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Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies
University of Houston
March 27-30, 2014
Deadline: November 15, 2013
Featuring Keynote Speakers
Tim Morton: Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair of English, Rice University
“We do not exactly know what energy is, but we recognize it,” wrote engineer William Carpenter in 1883. For INCS 2014, the committee solicits proposals that recognize nineteenth-century energies in all their multiple, mutable forms. What made the nineteenth century move, tick, and turn? How were its energies instigated, exchanged, conceived, and converted? Who was most animated, and who sought lethargy? What shapes—literal, figurative, material, textual, painted, embodied—did its energies assume? And how were nineteenth-century energies contained? Proposals might focus on the following topics, but are not limited to these:
- Currency and currents
- Hurricanes, storms, and weather
- Evolution and devolution
- Eruptions, real and imagined
- Electromagnetism and wave theory
- Dynamism and cosmology
- Photosynthesis
- Environmental effects and anthropocenic ages
- Geography and geology
- Fossil fuels
- Radiation
- Conservation
- Narrative rhythms
- Prosodic energies
- Punch cards and digitized text
- Time and temporality
- Cartography and mapping
- Circuitry
- Rain, Steam, and Speed (Turner or otherwise)
- Circulation: of people, of molecules, of money
- Diasporas
- Technologies of vision
- Political energies
- Sweated labor and radical movements
- Steam(punk) and industry
- Urban construction and destruction
- Architectural tensions
- Bodies in motion: working, exercising, performing
- Protoplasm and vital energies
- Libido
- Virility and vigor
- Lassitude, ennui, paralysis, inertia
- Opiates and opioids
- Stimulants and tonics
- Animal magnetism, mesmerism, sensations
- Telekinesis, spiritualism, mental telepathy
- Enervation and innovation
- Sleep
Please include a one-page cv and your name, affiliation, and email address on your proposal. Proposals that are interdisciplinary in method or panels that involve multiple disciplines are especially welcome. Submit proposals at incs2014.org; send questions to info@incs2014.org.
Travel subventions are available for graduate students; please contact Chris Vanden Bossche, INCS Executive Director (cvandenb@nd.edu), for further information.
