CFP: MVSA '15 "Sense and the Senses" (10/31/2014; 5/1-3/2015)

MVSA 2015

University of Iowa

May 1-3, 2015

Deadline: October 31, 2014

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association seeks papers for topics related to the conference theme of “Sense and the Senses.” The committee encourages papers on any aspect of this topic in art, music, history, science, philosophy, theater or literature: senses and the invisible; sounds and soundscapes; listening/depictions of listening; the relationship between the body and mind; the five senses; the representation of sense or reason; rationality and embodiment; the relationship(s) among sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste; the conflict or accord between reason and the senses; the scientific, psychological, philosophical, or empirical study of the senses; the role of the senses in the creation of ideas or knowledge; the relationship between sense and emotion; empiricism and the imaginary; the disarray or unreliability of the senses; synaesthesia; mesmerism, hypnotism, and extrasensory perception; sensory textures of spaces and lived experiences; sensory extensions/alterations catalyzed by technologies.

MVSA’s 2015 Jane Stedman Plenary Speaker will be Linda M. Shires (David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English, Yeshiva University). Her talk is entitled "Coming to our Senses: Colors in the 19th Century.” She is the author of Perspectives: Modes of Viewing and Knowing in 19th-Century England (2009), co-author with Steven Cohan of Telling Stories, A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction (1988; 2002), and editor of Rewriting the Victorians (1992; 2012) and From Romantic to Victorian: Essays by U.C. Knoepflmacher (forthcoming).

For the second year, MVSA will feature three seminars open to graduate students, faculty and independent scholars led by senior scholars on topics related to the conference theme. Seminar participants pre-circulate 5-to-7 page papers. More information will be available in the seminar CFP on the MVSA website soon.

Special events include a dramatic performance and a demonstration of Highland dancing in the Iowa Old Capitol Senate Chamber. A publication of selected essays from the conference is planned.

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is an interdisciplinary organization welcoming scholars from all disciplines who share an interest in nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture. Send a 300-word abstract and 1-page vita (as Word documents) by October 31, 2014, to conferencesubmissions@midwestvictorian.org. Even if you do not submit a paper, please plan to attend!

For more information, please visit www.midwestvictorian.org.

Reminder: MVSA 2014 'Victorian Violence" (10/31/2013; 4/11-13/2014)

2014 MVSA Conference
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
April 11-13, 2014
Deadline: October 31, 2013

The deadline for proposals for Midwest Victorian Studies Association 2014, to be held on the campus of the University of Michigan this April 11th to 13th, is fast approaching. Proposals are due this Thursday, October 31, 2013.

Please see our conference website for more details about our 2014 conference theme of “Victorian Violence.”  We also welcome proposals for our "Victorian Pedagogy" roundtable.  Presenters will introduce innovative and successful strategies for teaching Victorian literature, history, music, and culture in the classroom.

http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html

The committee is excited to introduce seminars to this year’s conference format.  Participants will pre-circulate position papers and, through conversation, work to identify important points of intersection and divergence.  Seminars will be held on the topics of “Colonial Violence,” led by Dr. Richard Price (University of Maryland), “Political Violence At Home and Abroad,” led by Dr. Bill Meier (Texas Christian University), and “Sensational Violence: ‘The Mysteries Which Are At Our Own Doors,’” led by Dr. Lisa Surridge (University of Victoria).  Detailed seminar descriptions are available at the website; proposals for the seminars are also due this Thursday.

In addition, the committee would like to invite applicants to “like” our Facebook page so that they can keep track of events and discussions of interest to Victorianists across disciplines.

See http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html for more information. 

For a more extended CFP see the original post on "Of Victorian Interest"

Prize: 2014 MVSA Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian Studies (2/1/2014)

MVSA Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian Studies

Deadline: February 1, 2014

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is pleased to announce the Twenty-First Annual Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian Studies.  This is a prize of $1,500 to support dissertation research in British Victorian Studies undertaken by a student currently enrolled in a doctoral program in a U.S. or Canadian university. 

