New Directions in Victorian Studies
Midwest Victorian Studies Association
Applications due: May 27, 2024
Seminars date: September 7, 2024 (Virtual)
Ah, May! When writing goals are full of promises to ourselves, and summer is full of time. MVSA Summer Seminars can help you reach that goal, with an end-of-summer draft deadline and feedback in a collaborative and congenial seminar group just as the next academic year is gearing up.
Seminars are not limited to specific themes, but are open to works-in-progress addressing any topic related to the field of Victorian Studies, broadly construed. Prior participants have brought articles, book or dissertation chapters, book proposals, and grant applications. Some groups have found themselves so simpatico that they have continued on as a writing group!
Participants will:
- submit up to 30 (double-spaced) pages of work by Friday, August, 23, 2024;
- identify 1-2 key issues on which they’d like feedback;
- serve as primary reader on ONE other submission, including providing detailed feedback in the form of one page of single-spaced typed notes;
- review more briefly, and be prepared to discuss, remaining seminar submissions (writers will indicate an excerpt, up to 6 pages, on which secondary readers should focus).
Seminars are limited to 8 participants and will happen over Zoom on Saturday, September 7, 2024, led by members of the MVSA Board. Discussions will provide concrete revision feedback, and often foster connections for future collaboration.
MVSA encourages applications from graduate students, post-docs, contingent faculty, and independent scholars. We are also eager to bring together work from as wide a range of disciplines as possible. We ask for your name, discipline, current position, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and time zone on your application, so that we include a diverse array of participants in each seminar and ensure that everyone gets feedback from a range of perspectives.
To apply: please fill out this google form (https://forms.gle/fKmejzQr3y6zT1Pv6), which asks for a 300-word abstract (as a Word doc or PDF) and the identifying details mentioned above, by Monday, May 27, 2024. Participants will be chosen with an eye towards forming fruitful seminar groupings for discussion. Selected participants will receive confirmation of their acceptance the week of June 3, 2024.
Participants will need to be members of MVSA ($40 faculty/$30 graduate students, adjuncts, and independent scholars) and register for the Summer Seminar ($10) by July 1, 2024, in order to receive the Zoom link and final directions for uploading and commenting on papers. Please note: annual memberships run for one calendar year; if you became a member prior to this year’s conference in Iowa, you need only pay the $10 Summer Seminar registration fee.