of victorian interest

 Call for Papers
Two panels at MLA 2027
Sponsored by the William MOrris Society in the United States
Los Angeles, California
January 7-10, 2027

Submission Deadline (for both panels): March 15, 2026

The William Morris Society in the United States is soliciting proposals for two panels at next year's MLA (January 7-10, 2027 in Los Angeles). You are warmly invited to submit proposals for either session. Please submit your proposals to the email addresses listed with each CFP. Submissions must be received by March 15.

Panel One:
William Morris, Labor & the Nineteenth Century

We invite papers that draw on William Morris’s socialism to examine nineteenth-century labor and craft practices, as well as the work of successors in Britain and elsewhere. Please submit 300-word abstracts and 2-page CVs.

Jennifer Rabedeau, Cornell University (rabedeau@cornell.edu) and Jesse Cordes Selbin, Gettysburg College (jcordess@gettysburg.edu).

Follow this link to the CFP posted on the MLA website.

Panel Two:
William Morris, Collections Technology & the Virtual Archive

We invite papers that consider collecting and collections with respect to William Morris and his circle. Topics include collecting practices, individual collections, collection architectures, and digitization processes. Please submit 300-word abstracts and 2-page CVs.

Jennifer Rabedeau, Cornell University (rabedeau@cornell.edu) and Amanda Gailey, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (gailey@unl.edu)

We are organizing this session in collaboration with the Society for Textual Scholarship. Follow this link to the CFP posted on the MLA website. Please note that this session is not guaranteed.

Financial support may be available from the William Morris Society in the United States for a speaker without institutional funding. If you would like to be considered for funding, please notify the session chairs when you submit your paper proposal.

Image source: William Morris's bedroom at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith

Victorian Personhood(s)
MLA Profession Themed Issue

Submission Deadline: March 20, 2026

This themed issue welcomes essays that consider the troublesome conception of Victorian personhood, understood not only as a legal but also as a literary-cultural property. We seek contributions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• How did formal and thematic innovations in the novel reflect or even inform the Victorian era’s changing notions of personhood?
• How did Victorian authors and legal professionals engage with personhood, whether in their biographies, their professional lives, or in their written work?
• How does empire complicate Victorian personhood? Were legal and/or literary-cultural definitions of personhood unified at home and in the colonies, or did place, context, and imperialism turn personhood into an uneven field?
• How was personhood connected to major socioeconomic, political, and literary changes in Britain, such as the growth of industry (e.g., corporate personhood, nonhuman entities), the universal suffrage movement, the rise of the serialized periodical, etc.?
• How do popular Victorian genres (sensation fiction, the detective story, the domestic novel, etc.) reflect changing definitions of personhood?
• How did women writers and authors of color respond to legal restrictions that limited their personhood?
• How did legal debates surrounding unsettled and limited states of personhood (e.g., the unborn, stillborn, enslaved, absent, and dead, as well as trans and intersex people) inspire the literary imaginary?
• How did writers imagine future notions of personhood in terms of corporate, animal, environmental, and technological conceptions?

Please send 300-word abstracts with a working title for a 7,000–7,500-word article and brief CV to coeditors Jolene Zigarovich (jolene.zigarovich@uni.edu) and Adam Kozaczka (adam.kozaczka@tamiu.edu) by 20 March 2026. Authors will be notified if their proposals have been accepted by 31 March 2026, and complete articles will be due by 15 October 2026. This themed issue will be received for review at SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, and submissions will undergo double-anonymized peer review. The full CFP is available here.

Image credit: The National Archives

Visiting Full-Time Faculty Position in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
Department of English
College of the Holy Cross
Worcester, MA

Application Deadline: April 1, 2026

The Department of English at the College of the Holy Cross invites applications for a two-year visiting full-time faculty position appointment in Nineteenth-Century British Literature to begin in August 2026. This position carries a 3-3 teaching load, and will involve teaching 100-level introductory literature courses, 200-level intermediate majors courses and non-majors topic courses, and upper-division courses in both British Romantic literature and British Victorian literature. Scholarly focus can be in Romanticism or Victorian literature.

