of victorian interest

“The Underground: Prohibition, Abolition, Expression”
Midwest Victorian Studies Association 2026
Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio
April 10-12, 2026

Proposal Deadline: December 6, 2025

Inspired by Cincinnati’s historic role in the Underground Railroad and its National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the theme of this year’s conference is “The Underground: Prohibition, Abolition, Expression.” This year’s conference seeks to investigate the relationship between the literal underground — the built and geological spaces beneath our feet — and the metaphorical and political “undergrounds” of Victorian Britain. Prohibitions and abolitions can drive things underground, but the underground can also be a place of fecundity and growth. What kinds of expression result from conditions of prohibition or abolition? What grows underground?

Paper topics might include but are not limited to:

• Colonial uprisings and revolutions; underground newspapers, publications, and circulations
• Abolition: legacies of abolishing the slave trade, emancipation, reactions to the U.S. Civil War
• Race science and racial passing as modes of concealment or subversion
• Prohibition and temperance movements
• Underground diplomacy and intelligence networks in imperial contexts
• Underground railways in London and elsewhere
• Scientific and subterranean imaginaries, e.g. geological time, fossil records, stratigraphy
• Seeds, literal and figurative: underground forms of botanical life (e.g. roots, fungi, rhizomatic species)
• Anthems and protest music
• Censorship and archives that exist due to censorship (e.g. Lord Chamberlain’s Plays)
• Laboring “underground”: mining, sex work, child labor, informal or clandestine earnings
• Bans, embargos, vetoes, boycotts, bars, disbarment, erasure
• Finding one’s voice in a repressive atmosphere
• “Underground” sexualities and gender expressions
• Marginal religious sects and spiritualist circles
• Substitution, coding, improvisation
• Closed sessions, private meetings, clubs, secret societies 
• Fairy tales and underground worlds
• Discarded, suppressed, or “low” cultural forms (e.g.ephemera and scrapbooks)
• Forms of resistance: labor regulations, union efforts, grass-roots political movements
• Technologies of concealment and exposure (e.g. x-rays, coding, telegraphy)

Remote Participation Keyword Roundtable:

The majority of the conference will be devoted to in-person papers. However, in lieu of seminars this year, we are experimenting with a hybrid roundtable session for lightning talks on a keyword. Thus a subset of our call for papers is a call for proposals for the keyword roundtable, which includes the opportunity for remote participation.

If you are interested in participating this session, please propose a keyword and plan to give a six-minute talk about how it illuminates and raises questions about the Victorian period and our contemporary interactions with it. Talks that engage with teaching, research process, and other types of work are welcome. These short presentations will be followed by a moderated discussion of the intersections — conceptual or practical — between these topics. 

All other conference sessions will be in-person only. Remote participants (presenters and attendees) will have access to this keyword session only at a separate, much reduced, conference registration rate. This hybrid format offers space to surface terms and concepts that resist easy consensus, and to reflect critically on what language could or could not do in the nineteenth century — and what it still can’t do today.

Conference Highlights:

• Stedman Lecture by Nathan K. Hensley, Professor, Georgetown University
• MVSA Lifetime Achievement Award honoring Linda K. Hughes, Professor Emerita, Texas Christian University
• The conference will run from lunchtime, Friday, April 10, to lunchtime, Sunday, April 12. The Board Meeting will take place in the morning of Friday, April 10.

How to Apply:

Please submit an abstract (~350 words) and a brief CV for individual papers or keyword submissions. To propose an in-person panel or roundtable, submit a brief overview, plus individual paper abstracts and brief CVs for all participants.

Please apply by December 6, 2025, through this Google form (https://bit.ly/MVSA2026). The committee aims to return decisions by the end of the calendar year.

Click the following link to download the call for papers as a PDF.

Image: A Ride for Freedom-The Fugitive Slaves (Eastman Johnson, 1862) 

The Critical Age in Victorian Popular Literature
Online Study Day in Association with the Victorian Popular Fiction Association
Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Keynote Speaker: Dr Louise Benson James, Ghent University

Deadline for Submissions: February 19, 2026

This one-day symposium seeks to explore representations of the ‘critical age’ – the (peri-) menopause – in Victorian popular literature. The peri-menopausal and menopausal experiences of Victorian women have to date been overlooked or underrepresented in scholarly discussions of the period. Victorian popular literature, from novels to periodicals to advice books, provided an essential forum for discussing and shaping the public understanding of women’s bodies, even as much of it sought to obscure the female body. The (peri-) menopausal experience was often framed in terms of illness, excess, and degeneration, or, conversely, was relegated to silence. Women at the ‘critical age’ are frequently marginalised and associated with a range of negative stereotypes in literary and cultural narratives. This call for papers invites exploration of how this phase of women’s lives was constructed in the Victorian imagination, in medical discourses and advice literature, and in women’s lived experiences.

