From railways to telegraphy, typewriters to telephones, Victorians were engaged with new, and developing, technologies of connection and communication. Innovations in technology over the course of the Victorian period influenced wider cultural ideas of connection, of scale and of human capacity. Like the Victorians, researchers in Victorian Studies are using new technologies of reading, writing, research and social connection that are changing the nature of our work and its dissemination.
This call is for papers that critically address Victorian Technologies and/or the technologies of Victorian Studies. Whether you are interested in the Blackberry or the trans-Atlantic cable, you are invited to submit a proposal for a 20 minute paper to be presented at the ACCUTE/NAVSA joint panel at the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities in Waterloo, Ontario from May 28-May 31 2012.
Possible topics may include:
- technologies of reading, writing, printing and publishing
- photography, phonography, telephony and other media and information technologies
- from horses to railways: technological innovation vs. the natural world
- industrial innovations and working with/as machines
- technologies of the body: medical instruments, prostheses
- the railway, the telegraph and other social networks
- theories, histories and discourses of the technological
- Archives then and now
- the history and future of the [Victorian/Victorian Studies] Book
- Victorian Studies e-journals and archive digitization projects
- Victorian Studies social media: blogs, facebook groups and twitter
- Victorian Studies and the digital humanities
Please submit your proposal by November 1 to Jennifer Esmail at jesmail@wlu.ca. Submission instructions are available at http://www.accute.ca/joint.html#submit. All submitters must be members in good standing of either NAVSA or ACCUTE.