Visiting full-time faculty teach 3 courses each semester and are eligible to apply for support to present at a conference or attend a professional development program through the Provost’s Supplemental Research Fund. The College will support reimbursement of relocation costs within its published policies. This position offers full benefits and a salary of $70,000.  The College will not support H-1B visa applications that require the $100,000 employer fee.

QUALIFICATIONS
Candidates must demonstrate commitment to, and excellence in, undergraduate teaching and inclusive pedagogies as informed by current practice and scholarship in the field.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
Please submit a letter of application; a current curriculum vitae; a statement on teaching philosophy and interests; graduate transcripts, and two confidential letters of recommendation. 

In your cover letter, please address the ways you might contribute to and
further the College’s mission as a Jesuit, undergraduate liberal arts college.

The College of the Holy Cross uses Interfolio to collect all faculty job applications electronically. Please submit all application materials to https://apply.interfolio.com/181048.

Applications must be submitted by April 1, 2026. Interviews of selected applicants will take place shortly after via Zoom. Questions about this search may be directed to Prof. Jonathan Mulrooney, English Department Chair (jmulroon@holycross.edu).

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS
College of the Holy Cross is a highly selective Catholic liberal arts college in the Jesuit tradition. It enrolls about 3,200 students and is located in Worcester, Massachusetts—New England’s second-largest city. The College seeks faculty members who demonstrate an enduring commitment to academic excellence and inclusive excellence and who embrace the educational benefits of a richly diverse community. Holy Cross aspires to meet the needs of dual-career couples, in part through its membership in the Higher Education Consortium of Central Massachusetts and the New England Higher Education Recruitment Consortium. To learn more about faculty life at the College, applicants are encouraged to visit http://holycross.edu/join.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYMENT STATEMENT
The College is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and complies with all Federal and Massachusetts laws concerning equal opportunity.

Co-Editor Position
The Gaskell Journal

Application Deadline: March 2, 2026

The Gaskell Journal invites applications for the position of co-Editor.

The Gaskell Journal is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published annually, dedicated to disseminating the most authoritative, dynamic and agenda-setting research in Gaskell Studies. It is owned by the Gaskell Society and is distributed to its members, as well as being indexed in various academic databases (for more details, see The Gaskell Journal – The annual Journal of the Gaskell Society). In a typical issue, the journal publishes 3-4 original articles, 3-4 book reviews, and reports from the Society’s branches across the UK and the world.

The successful applicant will become one of two co-Editors responsible for receiving, desk-reviewing and distributing for peer review article submissions, and overseeing the revisions process, as well as contributing to reviewing as suits their expertise. In addition, they will assist in answering enquiries, soliciting contributions, and maintaining links with the Gaskell Society and with the journal’s Editorial Board. They will work closely with the Reviews Editor, Production Editor and Editorial Assistant to produce the journal each year, including co-writing the journal’s front matter and receiving and editing reports from the various Gaskell Society branches.

The co-Editors are also responsible for coordinating the journal’s biannual Joan Leach Memorial Graduate Student Essay Prize, in collaboration with the Editorial Board and a rotating Guest Judge.

We invite applications from interested parties who meet the following requirements:

• You are an established or emerging scholar working in Victorian studies (or a closely related area) with a focus on literature
• You have taught and/or published on Elizabeth Gaskell’s works
• You have editorial and/or (peer) review experience
• You are enthusiastic about taking the journal forward and generating academic interest in Gaskell studies
• If possible, you are willing to attend the Gaskell Society conference and/or AGM on occasion, which are usually held in the UK

To apply, please submit a CV and a one-page statement of interest, indicating your relevant experience and what you would bring to the role, to Ben Moore (B.P.Moore@uva.nl) and Rebecca Styler (rstyler@lincoln.ac.uk) by Monday, March 2, 2026.

Short-listed applicants will be invited to attend an informal online interview.

Applicants should be aware that the position is not remunerated.

Call for papers
Women and/of the Empire
International Conference
University of Porto, Portugal
29-30 October 2026

Proposal Deadline: 15 June 2026

Under the Royal Titles Act of 1876, Britain’s Queen Victoria, who had often, albeit informally, been called Empress of India, had the title officially added to her style. The nominal head of the most powerful country in the world henceforth matched the titles used by the monarchs of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. In a context of international rivalry, the overtones of grandeur were intended to instill a notion of British superiority as well as to flatter the “Mother of Europe”. Ironically, however, the new title was also an attempt to cover up how close British control over India had come to utter collapse due to the Indian Mutiny (also known in India, significantly, as the First War of Independence) less than two decades earlier. At the same time, Victoria’s proclamation as Empress arguably exalted her as a supreme figure of the age in a global perspective as much as highlighted the fact that she was a woman with visibility and power in a period that almost universally denied women a range of rights and opportunities that we have come to assume are integral to any modern, democratic society.

This conference will seek to explore the realities and the legacies of the Victorian Age, its monarch and its empire. It will focus on women, their engagement in private and public life, their experience of class, travel, migration, and cultural exchanges – on either side of the cultural divide involved in imperial encounters – as well as on how women writers, of Victorian and later periods, have engaged artistically and critically with such realities in their poetical and fictional works.

Although Queen Victoria provides the starting point for the conference, we are also interested in contributions dealing with other aspects of the imperial/colonial experience, not limited to the nineteenth century, women, or the British Empire. Comparative perspectives, as well as broader chronological approaches, are also welcome.

The organisers welcome proposals for 20-minute papers in English responding to the above. Suggested (merely indicative) topics include:

• national (ethnic, religious, etc.) identity/ies and the ideology/ies of empire
• women, power/powerlessness, and the experience of empire
• Victoria’s/Victorian exceptionalism in a historical and global perspective
• nostalgia, trauma, exaltation: the legacies of empire
• institutions of national/imperial memory: academies, museums, libraries, archives
• rival discourses of patriotism and identity, war and peace, prejudice and (in)tolerance
• literary and artistic representations of Queen Victoria in the nineteenth century and later
• politically radical perspectives on, and attitudes to, empire by Victorian women writers and activists
• representations of empire: literature, autobiography, journalism, the visual arts, digital media, etc.

This conference reflects the concerns of the research strand “From Classicism to Victorianism” of CETAPS (the Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies). 

The standard conference fee is 80 euros. A reduced fee of 40 euros is available for students. The conference will be held in person at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. All delegates are responsible for their own travel arrangements and accommodation.

Submissions should be sent by email to victoriaempire@letras.up.pt

Please organise your proposal into two separate files:

1. a file containing the full title and a 200-250 word description of your paper;
2. a file containing the author’s data: name, affiliation, contact address, paper title and author’s bio-note (150 words).

Please name these two documents as follows:

1. Surname_Name_Abstract_Empire
2. Surname_Name_AuthorInfo_Empire

Deadline for proposals: 15 June 2026

Notification of acceptance: 30 June 2026

Deadline for registration: 30 September 2026

More information available later at https://womenandempire.wordpress.com/

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Ana Cristina Mendes
(Professor of English Studies, University of Lisbon, President of the Association for Cultural Studies)

Martin Hewitt
(President of the British Association for Victorian Studies, Visiting Professor of English, University of Leeds, Editor of the Curran Index)

Executive Committee:
Jorge Bastos da Silva (coord.) | Ana Catarina Anjos | Cláudia Coimbra | Tânia Cerqueira

Scientific Committee:
Alexandra Lopes | Dragoș Ivana | Elena Butoescu | Iolanda Freitas Ramos | Jéssica Bispo | João Paulo Pereira da Silva | Jorge Bastos da Silva | Katarzyna Pisarska | Maria Zulmira Castanheira | Miguel Ramalhete Gomes | Paula Alexandra Guimarães | Rogério Puga

For further queries please contact:
CETAPS – Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
Via Panorâmica, s/n
4150-564 PORTO
PORTUGAL
www.cetaps.com

Call for Papers
Special Issue of Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film
Adapting Thackeray

Abstract Deadline: January 19, 2026

Is Thackeray adaptable? William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the titans of the Victorian age whose realistic works and characters satirized and moralized British society. While theatrical and cinematic adaptions of his works pale in comparison to other novelists like Dickens, many throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century reimagined Thackeray and his characters, particularly Becky Sharp, Colonel Newcombe, Barry Lyndon, and Arthur Pendennis. Attempts at adapting Thackeray produced stirring successes and complete failures from authors and dramatists including Dion Boucicault, J.M. Barrie, Langdon Mitchell, and John Brougham. These productions reworked Thackeray while exploring a number of social and cultural issues surrounding gender, empire, performance, and war. 

This special issue is interested in investigating the ways Thackeray has been adapted on the stage and early screen, but also in shining a light on the actors, directors, and performances that brought his works to life.

Topics might include:

• 19th/20th Century Early Film/Theater adaptions of Thackeray
• Thackeray and Empire
• Gender/Queer Thackeray
• Thackeray and Theater
• Transmedia Adaptations
• Thackeray and Performance
• Disability and Thackeray
• Thackeray and Theatre/Film history

Please send paper abstracts of 250 words with short bio (100 words) by January 19, 2026 to guest editors Matthew Skwiat at Matthew.Skwiat@morehouse.edu and Christina Jenat christina.jen@sus.edu. Acceptances will be sent out by February 9th. Final articles are due June 1st 2026 and should be between 5000-8000 words, inclusive of citation.

DEADLINE EXTENDED
CALL FOR PAPERS THE TWENTY-SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL THOMAS HARDY CONFERENCE AND FESTIVAL
Dorchester, Dorset, UK
July 25th—August 1st 2026

Submission Deadline: January 25, 2026

Paper proposals are welcome on any aspect of Hardy’s life, work, and legacy for the Twenty-Seventh International Hardy Conference and Festival. Significant Hardy anniversaries in 2026 include the 150th anniversary of The Hand of Ethelberta, the 140th anniversary of The Mayor of Casterbridge, the 120th anniversary of The Dynasts (Part 2), and the 110th anniversary of Selected Poems. Proposals for papers on any of these anniversary texts are especially welcome.

Papers should be planned for delivery times of a maximum of 20 minutes (approximately 2000 words).

Like its predecessors, the 2026 Conference is designed to appeal both to Hardy scholars and to general readers. We invite proposals from established scholars, Hardy enthusiasts, early-career researchers, independent scholars, and postgraduate students. Postgraduate students may be eligible for bursaries to help defray conference expenses. Confirmed plenary speakers include Jacqueline Dillion, Roger Ebbatson, Trish Ferguson, Mark Ford, Richard Franklin, and Jackie Walker. Lectures and conference papers will be supplemented by excursions and entertainments relating to the local context which Hardy’s work celebrates, and from which it emerged.

Proposals (absolute maximum 300 words) should be sent by email to Dr Mary Rimmer at mrimmer@unb.ca. Each must be accompanied by a short biographical note (75 words or less) in a separate document file. These notes will not be consulted during the vetting process but will be used by panel chairs to introduce speakers during the conference.

All submissions will be read and adjudicated by an academic panel. The closing date is 25 January 2026. Papers given at the Conference may be considered for publication in the peer-reviewed Thomas Hardy Journal appearing in Autumn 2026.

Please note that all submissions will be acknowledged: if the submission is not acknowledged within four business days, the proposer should re-send.

