Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies of the Western United States announces the theme of its 2013 conference:
Victorian Modernities
Nov. 14-16, 2013
Courtyard by Marriott, Portland City Center
Portland, Oregon
“Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.” – Oscar Wilde
VISAWUS 2013 explores the Victorians’ enthusiasm and apprehension regarding modern progress and innovation.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.
Keynote Speaker: Joseph Bristow (English, UCLA), author and editor of numerous works on Victorian and modern literature and theories and histories of sexuality, including Effeminate England: Homoerotic Writing after 1885 (1995), Sexuality (1997), The Fin-de-Siècle Poem: English Literary Culture and the 1890s (2005), and Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend (2009), is currently working on a project on “The Sex of Victorian Poetry” and editing the Journal of Victorian Culture and the Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture series.
Papers are solicited for topics such as:
- Urbanization, urbanity, and the flux of modern life
- New nationalisms
- Modern understandings of the global and the cosmopolitan
- Class mobilities and new professions
- Progressive Victorian social reform movements
- New Victorian types: New Women, dandies, Decadents, swells
- Anticipations of modernist formal styles
- New media: audio and visual technologies
- Advances in Victorian drama
- New sciences and pseudo-sciences
- Modern illnesses and modern medicine
- The novel and novelty
- Commodity culture and consumerism
- Modern understandings of sexuality and desire
- Resistances to modernity: nostalgia, pastiche
- New religions
- The apex of empire
- Modern warfare
- Neo-Victorianism and steampunk aesthetics
To submit: By March 15, 2013, email 300-word abstracts and a 1-page CV (name on BOTH) to visawus2013@gmail.com.
Please note: Graduate student papers are eligible for the William H. Scheuerle Graduate Student Paper Award ($300.00).
The most up-to-date information about the 2013 Conference can be found on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Victorian-Interdisciplinary-Studies-Association-of-the-Western-US/148139335285338?ref=stream.