CFP: VSAO 2014 “Too Little, Too Late: Decadence and Incompleteness in the Victorian Era” (2/7/2014; 4/26/2014)

Victorian Studies Association of Ontario

Glendon College, York University, Toronto

April 26, 2014

Deadline: February 7, 2014

Plenary Speakers: Professors Stephen Arata (University of Virginia) and Barbara Leckie (Carleton University)

“Too Little, Too Late: Decadence and Incompleteness in the Victorian Era”

The VSAO executive invites proposals for three 20-minute papers to be presented at the Association's 47th annual conference at Glendon College, York University, Toronto, on April 26, 2014.  

We invite proposals to interpret the conference theme in broad and imaginative ways.  Papers might address:

• belatedness 
• inattention or indifference
• embellishment, ornament, frills
• unfinished, underdeveloped, or unfulfilled work
• superfluity and superficiality
• the un/de/dis-composed
• decay, degeneration, and extinction
• sketches, drafts, notes

Please send electronic copies of proposals (300-500 words) and a brief biographical statement to Alison Syme  alison.syme@utoronto.ca by February 7, 2014. 

For more information visit the website:  http://vsao.apps01.yorku.ca/

Lecture Series: VSAO presents Daniel Wright on "Symbolic Logic and the Buried Life" (11/7/2013)

Victorian Studies Association of Ontario (VSAO) 

Evening Lecture Series: Daniel Wright on "Symbolic Logic and the Buried Life."

November 7, 2013

Daniel Wright is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He is currently at work on a book entitled Bad Logic: Reasoning about Desire in the Victorian Novel. A portion of this project, on tautology in Trollope, is forthcoming in the Winter 2013 issue of ELH.

The talk will take place on Thursday, Nov 7th at 7:30pm, at the Spadina Museum, 285 Spadina Rd, just north of Davenport Road. 

Following Daniel's talk, we'll enjoy a private tour of the Spadina Museum, a Victorian home that has recently been restored to reflect 1920s and 30s interior design. For more on the Spadina Museum and its restoration, please see:http://www.toronto.ca/culture/museums/spadina_restoration/index.htm

For more on the VSAO, including information on future events, CFPs, and ourSeptember 2013 newsletter, please see: http://vsao.apps01.yorku.ca/?page_id=10

CFP: VSAO-ACCUTE Panel 2014 "Stuff and Stuffing" (11/1/2013; 5/24-27/2014)

The annual VSAO-ACCUTE Panel to be held at the 2014 Congress

Joint Session: Victorian Studies Association of Ontario (VSAO) at ACCUTE
Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario.

May 24-27, 2014
Deadline: November 1, 2013

“Stuff and Stuffing”

Henry James’ infamous condemnation of nineteenth-century novels as “loose baggy monsters” is so perfectly devastating that many forget that the author was posing a question. Flummoxed by a literary form that so readily included “the accidental and the arbitrary” in its representations, James pondered: what do they “artistically mean?” Walter Benjamin, another modern looking back on the nineteenth century with a sense of bewilderment, suggested elliptically that the swollen cushions, ample hangings, and profusion of dust covers, doilies, and antimacassars of the nineteenth-century interior were evidence of a deeply engrained “posture … of struggle and defense.”

This panel seeks to address James and Benjamin’s queries, and, more generally, to explore the profusion of “stuff” in the Victorian era. A notoriously vague term, “stuff” can refer to a workable material that can be molded into other forms—think of the abundance of new commodities and technologies wrought by the industrial revolution, or the discovery of new entities, speciations, and categories of materiality by the burgeoning fields of science. However, “stuff” can also refer to material that remains stubbornly unspecialized, undifferentiated, and inert—dust, batting, and fillings that are useful chiefly in their ability to insulate and take up space. How did the Victorians interact with, represent, and imitate their materially profuse surroundings? What stuffs Victorian texts?

Papers may consider such topics as:

• Taxidermy and other stuffed animals
• Crinoline, padding, puffed sleeves, and the stuff of cloth
• Foodstuffs and stuffing oneself: gluttony, corpulence, and satiation
• Baggy monsters: rhetorical verbiage, textual excess, narrative bulk, and the serial novel
• Dickensian stuff: the Cratchitt Christmas goose stuffing, Sir Duddle’s stuffed people; the Veneerings and the Buffers
• Modernist creations of and reactions to Victorian “stuffiness”
• Filling in and filling up
• Household stuff and stuffy houses: billowing curtains, draped fabrics, covers and casings
• Stuff and nonsense