Organizers invite 20-minute papers exploring any aspect of the critical age in Victorian popular literature. Topics for exploration include but are not limited to:

• Representations of the critical age in Victorian popular fiction

• The medicalisation of (peri-) menopause

• Cultural constructions of middle-aged women

• Class and (peri-) menopause

• Menopause in Victorian advice literature

• Motherhood and (peri-) menopause

• Experiences of the critical age in Victorian women’s life writing

• Myths and popular misconceptions

The event will also include a Digital Humanities Research Skills Workshop, with an emphasis on making digital methods more accessible. Organizers invite short papers or workshop proposals that showcase how digital tools can be used to research women and their bodies in Victorian literature. Possible topics include data creation/cleaning/visualisation, textual, quantitative or statistical analysis, using AI or specific tools (such as Voyant or Power BI).

The event will be free to VPFA members and £5 for non-members. To join the VPFA click HERE.

Please send proposals (max. 250 words) and a short biographical note to jessica.cox@brunel.ac.uk and siobhan.smith@tees.ac.uk by 19th February 2026.

Sally Mitchell Prize

Submission Deadline: December 1, 2025

The annual Sally Mitchell Prize recognizes the best paper presented by a graduate student at the annual NAVSA conference. All graduate students presenting a paper at the 2025 "Aftermaths" conference are invited to submit their papers for consideration. Papers must be received as electronic files (MS Word format preferred) by Monday, December 1, 2025. To be eligible, you must be a graduate student at the time of your presentation.

Because the contest honors the paper as it was given at the conference, please keep your essays to under 12 pages double-spaced, 8.5 x 11’ paper, inclusive of notes and works cited. (Handouts and slides or other images may be included as an appendix, if these were given at the conference.)

Please submit an electronic version of your essay as a single attachment to an email that contains the following information:

• your name
• affiliation (rank and dissertation director, if applicable)
• title of the paper
• snail mail and email address

Send the submission by email to Pamela K. Gilbert (PamelaKGilbert@auburn.edu).

The winning paper will be selected based on the following criteria: 1) potential significance for Victorian studies; 2) quality and depth of scholarly research and interpretation; and 3) clarity and effectiveness of presentation. The judges will choose one essay for the award and may also choose two honorary runners-up. The prize winner will receive $250 and a year's free NAVSA membership (including a subscription to Victorian Studies). If the judges are deadlocked, the final decision will be made by the NAVSA Executive Committee.

Women, Money, and markets:
Crisis and Resilience (1650-1950)
The Foundling Museum, London
June 12-13, 2026

Abstract Deadline: January 15, 2026

Organizers invite submissions for their 9^th interdisciplinary conference exploring how women’s interactions with money, markets, and finance have shaped, and been shaped by, economic crises, financial literacy practices, and strategies for resilience across time and borders. This year, we especially welcome reflections on how evolving political landscapes reshape economic power, knowledge access, and inclusion. womenmoneymarkets.co.uk

The Foundling Museum will be celebrating the publication of their first edited collection, Women, Money, and Markets: Uncovering the Invisible Hands of the Economy (Boydell & Brewer, 2026).

Possible areas of interest include but are not limited to:

• Material Culture and Financial Activism
  ~ Drawing inspiration from The Foundling Hospital’s archives, how material items, including sewing/knitting, tokens, calendars, etc., were used by women to teach, learn, or execute financial skills, especially when formal institutions excluded them; how artifacts—e.g. pocketbooks, receipts, letters, teaching pamphlets—help to reveal financial practices that women adopted when formal systems were under threat or failed.

• Resilience in Marginalisation
  ~ Women’s survival strategies, real or fictional—e.g. cooperatives, informal credit, communal aid—in the face of systemic exclusion from formal markets, such as through.

• Literature, Media, and Representation
  ~ Historical and fictional portrayals of women’s money agency, and financial roles during economic collapses or shifts.

