The Fifth Annual Undergraduate and Graduate Student Victorian Association (UGSVA) conference
Victorian Façades, Facets, and Fantasies.
A Zoom conference, sponsored by Carroll University
Conference held: May 1, 2025
Abstracts due: April 11, 2025
UGSVA welcomes participation from any and all interested undergraduate and graduate students. Organizers intentionally crafted the CFP so that it could potentially be of interest to students from beyond the field of Victorian Studies. So please, share with your students and encourage them to apply to join the conference!
Conference date and schedule:
Thursday, May 1 2024: 10:00 AM – 2:30: PM CDT.
- 10:00 - 10:15 AM: Introduction
- 10:15- 11:15 AM: Concurrent session 1
- 11:15- 12:20 PM: Keynote
- 12:20-:12:30 PM: Break
- 12:30- 1:30 PM: Concurrent session 2
- 1:30-2:30 PM: Interactive session and closing discussion.
Note: The conference will occur over Zoom. Links will be provided after the schedule is finalized.
Conference fees:
It is free to present at and attend this conference. We only ask that all participants try to stay for the whole day.
Keynote:
Jessica Tebo, University of Colorado, Boulder
"Running Wild! Women’s Sports and Exercise in Victorian Literature"
Interactive Closing Plenary Session:
Negin Heydari, Arizona State University
"The Parlors of Progress: A Victorian Salon Experience"
Abstracts:
Please submit abstracts to Lara Karpenko, lkarpenk@carrollu.edu and Alivia Hanson, hanson@carrollu.edu by 4/11/2025. Note: panel applications are welcome as long as there is cross-institutional representation on the panel. It is expected that students will present for about ten minutes on their work. Abstracts should include the following information:
- Name
- Institution
- University e-mail
- Paper Title
- Paper abstract (100-150 word summation of essay)
Conference Description:
Victorian Façades, Facets, and Fantasies: a Zoom Conference
Whether studying a conduct manual, partaking in an elaborately organized dinner, or attending to the latest fashion trends, Victorians seemed to value surfaces and façades. At the same time, the literature and art of the time sought to emphasize interiority, flights of fancy, and facets of deep selfhood. UGSVA invites proposals from undergraduate and graduate students about any aspect of Victorian façades, facets, or fantasies as these concepts were broadly conceived during the Victorian era. Organizers also encourage analyses of twentieth or twenty-first century adaptations of Victorian texts as well as analysis of pre-Victorian source texts. Below, you will find a suggested list of possible essay topics. Other topics are enthusiastically welcome.
Possible topics:
- Gender norms and expectations
- Constructions of sexuality
- Queerness
- Angel in the house/ Fallen women
- New Women and Feminism
- Muscular Christianity and masculinity
- Love and Marriage
- Class definition and division
- Labor and Poverty
- Identity formation
- Growth of the city
- Rural landscapes
- Police/detectives and detective fiction
- The Great Exhibition
- Shopping culture
- Parlor games
- Ideal homes
- Meals and tea time
- Cooking and cookbooks
- Consumerism and commodity culture
- Object studies
- Imperialism and colonialism
- British and Britishness
- Race and racialization
- Irish and Irishness
- Health and disease
- Quarantine
- Community and isolation
- Memory and mourning practices
- Arthurian legend
- Pre-Raphaelitism
- The Gothic
- Aestheticism and the fin de siècle
- Realist novels
- Constructions of monarchy
- Athleticism and sports
- Sensation and feeling
- Science and technology
- Deep time
- Fossils and evolution
- Science and technology
- Neo Victorian games and texts
- Game theory
- Online Victorian LARP
Organizer and contact email:
- Lara Karpenko, Professor of English and Director of the Center for Humanities, Carroll University: lkarpenk@carrollu.edu.
- Alivia Hanson, Lead Undergraduate Organizer, Carroll University: hanson@carrollu.edu.
- Carroll University undergraduates. This conference is organized by an upper-division class in Victorian literature during Spring 2025. Students helped decide the conference theme, took the lead on writing this CFP, decided on our keynote speaker and “interactive” topics/organizers, and will be vetting abstracts and organizing speakers into panels.