Joint NAVSA/ACCUTE Panel 2014
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
May 24 – 27, 2014
Deadline: November 15, 2013
"Neo-Victorian Uses and Abuses of History"
In the relatively new field of Neo-Victorian studies the status of history is the focus of much debate. Is the recourse to the Victorian period necessarily nostalgic? Can the Victorian period be used to critique racism, violence and homophobia? And what of imaginative reconstructions of the Victorian period in genres such as Steampunk: are novels that reconfigure the Victorian period with contemporary technology and issues “historical” or do they call into question totalizing historical narratives?
In the relatively new field of Neo-Victorian studies the status of history is the focus of much debate. Is the recourse to the Victorian period necessarily nostalgic? Can the Victorian period be used to critique racism, violence and homophobia? And what of imaginative reconstructions of the Victorian period in genres such as Steampunk: are novels that reconfigure the Victorian period with contemporary technology and issues “historical” or do they call into question totalizing historical narratives?
Possible topics include but are by no means limited to:
- History, collective memory and nostalgia
- The commodification of the Victorian period
- Retro-futurism and the status of history
- Refiguring colonialism in Neo-Victorian texts
- Ecohistory and Neo-Victorianism
- Play and history in Neo-Victorian texts
- The Victorian period as utopia/dystopia
- Race, history and Neo-Victorianism
- Subverting the “Victorian” in Neo-Victorianism
Send 250 word proposals or completed papers for 15-20-minute talks to Martin Danahay . Deadline: November 15, 2013