Doctoral Futures
Co-led by the ACLS, AHA, MLA, and Sbl

NAVSA is proud to participate in Doctoral Futures, an initiative co-led by the ACLS, AHA, MLA, and SBL, and generously funded by the Mellon Foundation. Doctoral Futures seeks to transform doctoral education in the humanities and interpretive social sciences to better serve students, advance scholarship, and contribute to the public good. NAVSA has committed to work with other scholarly organizations to:

• Advocate for higher completion rates, efficient time-to-degree, equitable funding, and sustainable program structures;
• Support the recruitment of diverse cohorts including first-generation students, students from underrepresented institutions, and non-traditional candidates;
• Promote curricular innovation that integrates rigorous academic and scholarly training with professional development;
• Support collective and holistic mentorship models and training faculty in inclusive advising practices;
• Center principles of access and inclusion in all aspects of graduate education;
• Prioritize student well-being throughout the doctoral experience.

We welcome recognition of the full spectrum of careers for which doctoral training prepares graduates, including positions in teaching-intensive institutions, cultural organizations, the public service, the private sector, and publicly engaged scholarship, and commit to legitimizing these diverse pathways through our conferences, publications, and professional discourse.

More information about the Doctoral Futures initiatives can be found here: https://www.acls.org/doctoral-futures/

Call for Papers
The Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities (JURH)

Submission Deadline: February 9, 2026

WANT TO PUBLISH YOUR SCHOLARLY WORK?

• The Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities (JURH) is looking for excellent undergraduate essays.

WHAT IS JURH?

• JURH is a new biennial journal that will provide a national forum to showcase the best in undergraduate Humanities research.
• JURH is governed by a board of nationally recognized scholars and overseen by Dr. Lara Karpenko, Professor of English, and Director of the Center for the Humanities at Carroll University and Dr. Lauri Dietz, Executive Director, Center for Faculty Development, Loyola University, Chicago.
• JURH is run by an Editorial Team of undergraduates. The ET will be responsible for all publishing and editing decisions.
• The inaugural issue in 2023 published 14 articles representing universities such as Brown University, Beloit College, and Chapman University. Submissions also represented four countries and five US states!
• Click here to learn more about JURH.

HOW TO APPLY?

• Send .docx documents in an email attachment to Dr. Lara Karpenko at lkarpenk@carrollu.edu by February 9th, 2026.
• All work must be submitted in MLA format and be between 4,000 and 10,000 words.
• All writers must be current undergraduates or have graduated within the past twenty-four months. 
• Writers can be from any 2- or 4- year institution across the United States or world.
• The editors are looking for work in the following fields (list not exhaustive): art history, critical race studies, cultural studies, dance studies, film criticism, literary criticism and literary studies, gender studies, history, musicology, philosophy, politics and political theory, rhetoric, religious studies, and theatre studies.

Victorian Periodicals Review
ASSOCIATE EDITOR POSITION

Application Deadline: December 15, 2025

Victorian Periodicals Review (VPR) is hiring an Associate Editor to oversee book reviews and assist the Editor with content development. The Associate Editor will help shape the journal’s editorial vision and critical interests, and we are seeking an innovative scholar of nineteenth-century periodical studies with meticulous editing and organizational skills.

The Associate Editor will be responsible for the book reviews section, including identifying new books relevant to the field of periodical studies, coordinating with publishers, recruiting reviewers, offering advice for revision, copyediting, and proofreading. The Associate Editor will also work with the Editor to organize roundtables, state-of-the-field essays, and other special features. The Associate Editorship is a three-year position with the opportunity to renew; it is an unpaid position and is ideal for a scholar looking to develop editorial and leadership skills.

VPR is deliberately seeking to diversify its editorial board, and we encourage expressions of interest from scholars from a wide range of backgrounds, specializations, and career levels. Candidates must have demonstrated expertise in nineteenth-century periodicals or newspapers (through relevant publications or teaching) and impeccable written communication skills. Editorial experience is desirable (such as working on a journal or digital project, editing special issues or collections of essays, or supervising MA/PhD students).

Candidates should send a one-page letter explaining their interest and qualifications for the role and a one-page CV to Katherine Malone, Editor, katherine.malone@sdstate.edu by Monday, December 15, 2025. The position will begin in late January 2026.