The Victorian Popular Fiction Association
Generously Supported by BAVS
Institute of English Studies, Senate House, London
July 8-10, 2014
Deadline: April 4, 2014
Speakers and Special Presentations
- Keynote Speaker: Dr Jonathon Shears (Keele), "'[...] battered [...] soiled [...] broken [...] empty [...] half-smoked [...] stale': The Hangover in Victorian Popular Fiction’"
- Guest Speaker: Judith Flanders, "Painting Reality: Home vs. Home-ness"
- Senate Library Special Collections Talk and "hands-on" mini-exhibition: Dr Karen Attar, "Trash, Treasure or Trashy Treasure at the Institutional Library"
CFP: “Victorian Treasures and Trash”
The Victorian Popular Fiction Association conference is recognized as an important event on the annual conference circuit and offers a friendly and invigorating opportunity for established academics and post graduate students to share their current research. The organizers remain committed to the revival of interest in understudied popular writers, which is pivotal to the reputation this conference has established.
The organizers invite a broad, imaginative and interdisciplinary interpretation of the topic and its relation to any aspect of Victorian popular literature and culture which might address literal or metaphorical representations of the theme.
The organizers welcome proposals for 20 minute papers, or for panels of three papers, on topics which can include, but are not limited to:
- Treasures and Trash in: the home, the street, the store, the library, the gutter, the island, the workhouse, the factory, etc.
- Print culture and the literary marketplace: ‘trash’ fiction, high/low culture, taste, fashion, rarity, cheap editions, fine editions, ‘specials’, royalties, contracts, collectors, etc.
- Treasure: buried, hoarded, displayed, collected, traded, neglected, etc.
- Waste: scrap/s, refuse, recycling, reclamation, that which is/those who are discarded/unwanted, the abandoned, etc.
- Dirt: gossip, scandal, degeneracy, decay, cleanliness, healthfulness, godliness, etc.
- Trashed: defaced, vandalised, wasted, defamed, scandalised, denounced, drunk, drugged, etc.
- Industry: the ethics of production, craftsmanship, the cheap, the mass-produced, etc.
- Money: markets, debts/debtors, savings, shares, inheritances, ransoms, fortunes, etc.
- Papers and artefacts: archives, special collections, the museum, the preserved, the priceless, the lost, digitised treasures, etc.
- The Beloved: persons, possessions, memories, moments, etc.
- Values: validity, value/worth, cost, price, morals, family values, etc.
- Things: junk, clutter, paraphernalia, bric-a-brac, curiosities, trinkets, tokens/keepsakes, troves, etc.
- People: fortune-hunters, gold-diggers, prospectors, speculators, pirates, con-artists, thieves, beggars, prostitutes, consumers, etc.
Special author panels: This year the committee will schedule special panels to be hosted by guest experts on each of six key popular authors; therefore, the organizers especially welcome papers about the following authors:
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon (hosted by Anne-Marie Beller)
- Wilkie Collins (hosted by Mariaconcetta Constantini)
- Marie Corelli (hosted by Nickianne Moody)
- Florence Marryat (hosted by Greta Depledge)
- Ouida (hosted by Jane Jordan and Andrew King)
- Robert Louis Stevenson (hosted by Sara Clayson)
Other suggested authors/papers in previous years have also discussed authors such as:
J. M. Barrie, Mrs Beeton, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Rhoda Broughton, Lewis Carroll, Mary Cholmondeley, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, Thomas Hardy, Jerome K. Jerome, Rudyard Kipling, Eliza Lynn Linton, Edith Nesbit, Margaret Oliphant, Olive Schreiner, Bram Stoker, William Makepeace Thackeray, Dinah Craik, Anthony Trollope, Mary Augusta Ward, H.G. Wells, Ellen Wood, & Charlotte Yonge
Postgraduate students can apply now for funding to cover conference fees – see the website for details: http://victorianpopularfiction.org/. Please send proposals of no more than 300 words to Drs. Kirsty Bunting, Janine Hatter and Helena Ifill at: vpfamembership@gmail.com. Deadline for proposals: Friday April 4, 2014.