Victorian Trade
VSAWC Conference
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
May 1-2, 2026

Proposal deadline: December 1, 2025

The Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada is pleased to announce that its next conference, on the topic of Victorian Trade, will take place in Winnipeg MB (Treaty One Territory) on May 1 and 2, 2026. VSAWC looks forward to welcoming Dr. Sarah Fee (Senior Curator, Global Fashion & Textiles; Royal Ontario Museum) as our plenary speaker.

Trade establishes new relationships and shapes existing ones. Nineteenth-century trade evokes not only economic pursuits, labour activism, and the geographical movement of goods but also the exchange of ideas. We encourage proposals that expand our ideas about Victorian trade, whether focused on material objects, people, knowledge, identities, values, or emotions.

Topics for exploration include but are not limited to:

• the movement of raw materials, manufactured goods, and knowledge between people and places
• treaties, agreements, and contracts
• the trade in enslaved people and products of their labour
• bartering and bargaining
• the nineteenth-century book trade
• the nineteenth-century art market
• trade unions, guilds, and apprenticeships
• vocational schools, workingmen’s libraries, and reading rooms for tradespeople
• trade publications
• the emergence of new professions and professional identities
• national and regional borders
• physical and conceptual borders
• non-commercial forms of exchange, including gift culture
• material culture and craft
• stock exchanges and banking
• stamps, monetary systems, and the gold standard
• transportation and communication systems
• street trade, peddling, arcades, and department stores
• mutuality, trust, distrust, and betrayal
• hoarding, frauds, swindles, and scams
• neo-Victorian authors who ‘trade’ in Victorian tropes
• the trading of ideas in the context of contemporary or Victorian-era education

Organizers welcome proposals for papers, panels, and workshops that explore the theme of Victorian Trade. Established scholars, emerging scholars, independent scholars, and graduate students are all encouraged to apply. Please send a proposal of no more than 200 words, accompanied by a brief biographical statement, to vsawc2026@gmail.com. In the case of panels or workshops, please share participants’ materials in a single email. Please submit proposals no later than December 1, 2025.

Our conference will be held at the Alt Hotel in downtown Winnipeg. Graduate students and underemployed scholars will have the opportunity to apply for funding to reduce the cost of participation. Please direct any questions to conference host Dr. Vanessa Warne (vanessa.warne@umanitoba.ca). To learn more about the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada and past conferences, please visit our site. To learn more about our organization’s journal, Victorian Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies, please visit: https://victorianreview.org/