of victorian interest

Award
Literary Encyclopedia Research Awards

Deadline: October 1, 2026

The Literary Encyclopedia Research Award grants travel bursaries worth between £500 and £750 each to assist both emerging and established scholars in defraying the costs of archival research on a literary or related matter. This programme is funded through the donation of royalties by contributors and editors to the Encyclopedia.

Applications are accepted from members of an institution which subscribes to The Literary Encyclopedia, contributors to our publication, or individual subscribers. Scholars of Victorian literature are strongly encouraged to apply.

Starting in 2025, and in line with The Literary Encyclopedia’s commitment to lowering its carbon emissions and fostering greater inclusivity among researchers, our awards will also be offered to help fund research assistance to consult archives remotely and/or additional research costs, such as those arising from caring responsibilities.

Awards of between £500 and £750 are available to fund a range of research activities within these categories:

• Travel costs for archival research
• Research assistance to consult archives remotely
• Training in new techniques/skills
• Additional research costs, such as caring responsibilities
• Support for access needs

Conference attendance will not be covered.

Applications are considered by the Editorial Board of The Literary Encyclopedia whose decision is final. Money will be paid on presentation of receipts.

Successful applicants will be expected to write a formal report of their work to be published on our website. The contribution of the LE Research Award should be acknowledged in any publications resulting from these awards.

You can read about the winning candidates and research proposals from previous years HERE.

Successful applicants to this round must complete their research travel by June 30^th 2027. Recipients will be expected to provide formal reports on their work by start of October 2027.

Applicants should please download and complete the application form attached HERE, and email it to The Managing Editor no later than 1 October 2026. We will announce the winners by mid-November.

Long 19th-century British and Interdisciplinary Humanities panel session
58th northeast mla (Nemla) annual conference
newport, rhode island
march 6-9, 2027

 Abstract Deadline: 

Weather in 19 th-Century Literature and Art in the Age of the Anthropocene

Panel Chair: Dewey W. Hall, Ph.D.

Weather in 19th-century Literature and Art in the Age of the Anthropocene concerns the question of evidence of weather-related changes due to anthropogenic emissions induced, in part, by industrial capitalism. The issue centers on the extent to which man-made emissions as well as volcanic emissions contributed to the rise of the Anthropocene during the 19th -century. While humanity has been considered to be largely responsible for weather-related changes regarding shifts in wind current patterns, varying levels of precipitation, and drought-like conditions induced by an increase in anthropogenic emissions, leading Paul Crutzen to declare a new geologic epoch in Cuernavaca, Mexico (2000) during a gathering of atmospheric chemists, the conditions continued to be exacerbated by the close of the 19 th-century.

In recent years, numerous studies have emerged correlating the Anthropocene to industrial capitalism, documenting the increasing carbon footprint. Several of which include Jeremy Davies’s Birth of the Anthropocene (2016), Jesse Oak Taylor and Tobias Menely’s volume Anthropocene Reading: Literary History in Geologic Times (2017), Pieter Vermulen’s Literature and the Anthropocene (2020), and Seth Reno’s Early Anthropocene Literature in Britain, 1750–1884 (2021) among other publications. Many of the aforementioned studies and beyond focus on the negative effects upon the environs, which implicate human activity evident through humanity’s imprint upon lithostratigraphic records whether through glacier recession, soil erosion, declining high water marks, and so on as well dendrochronological study of growth rings in tree trunks, reflecting the changing weather conditions.

A variety of writers and artists documented the effects due, in part to a great extent, to the anthropogenic activity, which may include the sky watchers identified, but are not limited to the following.

In literary studies, one might think of literary and non-literary records:

• Luke Howard’s Essays on the Modifications of Clouds (1803)
• William Wordsworth's Lucy poems (1798) and “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807)
• George Gordon, Lord Byron's "Darkness" (1816)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Cloud” (1820), “To a Skylark” (1820), & “Ode to the West Wind” (1820)
• John Ruskin's "The 'Storm-Cloud' of the Nineteenth Century" (1884)

In visual art, a host of artists captured the meteorological changes and the sky-altering effects:

• Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818)
• J.M.W. Turner's atmospheric watercolor paintings (1818–1830)
• John Constable’s oil paintings/sketches in Hampstead, London (1821–1822)
• Thomas Cole’s cloud studies (1838)
• Vincent Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Cypresses (1889)

The panel invites cross-disciplinary humanities papers that may delve into literary studies, history of art, geology, industrialism, volcanology, and, of course, meteorology, focusing on weather as recorded in literary and visual art. For consideration, please submit an abstract (200-250 words) and biography (100 words) through the NeMLA portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22517.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Dewey W. Hall, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona at dwhall@cpp.edu.

