Refractions/Reflections: Victorian(ist) Ways of Seeing
Victorians Institute
October 22-23, 2021
Charlotte, North Carolina
In The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), John Ruskin writes, “The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.” Ruskin pushed his contemporaries to see the world for themselves plainly. George Eliot echoes this idea in Adam Bede (1859), writing “all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of [human] nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place of definite, substantial reality.” In contrast, other writers of the period reveled in creating imaginative, sensational, or fantastical worlds that moved beyond the boundaries of the seen and known. This conference seeks essays that explore how Victorians saw their world, how they depicted what they saw, and the ways that modern scholars, in turn, see the Victorians. Papers or panels on poetry, prose, nonfiction, biography, digital humanities, or visual art are welcome, as are presentations on the pedagogy & ethics of teaching Victorian literature during or not during a global pandemic.
POSSIBLE TOPICS:
- Emotional, Intellectual, Aesthetic Insight
- Visual Print Culture, Advertising, Ephemera
- Visual Technology: Magic Lanterns, the
- Diorama, Binoculars, the Stereoscope
- Optical Illusions/Literary Allusions
- Observation & the (Scientific) Eye:
- Telescopes, Microscopes, Mirrors, Glasses
- Victorian Photography/Illustration
- The Imagination/The Mind’s Eye
- Seeing Ghosts & Gothic Ways of Seeing
- Seeing Disease/Illness/(Dis)ability
- The Spectacle/Spectacular
- The Great Exhibition
- Shadows/Secrets/Surveillance
- Mesmerists & Spiritualists
- Performance/Performativity
- Victorian Theater
- The Visible/Invisible
- Detectives/Detection, Criminals/Crime
- Memoir/Memory/Retrospection
- Fantasy & Reality
- Travel & Travelogues
- Pornography/Iconography
- Food & its Presentation: the Home & the Restaurant
- Self-Perception/Self-Construction
- Victorian Landscapes & the Natural World
- Art/Art Criticism/The Art Gallery
- Medieval Revival & Revisions
- Erasure & Censorship
- Literal/Figurative Blindness
- Objects/Objectification/the Other
- Neo-Victorian/Modern Perceptions
- Pedagogy: Victorians in the Age of #metoo
- Pedagogy: Victorians in the Age of Covid
Please send a 300-word abstract and 1-page c.v. to conference organizers Bonnie Shishko and Casey Cothran at thevictoriansinstitute@gmail.com (Word or PDF format) by May 15th, 2021. Individual proposals should include contact information. Panel proposals should include contact information for all participants, a synopsis of the panel, and abstracts for all papers.
Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Dr. Amy M. King, St. John's University
“Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.”
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning