Of Victorian Interest

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Of Victorian Interest

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CFP: VSAWC / VISAWUS 2017 Conference & Publication Workshop (9/26/2016; 4/27-30/2017)

VISAWUSVSAWC/VISAWUS 2017
Joint Conference: “Victorian Education” & Publication Workshop
Vancouver, British Columbia

Conference: 28-29 April 2017
Publication Workshop: 27 & 30 April 2017

The Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada and the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States invite proposals for their 2017 joint conference, “Victorian Education.” The conference will explore Victorian concepts, theories, and expressions of education, teaching, and learning. The organisers welcome papers that examine the Victorian interest in education and its relationship with widespread concerns about personal development, progress, and improvement at the individual, spiritual, and national levels. They also invite proposals for papers, panels, or workshops that explore the teaching of Victorian literature and culture in today’s college and university environments. The conference will also include a publication workshop for graduate students and junior scholars.

Conference CFP: Please send 250-word abstracts with titles plus a separate 75-word biographical statement to Dr. Heather McAlpine and Dr. Ryan Stephenson (victorianeducation17@gmail.com) by 26 September 2016. Please visit http://web.uvic.ca/vsawc/vsawcconferences/2017-vsawc-visawus/ for more information.

Publication workshop CFP: Please send your paper title plus a separate 75-word biographical statement and CV to Lisa Surridge (lsurridg@uvic.ca) by 26 September 2016. Participants will submit 20–25-page essays one week before the first workshop day. Workshop participants need not present a conference paper.

Possible topics for discussion might include:

  • examinations of pedagogy, theories of learning, and education in the Victorian period
  • representations of teaching and learning in Victorian culture
  • informal education and popular culture
  • mechanical instruction, vocational training, and economic development
  • education and empire
  • working people’s clubs, lectures, and continuing education for the working classes
  • religious education and the “reform” of fallen women
  • physical education
  • issues of colonialism, race, gender, and class in teaching and learning
  • education and genre: representing development in fiction, poetry, and drama
  • learning and disability
  • conduct manuals, emblem books, and magazines for adults and children
  • animal training
  • auto-didacticism
  • didactic art and literature in the popular press
  • aestheticism, Decadence, and the backlash against didacticism in popular culture
  • sexology and sex education
  • occult intelligence: seances, telepathy, automatic writing, and psychical research
  • nationalism and curricula
  • concerns about “bookishness” and national decline
  • educational technologies
  • the physical and psychological effects of schools and other formal institutions of learning
  • Topics for discussion on the current teaching of Victorian literature and culture might include:

  • innovative approaches to the teaching of Victorian literature and culture
  • teaching humanities in a vocational age
  • teaching Victorian studies outside the classroom
  • teaching Victorian literature and culture in a digital age
  • teaching in the archive and/or museum
  • Victorian ideologies in the contemporary classroom
  • The conference organizing committee welcomes papers from scholars working in different disciplines and employing varied methodologies (history, art history, architecture, music, theatre, literary studies, popular culture, digital humanities, media history/archaeology, disability studies, affect theory, postcolonialism, critical race theory, phenomenology, gender studies, and queer theory). They also encourage would-be participants to propose panels of three papers on related themes.

    As well, the conference will once again feature at no additional cost VSAWC’s highly successful Publication Workshop for Emergent Scholars. This two-day intensive workshop, scheduled for 27 and 30 April and bracketing the main conference, will be led by Victorian Review coeditors Lisa Surridge and Mary Elizabeth Leighton. Graduate students and junior faculty are warmly invited to this two-day hands-on workshop designed to hone a scholarly paper to publication standard. The workshop will start on the morning of 27 April with a three-hour interactive presentation on “How to Get Published: Ten Tips from Two Editors.” Participants will meet individually during the afternoon of 27 April with workshop leaders to receive feedback on their paper and then will be free to attend the regular conference. The conference will be followed on 30 April by a three-hour writing workshop in which participants will apply the knowledge gained during the presentation and feedback sessions, revise their introductions, and share results. Please note that those who have not taken the workshop before will be given priority in registration.

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