• Comparative and Cross-Cultural Dimensions 
  ~ Global case studies comparing diverse legal and economic environments, from colonial economies to more recent policy changes. 
  ~ Differences and commonalities in how women in different societies responded to economic marginalisation or inclusion.

•  Surviving Economic and Political Backlash 
  ~ Fictional depictions of women exhibiting financial ingenuity against barriers, or amidst repression, particularly when legal safeguards are weakened.  
  ~ Women’s resilience practices during discriminatory regimes or policy rollbacks. How women acquired, deployed, or withheld financial knowledge during periods of political and economic upheaval.
  ~ How diminished legal protections have disrupted women's financial agency.

Submission Guidelines

• Abstracts: Up to 300 words for individual papers.
• Panel Proposals:Include abstracts (≤300 words each) for up to three speakers.
• Formats: Individual papers, panels, or roundtable discussions.

Submit to: Enquiries to Dr. Emma Newport at e.newport@sussex.ac.uk.

Submissions via Google Form in link or via QR code.

Charles Dickens Birthday Virtual Conference
February 7, 2026

Proposal Deadline: December 1, 2025

The Dickens Society is delighted to share this Call for Presentations for their upcoming online event:

Novel Beginnings: A Virtual Conference Celebrating Charles Dickens’s Birthday

This free virtual event will take place on the morning of Saturday, February 7, 2026 (CST) and will later be uploaded to the Society’s YouTube channel.

The conference will feature a series of pre-recorded presentations (approximately 10 minutes each), followed by a live Zoom discussion lasting 1-2 hours. Presenters are required to attend the live session; pre-recorded presentations will not be aired if the presenter is absent.

Organizers invite proposals engaging with the theme of “novel beginnings,” interpreted broadly. Possible topics might include:

• Dickens’s birthday and the idea of renewal
• Beginnings in Dickens’s life and career
• Opening lines or chapter openings
• Character introductions and first impressions
• New beginnings, rebirth, and creative renewal in Dickens’s works

Successful applicants will be invited to register via a forthcoming Eventbrite notice and will receive the Zoom link about one week before the event.

Please submit a proposal of 100–200 words (Word or PDF) by December 1, 2025, to Céleste Callen (drcelestecallen@gmail.com).

Organizers particularly encourage submissions from graduate students, early-career researchers, and independent scholars.

Call for applications
VIctorianist Writing Retreat at Dickens Universe
UC Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California
July 26-August 1, 2026

Application Deadline: December 1, 2025

The Dickens Project is excited to announce a new week-long Victorianist Writing Retreat, held at UC Santa Cruz as part of our annual summer Dickens Universe conference. This retreat offers scholars who are not affiliated with Dickens Project consortium institutions the opportunity to attend the Universe, as well as to dedicate time during the week to writing in community.

In 2026, the Dickens Universe, including the Victorianist Writing Retreat, will take place from July 26-August 1. While the 2026 Universe will be focused on Bleak House, participants in the retreat need not be writing on Bleak House or on Dickens. Scholars working in any area of global British nineteenth-century studies are free to apply.

Hosted by Dr. Heather Nelson, this retreat is designed for scholars who are at least three years beyond their Ph.D. and who are working on a book, book chapter, or journal article. Applications are welcome from college and university faculty on and off the tenure ladder, independent scholars, high school teachers, and alt-ac workers.

Participants in the retreat will spend three hours every afternoon writing in some kind of communal structure (to be determined by group members in accordance with their preferred writing practices). They will also meet for one hour every morning to discuss and workshop material written the previous day. Everyone who participates in the retreat is welcome to participate in as many or as few Dickens Universe activities as they choose. The writing blocks and workshops won’t conflict with scheduled lectures, faculty seminars, or social events. More information about the Dickens Universe is available at https://dickens.ucsc.edu/dickens-universe/.

To apply, please send an email to Courtney Mahaney (cmahaney@ucsc.edu) that includes a 2-page C.V. and a 500-word abstract of the writing project you’d like to work on during the retreat. 

Successful applicants will need to register for the Dickens Universe and choose whether they would like to live on campus or stay off campus for the week. The on-campus registration cost in 2026 will be $1,950; the commuter registration will be $975 and includes all meals. More information about registration will be sent to accepted participants in February of 2026.

