26th Annual Dickens Society Symposium
An online meeting
July 12-14, 2021
Organizers: Sean Grass, Chris Loutitt, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig
The Charles Dickens Society is pleased to announce an extended deadline for abstracts for the 2021 Symposium. As you may know, the organizers only recently decided to convert the 2021 Symposium to an online meeting. One terrific side effect is that, since no one needs to make plans for travel, the organizers can extend the deadline and get acceptances out a little later. The new deadline is therefore Sunday, January 31, 2021. To have your work considered, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to Sean Grass at scggsl@rit.edu.
Because the virtual Symposium will feature a combination of newly-proposed papers and previously-proposed ones from the canceled London 2020 meeting, it will not be organized strictly around a theme this year. But given this transformation of the conference format, the organizers especially encourage papers that take up absence and/or connectedness (or “connexion,” as Bleak House’s omniscient narrator might say) in Dickens’s works. Topics include, but are not limited to: distance and separation in Dickens’s life and works; death and absence; solitude and isolation; emotional and spiritual connections, including family, community, and mesmerism; Dickens and travel; Dickensian networks, of characters, collaborators, and texts.
Please note that the organizers will provide an option to pre-record your presentation, if you prefer, and will provide instructions for doing so—for those wary of technical glitches in live sessions, but also to allow much more time for discussion and exchange.
As we complete our plans for the virtual meeting, we will be exploring alternate formats for sessions to avoid “Zoom fatigue.” Accordingly, be on the lookout in late January or early February for further calls for speakers and participants in such events as roundtables, mentoring sessions, and workshops.