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Call for Assessments: Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom

Anonymous Navajo (Diné) Artist. Blanket or Rug. [1801-1900]. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1999.579. Gift of Joseph W. Fell. CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.

Call for Assessments:
Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom

Deadline for Submissions: June 15, 2022

Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom (UVC) announces a new call for assessments that will model inclusive, antiracist, antiableist, and anticolonial assessment practices for Victorian Studies at large. Anyone with relevant professional interests is encouraged to apply, but the organizers are especially interested in submissions from early-career scholars and those with backgrounds that are under-represented in Victorian Studies.

UVC is a digital humanities project that reimagines how to teach Victorian Studies through a positive, race-conscious lens. UVC’s site launched in 2021 with the publication of peer-reviewed syllabi, peer-reviewed lesson plans, and Zoomcasts (i.e., video interviews with scholars engaged in important antiracist classroom work). The site has since been well-received by Victorianists and has as a whole been peer-reviewed for Reviews in Digital Humanities.

Currently, UVC is building a new section (“Assessment”) that will consider the different ways that assessments on Victorian and Neo-Victorian materials are used in classrooms throughout the world. Thus, assessments are sought from instructors whose work in the classroom aligns with the mission of UVC. The assessments should be innovative, can target different levels of students (Undergraduates/Graduates, Majors/Non-majors), and should be antiracist, antiableist and anticolonialist in content and/or form. They should also be student-centered and seek to empower students through different forms of classroom or independent, creative engagement.

While these assessments should feature a Victorian era component, they do not need to be exclusively used for the Victorianist classroom. For example, an assessment could be created for a Literature & Film course that has a segment on Victorian monsters or a Digital Humanities course that includes Victorianist digital projects. These assessments can be original assessments from courses already taught, revised versions of previously used assessments, or assessments that have been designed but not yet deployed in a course setting.

UVC has a simple submission process. For this Call for Assessment (CFA), the organizers request a copy of the assessment as well as short answers to a few questions that reflect on the history of the assessment, explain its pedagogical rationale, aims and visions, as well as connection to the UVC mission. These materials will be reviewed by a committee developing the Assessment section, and select instructors will be invited to submit a short essay that contextualizes the assessment for others to use in different institutions all over the world. UVC will also ask contributors to participate in the peer review process that will help develop this new pedagogical critical intervention. Assessments and essays will then be published on our website as open-access resources.

The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2022.  Please submit your assessment and responses directly through this Google form. (Note: Google log in is required in order to submit a copy of your actual assessment through the form.)

Visit Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom site to see this Call for Assessments in the context of the website.

Questions about this CFA and the Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom initiative should be directed to Pearl Chaozon Bauer (chaozonbauer@gmail.com).

To be placed on the project mailing list, kindly fill out this Google form.

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