZ


Keynote Speakers:
Gowan Dawson, University of Leicester,Caroline Levine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a panel commemorating the anniversary of Steven Marcus’s The Other Victorians

The Conference Committee for the 2016 annual NAVSA conference invites proposals for papers and panels on the subject of Social Victorians.

What does it mean to speak of the social in the Victorian era? In what ways were the Victorians social, antisocial, or both at once? What definitions of sociability circulated during the period, and through which structures? What models of sociability vyed, prevailed, and emerged? Topics might include:

Social frameworks and models
Kinship, familial and personal relationships (e.g., friendship, courtship, marriage)
Religion and the social
Social class/economic class and the mingling of classes
Regional, national, and cosmopolitan concepts of sociability
Comparative, revisionary, and colonial forms of the social

Empire as a social or anti-social force
The social in “other” cultures
The transcultural social
Social traditions, rituals, events, displays, and gatherings

Holidays and birthdays
Illness, death, funerals, and practices of mourning and remembrance
International exhibitions as social and socializing sites
Problematic and contested concepts of the social

Antisocial behaviors (e.g., neglect, abuse)
The criminal, deviant, revolutionary, unladylike/unmanly, and un-English
Paranoia, agoraphobia, xenophobia, and social anxiety
Social networks and organizations

Archiving/digitizing as a social form
Academic, scientific, professional, social clubs, societies, organizations, political parties, and advocacy
Social discipline, control, and punishment

Familial models of empire (e.g., mother country)
Restrictions, modifications, and surveillance of the social (e.g., through government, policing, penal system)
Explicit directions for sociability (e.g., etiquette manuals, signs/notices, finishing schools)
Implicit social instruction (e.g., education, legal system, media)
Bans, erasures, gaps, and silences on alternate social forms
Non-human social relations, interactions, and exchange

Sociable objects (and the human)
Sociable non-human animals (exclusive and inclusive of human animals)
Social spaces (e.g., drawing rooms, ballrooms, parks, hotel lobbies, museums, galleries, exhibitions, lecture halls, advertising, the press)
Social ephemera (e.g., visiting cards, menus, invitations)
Art as a social form

Collaboration, editing, publishing, and marketing
Reading and writing practices
The socializing function of the arts, arts criticism, art displays, and spectating (e.g., exhibitions, performances)
Visual, aural, and literary depictions of socialization and marginalization

The deadline for paper and panel submissions is February 1, 2016. For individual papers, submit 250-word paper proposals, along with a one-page CV. For entire panels, submit the above for each paper, as well as a one-page summary of the panel.

Tuesday 12 January 2016

CFP: RSVP 2016 Conference: Bigger, Better, More! (deadline 1 Feb 2016)

CFP: Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
BIGGER, Better, More! — Growth and Expansion in the Victorian Press

University of Missouri-Kansas City, September 9–10, 2016

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals invites proposals for its 2016 conference on the theme of growth and expansion in the Victorian press. We encourage broad interpretation of what “Bigger, Better, More!” means for Victorian newspapers and magazines, with possible topics including:

Proliferation of news events, headline stories, scandals
Serialization, sequels, symposia, rejoinders, recurring columns
Developments in printing technology, formats, editorial vision
Increased readership, population, urban and imperial expansion
Economic growth, profits, investments, windfalls, boom-and-bust cycles
Excess, hyperbole, filler
Malignant growth, plagues, floods, parasites
Natural growth, plants, parks, green spaces
Education, maturation, age, experience, longevity
Emerging taxonomies, catalogs, indexes, censuses
Developing networks, movements, professional and amateur organizations, bureaucracies
Growth of periodical studies, methodologies, pedagogies, archives

RSVP is an interdisciplinary and international organization welcoming all scholars interested in the richly diverse world of the 19th-century British press. Please send a proposal (250 words maximum) and one-page CV to rs4vp2016@gmail.com by February 1, 2016. Individual presentations should be fifteen to twenty minutes, and proposals for panels of three are welcome; be sure to include a brief rationale for the panel along with an abstract and CV for each presenter. A limited number of travel grants will be awarded to graduate students and independent scholars; please indicate in your email if you would like to be considered for one of these grants.

We are pleased to announce that the eighteenth annual Michael Wolff Lecture will be given by James Mussell, Associate Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds and author of Science, Time and Space in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press (2007) and The Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age (2012). The RSVP conference also features the Robert and Vineta Colby Lecture, given by the winner of the Colby Prize for the year’s best book on the Victorian press. This year’s recipient will be announced in spring 2016.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City is a vibrant public research institution located in the heart of the city. It is walking distance to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, built on the estate of a nineteenth-century newspaper tycoon. The museum houses one of the world's largest collections of daguerreotypes. Attendees will find lodging on the Country Club Plaza, an outdoor retail and dining destination, the first of its kind when it was established in 1922. Nearby is historic Westport, site of a Civil War battle and final stop on the way to the Western Frontier, with its many locally owned eateries, live music venues, and funky shops.

For more information, please visit the conference website: rsvp2016-kc.com.

Find RSVP on the web at rs4vp.org and follow us on Twitter @RS4VP, #RSVP2016.

Sunday 3 January 2016

CFP: 2016 AVSA Conference Stream at AHA Conference, Ballarat, 7-9 July 2016 (Deadline 3/2/16)

Call for papers: AVSA 2016, "Victorian Margins",  Ballarat, Victoria, 7-9 July 2016 (Abstracts due 3 Feb 2016)
Keynote speaker:  Prof. Joseph Bristow (UCLA)

In 2016, AVSA will join the Australasian Historical Association conference in Ballarat from 5-8 July, with a stream of AVSA papers and Keynote scheduled on 7-8 July, and a program of local sightseeing on Sat 9 July.  This is a welcome opportunity to connect with Australasian colleagues in history with shared interests in the long 19th century, and for AVSA members to visit one of Australia's finest Victorian cities. The conference will be held in Ballarat's historical precinct.  Delegates may wish to allow time to explore local sites such as the Ballarat Mechanics' Institute's extensive library of 19th-century books, periodicals and newspapers.

AVSA's Keynote Speaker will be Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA), on “Homosexual Blackmail in the 1890s,” drawing on research for his new study of Oscar Wilde’s two criminal trials.
Papers (20 minutes) or panel proposals (2-3 papers) are invited on the AVSA conference theme ‘Victorian Margins’ – some possible angles include:
geographic margins (in the UK; in the Empire; elsewhere)
marginalised groups (marginalised by ethnicity; class; sexuality; region; nationality)
temporal margins (1830s; fin de siecle)
marginalised forms of culture
economic margins (profits and losses; costs and benefits)
margins as gaps
margins as liminal spaces
marginal values
marginalia
margins and centres

The AVSA stream committee welcomes papers relating to Victorian Margins from any discipline in the humanities. Proposals consisting of an abstract (400 words), together with a brief author bio/note of affiliation (particularly for postgraduates) , should be submitted to Meg Tasker m.tasker@federation.edu.au by Wednesday 3 February 2016.

Those who would like to have their papers considered for an issue of the Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies on the theme, please indicate this with your abstract and aim to have the paper in a suitable form for publication as well as oral delivery by the time of the conference.  Thanks!

The Australian History Association theme is ‘From Boom to Bust.’ AVSA members may offer papers on either theme, or neither, but all paper-givers must be financial members of either AVSA or AHA.  Registration details available early in 2016, and venues will be in Ballarat CBD.

Please note that this joint conference is being organised by the Collaborative Research Centre for Australian History at Federation University, with Dr Jolanta Nowak as Administrative Officer.  General enquiries to:  aha2016@federation.edu.au please.