Proposals from graduate students are sought by February 1, 2014.  They may be submitted from the fields of literature, history, art history, or musicology, but should have a significant interdisciplinary component that will render them of interest to scholars studying Victorian Britain across a range of disciplines, approaches, and subfields. 

Applicants must submit:

• A cover sheet (to be found on the MVSA webpage:http://www.midwesternvictorian.org/p/prizes.html
• A statement on research (maximum 3 single-space pages, 12-point font).  Please provide a brief overview of your dissertation topic, remembering that your proposal will be reviewed by faculty members in several disciplines.  Indicate clearly the present state of your work, and explain how the award would assist you in completing the dissertation (for example, partial travel support, purchase of library supplies, etc.).  
• A current CV (maximum 2 pages single-spaced, 12-point font).  
• Two letters of reference; these must be submitted directly by the recommenders to:arnsteinprize@midwestvictorian.org

DEADLINE: February 1, 2014.  Please submit cover sheet, statement, and CV by email to: arnsteinprize@midwestvictorian.org

For more details about MVSA and the Arnstein prize, please go to: http://www.midwestvictorian.org

CFP: MVSA 2014 "Political Violence at Home and Abroad" (10/31/2013; 4/11-13/2014)

Midwest Victorian Studies Association 2014

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

April 11-13, 2014

Deadline: October 31, 2013

Seminar Leader: Professor Bill Meier, Department of History, Texas Christian University

“Political Violence at Home and Abroad”

Violence harnessed to political programmes mushroomed in the 19th century alongside the growth of ‘-isms’:  socialism, conservatism, trade unionism, nationalism, terrorism, anarchism, and the like.  Yet the distinction between “ordinary” crime and “political” crime was a blurry one, and governments, police, journalists, even “political criminals” themselves attributed divergent meanings to their menacing behavior.

This seminar seeks participants who wish to explore such dimensions of “political crime” as its motivations, representation, public perception, and legal definition, among other themes.  The seminar leaders also wish to examine the language Victorians used to discuss political violence, including “outrage,” “terrorism,” “atrocity,” and “frightfulness.”  The seminar leaders are especially interested to compare political violence in Britain to its manifestations throughout the empire in order to assess how the location of violence shaped Victorians’ understanding of such behavior.

Participants will write 5-7 page papers that are pre-circulated to the other participants prior to the conference.  During the two-hour conversation the seminar leader and participants will identify important points of intersection and divergence between the papers and identify future areas of inquiry and collaboration.  The seminar format allows a larger number of scholars to participate in MVSA and seek financial support from their respective institutions as they discuss a shared area of scholarly interest.  Seminars are limited to 10 participants.

Send a 300-word abstract and 1-page vita (both as MWord documents) by October 31, 2013, to Bill Meier:  w.meier@tcu.edu

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is an interdisciplinary organization welcoming scholars from all disciplines who share an interest in nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture. For more on the conference: http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html

CFP: MVSA 2014 "Sensational Violence: 'The Mysteries Which Are at Our Own Doors'" (10/31/2013; 4/11-13/2014)

Midwest Victorian Studies Association 2014

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

April 11-13, 2014

Deadline: October 31, 2013

Seminar Leader: Professor Lisa Surridge, Department of English, University of Victoria

"Sensational Violence: 'The Mysteries Which Are at Our Own Doors'"

In his review of sensation fiction in The Nation (1865), Henry James wrote that, “to Mr. Collins belongs the credit of having introduced into fiction those mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors.” James’s remark captures the sensation novel’s capacity to surveil, strip, and probe domestic spaces, lives, and even bodies.

This seminar will welcome scholars interested in the capacity of the sensation novel and/or the sensational press to scrutinize violence in what Victorians strove to construct as the “private” sphere—that is, to expose spousal violence, sexual violence, violence against children, and related domestic crimes. The seminar leaders also invite papers that consider how such texts constructed privacy even as they exploded the very notion of a private sphere free of public surveillance.