Feel free to email the Dickens Project (dpj@ucsc.edu) with any questions. 

• Announcement webpage: https://dickens.ucsc.edu/vwr/
• Download the flyer: https://dickens.ucsc.edu/files/2025/10/VWR-flyer.pdf

Order and Chaos: Vernon Lee and the Politics of Disruption
University of Liverpool, School of the Arts Library
1-3 September 2026, in-person and online

Abstract deadline: 18 January 2026
Registration opens: 1 May 2026

 “It is only in our own day that people are beginning to question the perfection of established rules of conduct, to discuss the drawbacks of duty and self-sacrifice, and to speculate upon the possible futility of all ethical systems, nay, upon the possible vanity of all ideals and formulas whatever.” 
—Vernon Lee, Gospels of Anarchy, 1909

A radical breakdown of trust in institutions across government, media, education, religion— is currently gripping Western Europe and the US. An atmosphere of uncertainty and fear has been created: for individuals, for groups holding common goals, and even for whole nations as the spectres of authoritarianism and anarchy become increasingly real. Among much else, freedom of thought the right of assembly, personal/medical rights, gender preference and expression, efforts to save the environment—all are under attack throughout the world.

In 1908, Vernon Lee (1856-1935)—a writer always sensitive to new political, social and cultural formations—wrote Gospels of Anarchy with her signature blend of irony, and literary flair. The book explores, and sometimes devastates, the theories of Order and Anarchy, and of Utopia and Dystopia, promulgated by literary and philosophical giants of the nineteenth century such as Emerson, Tolstoi, Nietzsche, William James and H. G. Wells. In 1912, her book Vital Lies expanded on these themes. In a manifesto that speaks loudly to our own era of post-truth politics, she vehemently attacked those who were “redefining truth in such a way as to include edifying and efficacious fallacy and falsehood” and thus helping to dissolve the whole idea of truth altogether.

This conference aims to explore the political questions and challenges we face today through the lens that Vernon Lee brought to the same kind of challenges in her time: a lens that is simultaneously thought-provoking, curious, playful, radical, and multidisciplinary. Papers may wish to explore the breakdown and/or the imposition of illusory order or structure in various fields (educational, social, commercial, entertainment, literary, scientific, information), what damage it is doing and whether it can somehow be harnessed or managed to be beneficial; how resistance, rebellion and nonconformity in public, academic, and private life, thought and publication can modify “however infinitesimally, the opinions and ideals and institutions of the present and the future” as Lee suggests in Gospels of Anarchy.

Organisers welcome presentations, lightning presentations, panels/roundtables, workshops, or creative practice sessions that engage with the following topics (but are not limited to)

• Freedom of Thought, Speech, and Expression
• Pacifism, anti-violence, anti-nationalism, anti-imperialism
• Protest, strikes, rebellion
• Philosophy, ethics, and morality (individual, governmental, national, corporate)
• Feminisms, local, global and radical
• Trans studies
• Human and animal rights
• Psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and mental health
• Environment, ecology, and the Anthropocene
• Sustainable futures
• Education and self-development

Organisers would particularly like to hear about the ways in which Lee’s works speak to current events and trends, and postulate or enable the development of healthy, sustainable futures.

Papers (15 minutes) Roundtable/ panel (60 mins), workshops (60 mins), creative practice session (60 mins), and lightning papers (10 mins).

Organisers would be delighted to discuss proposals for panels or individual presentations, and to answer any questions you may have. Please submit questions, abstracts (300 words) and a short bio (100 words) in a Word/ GoogleDoc to the review committee email vernonleealliance@gmail.com by 18 January 2026.

Thanks to the generosity of the International Vernon Lee Society, we hope to offer bursaries to early-career/precarious scholars—more details on the application process will be made available in due course.

The conference is organized by members of The Vernon Lee Alliance (VLA):  Matthew Bradley (The University of Liverpool, UK), Elisa Bizzotto (Iuav University of Venice, Italy), Sally Blackburn-Daniels (Teesside University, UK), Mary F. Burns (Independent Scholar, US), Mandy Gagel (University of Michigan, US), Mary Clai Jones (Chadron State College, US), Tomi-Ann Roberts (Colorado College, US).

