CFP: Neo-Victorianism and Globalisation (10/15/2013)

Neo-Victorianism and Globalisation:

Transnational Dissemination of Nineteenth-Century Cultural Texts

2014 Special Issue of Neo-Victorian Studies

(http://www.neovictorianstudies.com/)

This special issue seeks to explore the rise and the scope of the globalisation of neo-Victorianism. We are witnesses today to a transnational spread of all things Victorian verging on 'Victorianomania', where different elements of nineteenth-century literature and material culture are continuously translated, adapted and recycled for contemporary use. On the one hand, the re-visioned revival of popular genres of the nineteenth century is evident in a spate of neo-Victorian novels that re-visit Victorian fiction in terms of style and content as well as rethink the narrative format of the eponymous 'loose, baggy monsters'. Whether they are playful investigations of cosmopolitanism within the history of globalised economy - as depicted in Amitav Ghosh's The Sea of Poppies - or of transatlantic narratives and cultural connections between Victorian London and the contemporary US cityscape - as in HBO's TV series The Wire - neo-Victorian fictions engage not only with nineteenth-century narrative pace and plotting but also with the period's cross-fertilised popular genres. At the same time, the plethora of TV, film, video games, graphic novels, fashion and interior design adaptations and appropriations of Victorian art, literature and culture are clearly influenced by the global market, testifying to the impact of the ever-spreading 'participatory culture' (Jenkins 2006). This special issue aims to chart the patterns and politics of neo-Victorianism's transnational production and dissemination.

Some of the key questions Neo-Victorianism and Globalisation seeks to
address are:

• To what extent can we talk about the process of translating elements of nineteenth-century literature and culture into contemporary media as 'neo-Victorianism' outside of the Anglo-American context?
• How does nostalgia inform/deform the relationship between appropriated Victorian narrative forms and their global circulation?
• What political dynamics underlie the transnational dissemination of the '(neo-)Victorian', both as a term and concept, and what are its ideological implications?
• How broadly can 'neo-Victorian' be expanded as a generic term before it loses its critical value?
• Does neo-Victorianism run the risk of being construed as a form of cultural imperialism?
• How does postcolonialism contest and/or intersect with trans- and multiculturalism in neo-Victorian remediations of the nineteenth-century past?
• How can attention to multiple (national, ethnic, and cultural) publics and markets avoid totalising 'neo-Victorianism' as a monolithic concept?
• Which particular Victorian genres (such as Gothic, detection or sensation fiction), predominate in different neo-Victorian media and cultural contexts and why?
• What unacknowledged, potentially discriminatory or disabling mechanisms may be discerned in neo-Victorian critical discourse (e.g. Anglo-American/Euro-centrism, Western-focused trauma discourse, new forms of sexism, etc.)?

Please address enquiries and expressions of interest to the guest editors Antonija Primorac at primorac@ffst.hr and Monika Pietrzak-Franger at pietrzak@anglistik.uni-siegen.de. Completed articles and/or creative pieces, along with a short biographical note, will be due by 15 October 2013 and should be sent via email to the guest editors, with a copy to neovictorianstudies@swansea.ac.uk. Please consult the NVS website (submission guidelines) for further guidance.

Last Call: NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA Supernumerary Conference “The Global and the Local” (10/4/2012; 6/3-6/2013)

The conference is a supernumerary conference for NAVSA, BAVS, and AVSA.  The dates will be June 3-6, 2013 and the deadline for proposals is October 4, just a few days after the NAVSA '12 Wisconsin conference.  NAVSA's regular conference will occur in 2013 at the Huntington, the Getty, and Pasadena from October 23-27.  You can find more information about the Venice conference at the following web site: http://glocalvictorians.wordpress.com/

The deadline, once again, is October 4.  

The conference will occur on the beautiful island of San Servolo, just a 10-minute vaporetto ride from Piazza San Marco, the tourist heart of Venice.  There will be the option to stay on the island of San Servolo, in dorm room housing (with bathroom in room) for the fee of €53.33 (US$69) per night per person (an unbeatable rate for Venice!).  The rooms are spare but clean and a number of the rooms will be doubles, triples, and quadruples, so you would likely be sharing a room in this scenario.  

Lynda Nead (Birkbeck, UK) and Lydia Wevers (Victorian U, Wellington, New Zeland) have been confirmed as plenary speakers.  An opening State of the Field panel will have position papers by Regenia Gagnier (U Exeter, UK), Jock Macleod (Griffith U, Australia), and Kate Flint (USC, USA).  The conference will include a special night time tour of Basilica San Marco and a series of material culture seminars spread around the city. 

NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA Supernumerary Conference (10/4/2012; 6/3-6/2013)

The conference is a supernumerary conference for NAVSA, BAVS, and AVSA.  The dates will be June 3-6, 2013 and the deadline for proposals is October 4, just a few days after the NAVSA '12 Wisconsin conference.  NAVSA's regular conference will occur in 2013 at the Huntington, the Getty, and Pasadena from October 23-27.  You can find more information about the Venice conference at the following web site: http://glocalvictorians.wordpress.com/

The deadline, once again, is October 4.  

The Venice Professionalization Workshop

This workshop is intended for graduate students and recently minted PhDs and will address such issues as grant-writing; postdoctoral fellowships; the writing of proposals; job letters and the market; the interview process and job talks; teaching portfolios; how to turn a seminar paper into a published article; the digital humanities, pros and cons; the differences among Canadian, American, British, and also Australian markets; and negotiating contracts. The workshop will occur on San Servolo every morning, May 27-31, June 3, and June 7.  A number of scholars have expressed their willingness to participate, provided they can arrange their schedule and funding, including Andrew Miller, Carolyn Williams, Alison Byerley, Barbara Leckie, Pamela Gilbert, and Kate Flint.  There will not be a firm list of visitors until the new year.

The workshop will cost US$800.  That will include the program fee, rental of the classroom, and lodging for the period May 25 to June 2, plus an additional night on June 7, so 10 extra nights in Venice.  This means that participants would have 10 extra nights in Venice for less than they could arrange any other way, thanks to the help of Venice Int'l U, so the workshop is a bonus of sorts (two and a half hours every morning, leaving the afternoons to visit Venice each day).  The only cheaper lodging option is the Venice hostel but it only allows you to stay for a maximum of 3 nights.  The next cheapest is Domus Ciliota at €70/night (the price, however, goes up in June). It's already sold out for those dates (if it were available, it would be over $1000 for 10 nights, with the June rate increase). The housing will be in in dorm rooms on San Servolo from May 25 to June 7, not counting the nights of the conference itself; the conference runs from June 3-6.  You can find information about the island here:

http://www.sanservolo.provincia.venezia.it

In most cases, there will be three students together in one room, with a bathroom in the unit.  San Servolo is just a 10-minute vaporetto ride away from Piazza San Marco, the tourist heart of Venice.  

Note that the conference will run the first-come-first-served seminar format NAVSA ran successfully at Vanderbilt last year and will be running again in Wisconsin:

http://english.wisc.edu/navsa/?page_id=137

This means that, even if an individual does not get accepted in response to the general call, s/he will have the ability to join the conference and have his/her paper listed in the conference program.  Hopefully, that will be enough to secure funding from home institutions.

If you are interested in this workshop, please contact Dino Franco Felluga at:  felluga@purdue.edu