Participants will write 5-7 page papers that will be pre-circulated to the other participants prior to the conference.  During our two-hour conversation, the seminar leader and participants will identify important points of intersection and divergence among the papers and identify future areas of inquiry and collaboration.  The seminar format allows a larger number of scholars to participate in MVSA and to seek financial support from their respective institutions to attend the conference and discuss a shared area of scholarly interest.  Seminars are limited to 10 participants.

Send a 300-word abstract and 1-page CV (both as Word documents) by October 31, 2013 to Lisa Surridge: lsurridg@uvic.ca

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is an interdisciplinary organization welcoming scholars from all disciplines who share an interest in nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture. For more on the 2014 MVSA conference: http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html

CFP: MVSA 2014 "Colonial Violence" (10/31/2013; 4/11-13/2014)

Midwest Victorian Studies Association 2014

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

April 11-13, 2014

Deadline: October 31, 2013

Seminar Leader:  Professor Richard Price, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park

“Colonial Violence”

Historical studies of violence are legion.  Historians have long addressed the legal, social, cultural and political aspects of violence, as reflected both in criminal activity and in domestic interactions.  It is well-known, for example, that the violence of “primitive rebels” in peasant societies is structurally and politically distinct from violence in “modern,” urbanized industrial societies.  And much attention has been paid by historians and others to the developmental implications of these differences. 

It is, therefore, all the more strange that until recently colonial violence has not seemed to greatly interest students of empire.  Yet violence in colonial societies was both endemic and quotidian.  It was at one and the same time an abiding feature of “official” policy and, it would seem, often an everyday affair that stained and marked social relations in colonial societies.  But it remains true that in most accounts of the imperial experience (limiting that just to Britain alone) the nature of violence is not accorded the fundamental importance that it probably deserves.  As yet, for example, there is no subject volume on violence in the recent Oxford History of the British Empire.  Of course, most historians and others would nod in agreement with the notion that the colonial experience was inherently coercive and violent.  But they would be hard pressed to go much further than that to provide a typology of colonial violence.  It is only in the last few years, for example, that the fond notion of Britain’s peaceful exit from empire has been undermined by studies that show just how untidily violent it actually was.  Similarly, it is only recently that studies have appeared that focus on the historical sociology of violence in particular colonies, such as India. 

There is, therefore, enormous scope for an inter-disciplinary discussion and treatment of colonial violence.  This seminar will explore the historical and cultural dimensions and representations of colonial violence in Britain’s Victorian empire. The panel organizers are particularly anxious that the question of colonial violence be addressed from the standpoint of different disciplines.  And the panel chairs encourage scholars working on any aspect of this question to submit proposals.  The kinds of questions that could be addressed include: the political dynamics of colonial violence; the relationship between violence and settler politics.  To what extent is the colonial experience inherently genocidal towards indigenous peoples?  What is the psychology of colonial violence?  What are the relationships between violence in the colonies and the law?  How do the many ideological rationalization of empire justify and explain colonial violence?  How is colonial violence represented in the culture of empire in the metropole—in its literature, its theater, for example?  

Participants will write 5-7 page papers that are pre-circulated to the other participants prior to the conference.  During the two-hour conversation the seminar leader and participants will identify important points of intersection and divergence between the papers and identify future areas of inquiry and collaboration. The seminar format allows a larger number of scholars to participate in MVSA and seek financial support from their respective institutions as they discuss a shared area of scholarly interest.  Seminars are limited to 10 participants.

Send a 300-word abstract and 1-page vita (both as MWord documents) by October 31, 2013, to Richard Price: rnp@umd.edu

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is an interdisciplinary organization welcoming scholars from all disciplines who share an interest in nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture.