Beyond Binaries: Victorian Literature in Transnational Contexts
NAVSA-ACCUTE Conference
Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
June 4-7, 2026

Proposal Deadline: November 21, 2025

The view of Victorian literature as primarily ‘national’ obscures the depth of its cross-cultural engagements beyond Europe, engagements that were never just one thing—neither purely appropriative nor purely transformative, neither simply imperial nor simply personal, but irreducibly multiple in approach, execution, and impact. This complexity registered across Victorian literary culture: in translation practices that blended scholarly rigour with commercial ambition, in aesthetic movements that drew on non-European forms for genuine experiment, cultural distinction, or gesture of resistance, and in the careers of writers whose encounters with other traditions served at once personal, artistic, and professional ends. To recognize this complexity is to see that cross-cultural engagement was not supplementary to Victorian literary culture but constitutive of it, to understand that what we now call “Victorian literature” took form in, and depended upon, these multiple encounters with non-European traditions.

This panel seeks papers that can hold this complexity in view: work that examines how Victorian writers engaged with non-European traditions across multiple registers, receiving, representing and reproducing them in ways that resist categorization within binary theoretical or analytical models. Submissions that combine literary analysis with approaches from cultural history, translation studies, comparative methodology, or material culture are encouraged, as are those that go beyond familiar interpretive frameworks (e.g. power and agency; authentic and imitative; civilized and primitive) to consider how cross-cultural encounters encompassed contradictory impulses and effects, how they entailed complex processes of aesthetic and cultural mediation (i.e. translation, adaptation, conscious allusion), how they transformed both source traditions and receiving contexts.

Possible avenues of inquiry may include:

• Translation practices: What strategies, negotiations, or distortions characterized the translation of non-European works into English, and how did these shape Victorian literary culture?

• Aesthetic theory and criticism: How did encounters with non-European traditions alter Victorian debates about taste, beauty, or the purpose of art?

• Comparative analysis of form:  How did encounters with non-European literary traditions reshape Victorian narrative techniques, poetic structures, or dramatic conventions?

• Networks of mobility: How did travel, migration, and exile facilitate literary exchanges across borders?

• Reception and readership:  How did Victorian audiences interpret, adapt, or resist texts shaped by cross-cultural encounters?

• Identity formation through difference: How did engagement with foreign texts complicate Victorian constructions of selfhood, nationality, or religious belief?

• Material studies of circulation: How did publishing networks, periodicals, and libraries facilitate cross-cultural literary exchange?

• Contemporary methodological questions: What can digital humanities, postcolonial theory, or translation studies contribute to our understanding of these historical intersections?

This panel is co-sponsored by the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) and the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE). It will take place at the ACCUTE 2026 Conference, hosted by Concordia University, 4-7 June 2026.

Please submit a 250-word proposal, including a 50-word abstract and a brief biographical note, by Friday, 21 November 2025, via ACCUTE’s Online Submission Form.

Panelists need not be ACCUTE members provided they are members in good standing of NAVSA; however, only ACCUTE members will be eligible for travel funding. Proposals not accepted for this joint panel will still be considered as part of ACCUTE’s General Call for Papers.

For any enquiries, please contact Dr. Reza Taher-Kermani (Concordia University, Montreal): reza.taherkermani@concordia.ca

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/

Call for Contributions
Teaching Dickens's Compositional Process & Serial Form

Submission Deadline: January 31, 2026

The Digital Dickens Notes Project (www.dickensnotes.org) announces a call for participants to contribute lesson plans, assignments, or short essays about approaches to teaching with and about Charles Dickens’s working notes. Dickens Notes is a peer-reviewed, NEH-supported, open-access digital scholarly edition of the detailed working notes Charles Dickens kept for his novels in the second half of his career. Organizers are looking to feature approaches to teaching about Dickens’s compositional process, serial form, or other facets of his novels that make use of the working notes. Contributions can vary in form and focus, but should offer both:

• a practical component (e.g. a lesson plan describing classroom activities; a student-directed activity description; an assignment); and
• a concise (approximately 500-1000 words) critical introduction that describes the approach, pedagogical goals, and the appropriate course level and type within which the lesson plan or assignment has been or might be featured, along with a list of any relevant primary and secondary sources and resources.

While organizers look forward to contributions that center the working notes, they are also interested in approaches and assignments that feature Dickens's notes tangentially as part of a consideration of his serial form and/or compositional practice. For more information, please see the Call for Contributions or contact the project directors, Anna Gibson and Adam Grener, at dickensnotes@gmail.com.