Image Source: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818

Annual 18th- and 19th-century british women writers conference: Design
British women writers association
Palm springs, CA
march 24-27, 2027

 Abstract Deadline: October 18, 2026

In a review of Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament (1856), George Eliot writes, “There is a logic of form which cannot be departed from in ornamental design without a corresponding remoteness from perfection; unmeaning, irrelevant lines are as bad as irrelevant words or clauses, that tend no whither.” The ethics of design–whether ornamental, architectural, characterological, or psychological–were under consideration in much 18th- and 19th- century British literature and culture. From “demoniacal design[s]” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to romantic designs in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to drawing room designs in Ada and Rhoda Garrett’s Suggestions for House Decorating in Painting, Woodwork, and Furniture, women writers were clearly preoccupied with the various possibilities and risks associated with design. Where good design promised harmony, efficiency, and pleasure, bad design portended artifice, cunning, and conflict. In novels, characters who acted with design were represented as suspect, but in natural histories, forces that acted with design were represented as evidence of God. In art and ornament, design represented order and meaning; the lack of design represented chance and irrelevance. The process of designing also offered opportunities for individualism and collaboration and for thinking about the logic of aesthetics versus function.

The organizers of the 35th annual 18th- and 19th-century British Women Writers Conference invite proposals for papers on the theme of “Design” in texts authored by women, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming writers of the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The organizers also invite applicants to propose papers that challenge and query the boundaries of British literature by engaging with texts situated within transatlantic and global contexts. In addition to presentations on 18th- and 19th-century literature, presentations on history, art history, architecture, and related fields are welcome.

Participants may use the following topics as general guidelines for considering the conference theme of design:

Visual media, including architecture, fashion and clothing, sculpture,
decor and furniture, sewing and weaving
Futurism and Modernism/modernism
Urban planning and transportation
Designing public and private spaces
Movements, trends, imitation
Innovation and novelty
The process of design (vision, creation, public response)
Functionality
Accessibility
Sustainability
The home and interior design
Cookbook and menu design
Family planning, anatomy, and reproductive health
Social design (community, romance, friendship)
Aesthetic design, including plot and form
Literary forms/formalism
Nature, landscape, and ecological design
Patterns/motifs/shapes
Intention and purpose
Scheming and cunning
Style(s)
Artifice
Modernism/modernities
Course and syllabus design, institutional design

Proposals for individual papers and panels are due October 18, 2026. For paper proposals, please submit a 300-word abstract and short CV (no more than 2 pages). For panel proposals, please submit a short description of the panel, a 300-word abstract for each paper, and a short CV (no more than 2 pages) for each participant. Instructions for submission can be found here: https://britishwomenwriters.org/. Please note that registration will be due in January 2027.

The conference will be held at the Hilton Palm Springs. The hotel is centrally located in Downtown Palm Springs with shopping, restaurants, and coffee shops within walking distance.

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century medievalisms in british literature
the 62nd international congress on medieval studies; western michigan university
kalamazoo, mi
may 13-15, 2027

 Abstract Deadline: September 15, 2026

In Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son (1848), Mr. Dombey, Mr. Carker, Mrs. Skewton (Cleopatra), her daughter Edith (soon to be Mrs. Dombey), and Major Bagstock visit Warwick Castle:

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Skewton, with a faded little scream of rapture, “the Castle is charming!—associations of the Middle Ages—and all that—which is so truly exquisite. Don’t you dote upon the Middle Ages, Mr. Carker?”

“Very much, indeed,” said Mr. Carker.

“Such charming times!” cried Cleopatra. “So full of faith! So vigorous and forcible! So picturesque! So perfectly removed from commonplace! Oh dear! If they would only leave us a little more of the poetry of existence in these terrible days!”

Mrs. Skewton was looking sharp after Mr. Dombey all the time she said this, who was looking at Edith: who was listening, but who never lifted up her eyes.

“We are dreadfully real, Mr. Carker,” said Mrs. Skewton; “are we not?”

For this session, proposals might explore the factors, both nostalgic and cynical, that shaped nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature about the Middle Ages. What historical, social, and intellectual views shaped British nineteenth- and twentieth century approaches to the Middle Ages? How are nineteenth-century British medievalisms in particular both a check against and validation of progress? In what ways were these views limited or biased based on what the Victorians knew and believed and did not know, particularly when compared to advances in historical, psychological, and political knowledge in the next centuries? How have nineteenth- and twentieth-century medievalisms shaped adaptation and scholarship since? 

Along these lines, proposals might acknowledge the broader concept of medievalism(s), which not only invokes the cultural (e.g., gender, race, social class) and global dimensions of the Middle Ages but also includes traditional historical and philological critical approaches as well as creative, interpretive approaches. How do writers, historians, artists, and others in the British nineteenth and twentieth centuries both research and uncover the Middle Ages as well as creatively imagine and reimagine it?

Submit proposals using the International Congress Confex system:

https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress

Contact: Robert Sirabian (rsirabia@uwsp.edu) and Daniel Najork (daniel.najork@asu.edu)

Image Source: The End of the Song by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1902

Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature
A Special winter 2027 Issue
"Planetary Precarity"

 Essay Deadline: November 1, 2026

Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature invites article submissions on the topic of “planetary precarity” for its Winter 2027 issue. This special issue will consider how precarity is produced on both local and global scales. As humans confront our own possible extinction-level threats caused by climate disaster and, supposedly, a future dominated by artificial superintelligence, the organizers seek to investigate how the Victorians reconceived their own precarity in the face of extractive capitalism and ecological crisis. Essays may consider the complicities of Victorian science (including scientific institutions and technologies spawned by scientific breakthroughs), politics, and economics in producing precarity locally and/or globally. Essays could also explore counter-movements that fight to reduce precarity, such as eco-topian communities, trade unions, political parties, agricultural reformers, activist movements, and artists of the period. Authors may choose their preferred lens, from carbon to ecology, from labor to design, from bodies to affect. Overall, the special issue wishes to theorize and historically trace the emergence of the planetary as a politically and ecologically resonant category during the nineteenth century, although essays may also investigate precarity as a historically situated feeling generated by nineteenth-century political trends, scientific findings, and speculative art.

 

Essays should be 7,500-9,500 words, inclusive of notes. The citation style is The Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition), full footnotes and no bibliography. Please submit full essays by November 1, 2026, via Scholastica (https://victorians.scholasticahq.com/for-authors).

Ashley Miller (Albion College) joins Victorians’ editorial team as guest editor for this issue.

Image source: A Private View at the Royal Academy (1883) by William Powell Frith

"Keywords in Religion and Victorian Studies"
A Special Issue of Victorian Studies
NAVSA Religion and Spiritualities Caucus

 Abstract Deadline: July 31, 2026

At the invitation of Victorian Studies, the NAVSA Religion and Spiritualities Caucus is organizing a special issue devoted to fifteen keywords that illuminate the interdisciplinary dimensions of nineteenth-century religion. Contributors are invited to take up a particular keyword and make a pointed, argumentative case for what that keyword makes newly visible— historically, methodologically, or theoretically—in Victorian studies. 

We seek short essays (2,300-word maximum, inclusive of endnotes and bibliography), each taking its own distinctive approach to its keyword. 

The aim is not for a dictionary definition or encyclopedia-style entry but instead a polemical short-form argument about why the keyword matters now and what it makes newly visible in the study of Victorian religion. The collection as a whole aspires to serve as both a methodological resource and teaching tool, while showcasing some of the exciting work currently happening in our field.

Possible keywords might include:

• Affect 
• Archives 
• Class 
• Disability 
• Ecocriticism 
• Empire 
• Form 
• Gender 
• Industry 
• Lyric 
• Materiality 
• Politics 
• Print Culture 
• Race 
• Syncretism 
• Technology 
• Translation 
• Transnational 

Contributors are warmly encouraged to propose keywords not on this list.

To submit: Please email proposals of a keyword with a 300-word abstract to the Steering Committee of the Religion and Spiritualities Caucus at vs-rel-keywords@outlook.com by July 31, 2026. Abstracts should include your name, institutional affiliation, and a brief indication of your proposed essay’s central argument. Decisions on the abstracts will be communicated in September 2026, and final submissions will be due April 30, 2027 for peer review.

Image Source: The Lord Gave and the Lord Hath Taketh Away, Blessed Be the Name of the Lord by Frank Holl, 1868

HOgg’s World Now: Conference
James Hogg Society
University of Glasgow
July 2-4, 2027

 Abstract Deadline: December 31, 2026

The James Hogg Society will be holding a conference at the University of Glasgow on July 2-4, 2027. The organizers warmly invite paper proposals that engage with any aspect of Hogg’s life and writing and with the broader community of authors associated with Scottish Romanticism. The first volume of The Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg was published over thirty years ago now, and the edition is still ongoing, with several collections of Hogg’s periodical publications recently released. Considering the progress of this edition and other major editorial projects in Scottish Romantic studies (i.e., Galt, Lockhart, Scottish Women Writers), as well as new theoretical developments, this conference invites you to consider new ways of reading Hogg and his world. 

