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Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies of the Western United States announces the theme of its 2013 conference:
Victorian Modernities
Nov. 14-16, 2013
Courtyard by
Marriott, Portland City Center
Portland, Oregon
“Nothing is so
dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite
suddenly.” – Oscar Wilde
VISAWUS 2013 explores
the Victorians’ enthusiasm and apprehension regarding modern progress and
innovation.We encourage papers across all disciplines, including (but not
restricted to) art history, literature, gender, history of science, history,
material culture, political science, performance, life writings, journalism,
photography, popular culture, and economics.
Keynote Speaker: Joseph
Bristow (English, UCLA), author and editor of numerous works on Victorian and
modern literature and theories and histories of sexuality, including Effeminate England: Homoerotic Writing after
1885 (1995), Sexuality (1997), The Fin-de-Siècle Poem: English Literary Culture
and the 1890s (2005), and Oscar
Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend (2009), is currently
working on a project on “The Sex of Victorian Poetry” and editing the Journal of Victorian Culture and the
Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture series.
Papers are solicited
for topics such as:
- Urbanization, urbanity, and the flux of modern life
- New nationalisms
- Modern understandings of the global and the cosmopolitan
- Class mobilities and new professions
- Progressive Victorian social reform movements
- New Victorian types: New Women, dandies, Decadents, swells
- Anticipations of modernist formal styles
- New media: audio and visual technologies
- Advances in Victorian drama
- New sciences and pseudo-sciences
- Modern illnesses and modern medicine
- The novel and novelty
- Commodity culture and consumerism
- Modern understandings of sexuality and desire
- Resistances to modernity: nostalgia, pastiche
- New religions
- The apex of empire
- Modern warfare
- Neo-Victorianism and steampunk aesthetics
To submit: By March
15, 2013, email 300-word abstracts and a 1-page CV (name on BOTH) to visawus2013@gmail.com.
Please note: Graduate
student papers are eligible for the William H. Scheuerle Graduate Student Paper
Award ($300.00).
The most up-to-date information about the 2013 Conference can be found on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Victorian-Interdisciplinary-Studies-Association-of-the-Western-US/148139335285338?ref=stream.
