Reminder: “Extending Families” Special Issue: Victorian Review, Fall 2013 (4/1/2012)

We invite submissions for a special issue of Victorian Review mapping out new ideas of the family in the 19th century including:

• adoption and foster care
• cultural directives about proper filial behavior
• romantic marriage
• sibling relationships
• perceived threats to the family
• family formation in a colonial context
• the effect of changing marriage laws
• family unions
• narratives of unusual or idealized families
• discourses about primitive families
• primogeniture and inheritance
• incest and familial unions
• same-sex and non-normative couples
• lateral relations: cousins, uncles, aunts
• domestic fictions
• ex-spouses, love triangles, bigamous relations
• families without parents
• political/journalistic debates about familial roles
• servants, companions, governesses
• in-laws, poor relations, extended family

We aim to showcase the subjects not usually considered in the nuclear family: the servant, the grandparent, the poor relation, the foster child, the ex-spouse. What does family look like when we see it as a permeable, flexible, shifting configuration? Thus, we particularly invite essays that resist the privileging of the nuclear family and work against the teleological narrative of the (heteronormative) courtship plot.

The deadline is April 1, 2012. Submit essays of not more than 8,000 words (including endnotes), in MLA style to both guest editors by email attachment. Please consult the Victorian Review website (http://web.uvic.ca/victorianreview/submissions.html) for further submission guidelines.

Kelly Hager, Simmons College  
kelly.hager@simmons.edu           

Talia Schaffer, Queens College and Graduate Center, CUNY

talia.schaffer@qc.cuny.edu