Reminder: Victorians Institute 2012 "Victorian Mixed Media" (5/1/2012; 10/19-21/2012)

The Victorians Institute, an interdisciplinary scholarly organization founded in 1972, invites proposals for papers for the 2012 meeting, to be held at Virginia Commonwealth University in downtown Richmond, October 19-21.

Deadline for proposals is May 1.

Please go to http://www.vcu.edu/vij/CFP--VI2012.pdf for the call for papers, and http://www.vcu.edu/vij for information about the Institute and the scholarly annual Victorians Institute Journal.

CFP: Victorians Institute 2012 Conference: Victorian Mixed Media (5/1/2012; 10/19-21/2012)

Victorian Mixed Media
The 41st Meeting of the Victorians Institute
19-21 October 2012
Virginia Commonwealth University

Please send 300-500 word proposals for papers and a 1-page c.v. via email to dlatane@vcu.edu by 1 May 2012. Papers are invited on any aspect of the rubric, including arts & crafts – the media of the empire – theatre – ekphrasis – the exhibition as medium – illustration and text (extra-illustrated volumes – giftbooks) – hybridity and language – map and mapping – media and genre – medium specificity in the 19th-century – new (digital) media and the Victorians – photography and its relationship to traditional media – poetry of the daily press – the print trade – show and tell (dioramas, panoramas, history, literature) – Victorian new media (typewriting – film) – sound and music – information systems – periodicals, pamphlets, broadsides – representation of media in fiction and poetry, etc.

Because 2012 marks the bicentennial of Robert Browning’s birth, papers which consider his work are especially welcome, whether or not they conform closely to the topic, as a portion of the program will commemorate the occasion.

Keynote address by W. J. T. Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago, is editor of Critical Inquiry and his books include What Do Pictures Want?, Art and the Public Sphere, Iconology,  and Blake’s Composite Art.

Plenary talk to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Robert Browning by Herbert Tucker, John C. Coleman Professor of English at the University of Virginia; his books include Epic: Britain’s Heroic Muse, 1790-1910, Tennyson and the Doom of Romantcism, and Browning’s Beginnings: The Art of Disclosure.

Selected papers from the conference will be refereed for the Victorians Institute Journal annex at NINES.

Limited travel subventions will be available from the Victorians Institute for graduate students whose institutions provide limited or no support.

Please visit www.vcu.edu/vij for information about the conference, the Victorians Institute, and Victorians Institute Journal.

“Victorian Mixed Media” is sponsored at Virginia Commonwealth University by the College of Humanities and Sciences, Department of English, and the PhD program in Media, Art and Text (MATX).

David Latané, conference organizer. Advisory committee: Nicholas Frankel, Catherine Ingrassia, John Picker (English); Eric Garberson, Catherine Roach (Art History); Nicholas Wolf (History).

Updated CFP: Victorians Institute Conference "Charles Dickens: Past, Present, and Future" (6/20/2011; 10/21-22/2011)

UPDATED Call for Papers: 

VICTORIANS INSTITUTE CONFERENCE
"Charles Dickens: Past, Present, and Future"
Myrtle Beach, SC (Ocean Creek Resort)

October 21-22, 2011

To help usher in the global celebration of his bicentenary in 2012, the 41st annual conference of the Victorians Institute will focus rather broadly on the life and work of Charles Dickens. We welcome papers that examine Dickens's writings and their relevance to us today. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary essays exploring the literary life and legacy of Dickens in relation to science, economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, law, history, aesthetics, and theater and film adaptation. This year's keynote speaker is Audrey Jaffe, Professor of English at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Affective Life of the Average Man: The Victorian Novel and the Stock-Market Graph (The Ohio State
University Press, 2010); Scenes of Sympathy: Identity and Representation in Victorian Fiction (Cornell University Press, 2000); and Vanishing Points: Dickens, Narrative, and the Subject of Omniscience (University of California Press, 1991).

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Dickens's Journalism
• Dickens and the Literary Marketplace
• Dickens and Mass Culture
• Dickensian Friendships
• Dickensian Scandals
• The Dickens Circle
• Catherine Dickens
• Dickens and Science
• Dickens and Emotion
• Reading Dickens
• Dickensian Afterlives
• Spiritualism and Spirituality in Dickens
• Dickens's Moral Philosophy
• Dickens and the Posthuman
• Dickens and Travel
• Theatrical Dickens
• Dickens in America
• Dickens and Empire
• The Dickens Industry

Please send proposals of no more than 500 words and a brief one-paragraph bio by June 20, 2011 to: Dr. Maria K. Bachman, Department of English, P.O. Box 261954, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, South Carolina 29528-6054. Email: mbachman@coastal.edu


Victorians Institute & Journal: http://www.vcu.edu/vij/