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Victorian Epidemics
Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada
Banff, Alberta April 29-30, 2011
Keynote speaker: Pamela Gilbert, Albert Brick Professor of English, University of Florida
Dr. Gilbert has published widely in the areas of Victorian literature, cultural studies and the history of medicine. Her first book, Disease, Desire and the Body in Victorian Women’s Popular Novels, was published by Cambridge University Press in 1997, followed by Mapping the Victorian Social Body (SUNY Press, 2004) and The Citizen’s Body (Ohio State University Press, 2007), and Cholera and Nation (SUNY Press, 2008).
This international conference will bring together specialists in Victorian art history, history, gender studies, science, and literature to contemplate the theme of disease in Victorian England and its colonies. Papers will address medical and social histories of disease, literary and artistic representations of disease, and disease as metaphor in Victorian culture.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Victorian plagues: cholera, TB, venereal disease, influenza, smallpox
- histories and narratives of disease
- identity and pathology
- disease and the body
- disease as metaphor, languages of disease, contagion, illness
- disease and colonization, disease and globalization
- art as disease, mass culture as disease
- the spread of commercialism
- visual and literary representations of disease and illness
- sewers, filth, miasma
- slums, prostitution
- health and hygiene
- representations of illness
- mental illness
- imperial anxiety and disease
The conference will take place in Banff, Alberta in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. The town of Banff is surrounded by the spectacular scenery of Banff National Park, which offers excellent opportunities for both hiking and downhill skiing in late April. Banff is approximately one hour from Calgary and is easily accessible by car or air (regular and reasonably priced shuttles are available from Calgary International Airport).
Photo by Flickr user currybet / Creative Commons licensed
