Meet me in St. Louis for VISAWUS 2025: Gateways
Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO
October 3-5, 2025
Abstract deadline: March 1,2025
Keynote Speaker: Kristin Mahoney, Michigan State University
Paper topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Boundaries and thresholds
- Railways
- Westward expansion and manifest destiny
- Surveillance
- Travel and travel literature
- Colonial ports and entries
- Institutional admissions and permissions
- Movement or motion
- Contact points between genres & literary periods
- Purgatory and near-death experiences
- Theories of liminality and sacred space
- Barriers or entry points to Victorian studies
- Victorian Catholicism or anti-Catholic prejudice
- Representations of the US in Victorian fiction
- St. Louis as "gateway to the West"
- 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis
- Images of St. Louis in film
- Victorian house museums
Please submit abstracts of no more than 200 words along with a one-page CV to
visawus2025@gmail.com by March 1, 2025. Panel proposals are also welcome and should include a
brief panel overview, descriptions of individual papers, and one-page CVs for each panelist.
About the Location
Saint Louis University is a Catholic, Jesuit institution in mid-town Saint Louis, founded in 1818. The campus and surrounding neighborhood abound with buildings dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Saint Louis University is also close to the St. Louis Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum, the St. Louis Botanical Gardens, and many beautifully preserved Victorian House Museums, including the Samuel Cupples House on campus as well as the Campbell House Museum and Chatllon-Demenil Mansion nearby.