For more on the conference:http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html

CFP: MVSA 2014 "Victorian Pedagogy Roundtable" (10/31/2013; 4/11-13/2014)

Midwest Victorian Studies Association

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

April 11-13, 2014

Deadline: October 31, 2013

 The MVSA invites proposals for a Victorian Pedagogy Roundtable at the 2014 Midwest Victorian Studies Association conference. Presenters will introduce innovative and successful strategies for teaching Victorian literature, history, music or culture.  Presentations for this session need not be linked to the conference theme of "Victorian Violence".

Send a 300-word abstract and 1-page vita (both as MWord documents) by October 31, 2013, to conferencesubmissions@midwestvictorian.org.  Please indicate in the email subject that the proposal is for the Victorian Pedagogy Roundtable. For more information on this panel contact: Mary-Catherine Harrison at mc.harrison@udmercy.edu

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is an interdisciplinary organization welcoming scholars from all disciplines who share an interest in nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture. 

See http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html for more information on the 2014 conference.

CFP: MVSA 2014 'Victorian Violence" (10/31/2013; 4/11-13/2014)

2014 MVSA Conference
April 11-13, 2014
“Victorian Violence”
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association will hold its 2014 annual conference at the University of Michigan, April 11-13, 2014. Papers are sought for topics related to the conference theme of "Victorian Violence." Contributions may consider any aspect of conflict or resistance and its representations in art, music, history, or literature: violence in the army, the colonies, the prisons, the streets, the workplace, the family, the home, and even the animal kingdom. Papers on resistance to violence—such as anti-vivisection or the British anti-war movement—are also welcome, as are talks on indirect and systemic forms of violence. We are planning a collection of essays based on the conference.

In addition to the conference theme, we invite proposals for a Victorian Pedagogy Roundtable. Presenters will introduce innovative and successful strategies for teaching Victorian literature, history, music and culture in the classroom. Presentations for this session need not be linked to the conference theme.

MVSA’s 2014 Jane Stedman lecture will be given by Lara Kriegel (Indiana University). Dr. Kriegel’s plenary lecture is titled “Graceful Exits: War Cemeteries, Violent Legacies, and the Afterlife of the Crimean War.”

Send a 300-word abstract and 1-page vita (both as MWord documents) by October 31, 2013, to conferencesubmissions@midwestvictorian.org. Even if you do not submit a paper, please plan to attend!

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is an interdisciplinary organization welcoming scholars from all disciplines who share an interest in nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture.

See http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html for more information.

CFP: “Hard Times” or “Great Expectations”? How the Victorians Saw Themselves (11/1/2011; 4/20-22/2012)

Midwest Victorian Studies Association Annual Conference

Bloomington, Indiana, April 20-22, 2012

In commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Dickens’s birth, we invited papers on his writings and influence, but the conference will also consider issues of Victorian reflexivity and self-representation. Among topics to be considered might be: Victorian ideas of progress and degeneration; social commentators, ethnologists and journalists; parliamentary reports and reform movements; mirrors, disguises, and masquerades; visions of heaven and hell; utopias/dystopias; photography and portraiture; autobiographies, biographies and histories; museums and exhibitions; and Victorian psychology and theories of identity.  The conference will include a panel on teaching the Victorians, and proposals for topics and speakers are also invited.

Our keynote speaker will be John R. Reed, whose many academic publications include Dickens and Hyperreality (2011), Victorian Conventions (1975), The Natural History of H. G. Wells (1982), Decadent Style (1985), Victorian Will (1989), and Dickens and Thackeray: Punishment and Forgiveness (1995).

Held on the beautiful campus of Indiana University, the conference will include unique evening entertainment honoring Dickens, including a special film screening of the 1917 A Tale of Two Cities with live piano accompaniment, and a “Charles Dickens Variety Show” including music and magic lanterns.  Accommodations will be on campus in the Indiana Memorial Union.

Please submit an abstract!  Papers or full panels are welcome, and should include 500-word abstracts and 1-page (only) vitas by November 1, 2011 to conferencesubmissions@midwestvictorian.org.


For more information, see our website http://www.midwestvictorian.org/.