Questions and submissions should be sent toVSAOatACCUTE@gmail.com. Please submit the following as separate documents by November 1, 2013:

• a proposal of 300-500 words that has NO identifying marks for the author
• an abstract of 100 words and a bio of 50 words
• a proposal sheet, available at: http://accute.ca/general-sessions/

Please note that speakers must be members of either VSAO or ACCUTE at the time of the conference.  VSAO: http://vsao.apps01.yorku.ca/

CFP: Victorian Play(s): Excess and Expression (1/30/2013; 4/27/2013)

Victorian Play(s): Excess and Expression

46th Annual Victorian Studies Association of Ontario Conference

27 April 2013, York University

The VSAO executive invites proposals for 20-minute papers to be presented at next spring’s annual conference on 27 April 2013.  The conference theme will be “Victorian Play(s): Excess and Expression." Victorian acting, playacting, acting out; posing, positing, and performing; divinity and fabulousness: considerations of any aspect of Victorian life or culture connected to the theme are welcome. Please send electronic copies of proposals (300-500 words) and a brief biographical statement to Matthew Rowlinson (mrowlins@uwo.ca) by 30 January 2013.

For more information, visit http://www.yorku.ca/vsao/newsletters/2012sept.html#calls_paper

Last Call: Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology (1/28/2012; 4/28/2012)

VSAO 45th Annual Conference, 28 April 2012, York University

"Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology"

Plenary adresses by Kathy Psomiades and Audrey Jaffe.

The Victorian Studies Association of Ontario executive invites abstracts of 20-minute papers papers to be presented at this year's conference.  The theme will be "Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology" and the conference date is April 28 2012. Please send electronic copies of proposals (300-500 words) and a brief biographical statement to Matthew Rowlinson (mrowlins@uwo.ca) by 28 January 2012. Alternatively, hard copies can be sent by mail to Matthew Rowlinson, Department of English , University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada  N6A 3K7.

For more information on the conference, visit the Victorian Studies Association of Ontario.

CFP: Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology (1/28/2012; 4/28/2012)

VSAO 45th Annual Conference, 28 April 2012, York University

"Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology"

Plenary adresses by Kathy Psomiades and Audrey Jaffe.

The Victorian Studies Assoc. of Ontario executive invites abstracts of 20-minute papers papers to be presented at this year's conference.  The theme will be "Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology" and the conference date is April 28 2012. Please send electronic copies of proposals (300-500 words) and a brief biographical statement to Matthew Rowlinson (mrowlins@uwo.ca) by 28 January 2012. Alternatively, hard copies can be sent by mail to Matthew Rowlinson, Department of English , University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada  N6A 3K7.

CFP: Victorian Hesitations: Indeterminacy in Language, Art, and Politics (11/15/2011; 5/28-31/2012)

Victorian Studies Association of Ontario/ Assoc. of Canadian College and University Teachers of English - Joint Panel

Fiona Coll and Constance Crompton

Victorian Hesitations: Indeterminacy in Language, Art, and Politics

For knowing his way he is answerable, and therefore [the young artist] must not walk doubtingly … he may pause, but he must not hesitate. - Ruskin, Modern Painters

Lord Hartington's conduct seems to give signs of hesitation. - The Nation, April 1886

The Victorian ethos is often understood to have been based upon action, expansion, and initiative. However, behind all the evidence of Victorian vim and vigour lie traces of equivocation, vacillation, and indecision. From the Crown's factual reluctance to make Cameroon a British protectorate to Lady Bracknell's fictional admonition against irresolution in The Importance of Being Earnest, a concern with hesitation marks the prose and policy of the era. This panel invites papers that explore suspended moments in Victorian culture – moments when a delay, however long, was of real consequence. How did the Victorians understand hesitation? How did they weigh the ethics of equivocation against the virtues of candor? How did their moments of uncertainty manifest themselves in movement? How was the difference between deliberation and doubt calibrated in this age of enterprise?

Papers may focus on, but need not be limited to:

• Anxiety
• Contemplation
• Deliberation
• Doubt
• Dubiety
• Irresolution
• Meditation
• Pause
• Prevarication
• Reconsideration
• Reflection
• Reluctance
• Restriction
• Stillness
• Suspense

Following the instructions on the ACCUTE website (under Conference) for joint association sessions, send your 700-word proposal (or 8-10 page double-spaced paper), a 100-word abstract, a 50-word biographical statement, and the submitter information form (http://www.accute.ca/generalcall.html#submit), to Constance Crompton at VSAOatACCUTE@gmail.com by November 15th.

ACCUTE: http://www.accute.ca/