Victorian Studies, Asia and the Pacific
NAVSA Online Activities Spring 2021
Following from the recent call to “undiscipline” Victorian studies, this roundtable asks how scholars can move beyond the framework of metropole/periphery in thinking about the relationship between nineteenth-century Asia and Britain. Recent scholarship challenges the vision of Asia as periphery, writing of competing empires (Ross Forman, Grace Lavery) and its imbrication in the “intimacies” of global exchange and violence (Laura Doyle, Kendall Johnson, Lisa Lowe), yet Asia and the Pacific remain on the fringes of scholarship in Victorian studies. This roundtable will bring together scholars whose research challenges binary approaches to Britain and the world, instead considering the triangulations, intersections, exchanges, and (un)making involved in these encounters. In what ways can an attention to scholarship on/in Asia help to “undiscipline” and “unmake” Victorian studies and scholarly fields more broadly? The virtual event will be hosted in Hong Kong, a city shaped by the expansion of empires, trade, war, and migrations of the nineteenth century, and where current events reflect the enduring legacies of this fraught past.
Please send informal proposals for 10-minute papers to Jessica R. Valdez (jvaldez@hku.hk) by September 30. Scholars from anywhere in the world and at any stage of their careers are welcome.