16th ANNUAL CONFERENCE of the VICTORIAN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES (VISAWUS)
"The Vulgar and the Proper: Victorian Manners and Mores"
October 13-15, 2011
Houston, TX
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Helena Michie, English, Rice University, author, The Flesh Made Word: Female Figures and Women's Bodies; Sororophobia: Differences among Women in Literature and Culture; Victorian Honeymoons: Journeys to the Conjugal; co-author, Confinements: Fertility and Infertility in Contemporary Culture, and co- editor, 19th-Century Geographies: The Transformation of Space from the Victorian Age to the American Century. PLENARY SPEAKER: Lynn Voskuil, English, University of Houston, author, Acting Naturally: Victorian Theatricality and Authenticity, and essays in Victorian Studies, Feminist Studies, and ELH. Her current project is entitled "Horticulture and Imperialism: The Garden Spaces of the British Empire."
The 16th annual conference focuses on Victorian obsessions with vulgarity and propriety. We invite proposals on manners and mores in politics, culture, society, religion, art, science, economics, rural life, and other Victorian matters of decorum and propriety and what Victorians deemed vulgar, crude or crass. We encourage papers across all disciplines, including (but not restricted to) art history, literature, gender, history of science, history, material culture, political science, performance, life writings, journalism, photography, popular culture, and economics.
By March 15, 2011 email 300-word abstract and 1-page CV (name on BOTH) to: Laurel.Williamson@sjcd.edu.
Download the full CFP here, and click here for more information on VISAWUS.