NAVSA

Upcoming Conferences

2021/22 NAVSA • The 2022 Conference will occur September 29th-October 2nd in Bethlehem, PA.

2022 Conference
JUST VICTORIANS; https://wordpress.lehigh.edu/navsa2022/

We are excited to welcome you to historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for NAVSA 2022. Bethlehem maintains poignant legacies of the history of industrialization, colonial settlement, utopian aspirations, and urban renewal. Numerous Moravian dwellings remain, and the famous steel stacks of Bethlehem Steel still tower over the community.

The conference theme, Just Victorians, invites attendees to reconsider the nineteenth-century commitment to justice as well as presumed limitations of our understanding of “Victorian.” New models of undisciplining the field of Victorian studies interrogate established methods, aesthetics, and geographies--challenging the scope, forms, and peoples of the period. While many Victorians dedicated themselves to social causes throughout the century, including campaigns for racial, decolonial, environmental, and health justice, this dedication often led to unforeseen consequences, including devastating damages to underprivileged individuals in urban settings, imperial peoples, and women and racialized subjects.

Conference presenters may investigate how Victorian pursuits of justice were ardent and their conceptualizations of “the just” were limited. Victorians sought justice, and their successes and failures invite us to reconsider what we mean as just Victorian studies. What constituted Victorian social justice? How did Victorians actively seek out justice for themselves and others? In what ways did Victorians envision justice and for whom? What were the limits of Victorian visions of justice? How has the scope of “the Victorian” limited our fields and methods? Are there meaningful limits to the “Victorian” in Victorian studies?

Our keynote speaker is Professor Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb (University of Toronto), scholar of colonial and postcolonial literature and theory and author of _Epidemic Empire_ (Chicago 2021). In addition, we will be hosting a plenary panel on “Just Ecologies” featuring Ji Eun Lee (Sungkyunkwan University), M.A. Miller (UC Davis), and Kyle McAuley (Seton Hall University).

FUTURE CONFERENCES:
2023 Indiana U (20th anniversary)
2024 Flightless NAVSA (Atlanta, Boulder, Davis, Montreal, Phoenix, Seattle, Waco, West Lafayette, UK, Rome, Australia)
2025 Carleton U, Ottawa

All conference attendees must be current members of NAVSA.