Of Victorian Interest

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CFP: Back to the Future: Class and the Past, 1800-2000 (1/23/2017; 3/16/2017)

lancasterBack to the Future: Class and the Past, 1800-2000
Lancaster University
16 March 2017

Keynote: Dr. Michael Sanders

Once a ‘master’ category of historical investigation, social class no longer occupies a central place on the academic agenda. The ‘turns’ towards the cultural and the marginal have supplanted class as dominant paradigms, fostering an intellectual culture in which the concept is frequently dismissed as outdated and unfruitful. Yet, in tandem with a growing recognition that social inequality and class are still pivotal elements of our own society, socio-economic approaches to history are slowly making a resurgence. This colloquium draws on this resurgence and is designed to facilitate debate and discussion on the use of class in historical and cultural analysis: on its merits, drawbacks, and the ways in which traditional class-based approaches might be nuanced or reworked to meet the challenges faced by contemporary historians and cultural critics. Proposals on these topics are invited from postgraduate students, academic staff, and independent researchers across the globe.

Proposals on, but not limited to, the following topics are invited:

  • New approaches to class
  • Class and identity/class consciousness
  • The intersections between class, gender, race, and sexual identity
  • Working class cultures: literature, music, art, and language
  • Class conflict and class-based political movements
  • Marxism and its place in historical analysis
  • Class in the age of the digital humanities
  • Changes in class composition and structure
  • Historical materialism/historical materialist approaches
  • Please send an abstract of 250-300 words for a paper of 20 minutes to Back2theFuture2017@gmail.com by 23 January 2017. For more information, please visit the conference website: Back2theFuture2017.tumblr.com.

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