The James Hogg Society particularly welcome proposals from graduate students, postgraduate students, and early career scholars.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• Editing the works of the Scottish Romantics 

• The Blackwood’s Circle (including John Gibson Lockhart, William Maginn, David Macbeth Moir, Walter Scott, John Galt, John Wilson) 

• James Hogg and periodical culture

• Scottish women writers of the Romantic period and their relationship to Hogg and his world

• Hogg and transatlantic Scottish Romanticism 

• New archival, bibliographical, and editorial approaches to Hogg

• Hogg’s afterlives, including adaptations and fan culture 

• Reading Hogg and the Scottish Romantics through a Green or Blue Humanities lens

• James Hogg and Animal Studies

• Dis/ability in the works of Hogg and his contemporaries

• Theorizing Hogg’s treatment of Jacobitism in light of Leith Davis and Kevin James’s new edited collection, Shaping Jacobitism, 1688 to the Present: Memory, Culture, Networks (Edinburgh University Press, 2025)

• Hogg, colonization, empire, and/or Indigeneity

• Race and ethnicity in the works of the Scottish Romantics

• Hope in the unsettled age of the Scottish Romantics

• Scottish Romanticism and literary play/playfulness

Given Hogg’s tendency to challenge traditional forms, this conference will disrupt elements of the traditional conference, including different forms of presentations that allow for more time to discuss the ideas attendees bring to the table. The organizers welcome proposals for twenty-minute conference papers and for panels with a variety of formats, including roundtables.

Please submit a 250-word abstract by 31 December 2026 to Sharon Alker at alkersr@whitman.edu. Please address any questions to Sharon Alker.

Image Source: Portrait by John Watson Gordon, 1830

Leon Edel Prize
Henry James Review

Submission Deadline: November 1, 2026

The Leon Edel Prize is awarded annually for the best essay on Henry James by a beginning scholar.  The prize carries with it an award of $300, and the prize-winning essay will be published in the Henry James Review. 

The competition is open to applicants who have not held a full-time academic appointment for more than four years. Independent scholars and graduate students are encouraged to apply. 

Essays should be 20-30 pages (including notes), original, and not under submission elsewhere or previously published.  Please send the manuscript in Microsoft Word format.

Send electronic submissions to: hjamesr@creighton.edu

Author's name should not appear on the manuscript.  Please identify essays as submissions for the Leon Edel Prize.  The competition is limited to one submission per author.

A brief curriculum vitae should be included.  

Decisions about regular publication are also made at the same time as the prize decision. 

Image Source: National Portrait Gallery, London

Event
South Africa, 1904
A collaboration between the research society for victorian PERIODICALS (RSVP) and navsa’s empire and colonialism CAUCUS
Zoom
June 12, 2026

You are invited to "South Africa, 1904": A Collaboration Between RSVP and NAVSA's Empire and Colonialism Caucus! As part of our digital events series, the Empire Caucus has organized a Pick-a-Periodical event featuring Dr. Gigi Tang with our friends at the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP). Join us on Zoom on June 12 at 8 a.m. PST / 11 a.m. EST / 4 p.m BST / 5 p.m. CET to learn about the periodical South Africa and how Dr. Tang uses it in her research. The event will feature a presentation followed by an interactive discussion of a pre-circulated issue from the periodical.

Register now!

2026 Early Career Essay Prize
Victorian Poetry

Submission Deadline: August 3, 2026

Victorian Poetry invites submissions for its 2026 Early Career Essay Prize, which recognizes exemplary essays by untenured scholars of all ranks and affiliations (including NTT and graduate student colleagues). Conferred on an annual basis, the prize carries an award of $500 and publication in Victorian Poetry. Strong essays that do not win the award may also be considered for publication as recommended by the prize committee. Submissions are due 3 August 2026. Scholars wishing to be considered should submit anonymized MS Word essays and brief CVs to victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com with “Early Career Essay Prize” in the subject line. Prior to submission, consult the Victorian Poetry guidelines for authors. Essays written with the assistance of generative AI are ineligible for the prize.

Winning articles will be selected according to three criteria: (1) significance of contribution to the field of Victorian poetry (including its involvement with Victorian studies and other areas of inquiry in or beyond literary studies); (2) excellence of research, interpretation, and method; and (3) efficacy of presentation. The journal continues to expand its purview to a wider compass of archives and approaches. The organizers welcome work that capaciously (re)interprets the field's originary contexts and reconsiders Victorian poetry (broadly construed) in new, innovative, cross-disciplinary, theoretical, and / or experimental ways.