Announcement: NAVSA 2013 Donal Gray Essay Prize Winners

At the NAVSA banquet in Pasadena last Saturday, the committee announced the winner and honorable mentions for the Donald Gray Prize for best essay published in a journal in 2012.

• The winner of the Gray Prize is Daniel Hack for his essay, “Wild Charges: The Afro-Haitian ‘Charge of the Light Brigade,’” published in Victorian Studies.  Prof. Hack was a previous honorable mention for the Gray Prize (in 2008).  
• Honorable mentions go to Daniel Martin of Wilfred Laurier U and to Brian McCuskey of Utah State U.

NAVSA offers its sincere thanks to our judges, Kali Israel, Sally MItchell, and Cornelia Pearsall, as well as to Deborah Morse for administering the award on behalf of NAVSA's Executive Council.  

Registration Open: NAVSA 2013 in Pasadena (10/23-27/2013)

Registration is now open for NAVSA 2013 in Pasadena (October 23-27).

If you are not already planning to attend, there are still several exciting opportunities for participation available:

Study Sessions at the Getty & the Huntington
As a very special feature of NAVSA 2013, the committee is delighted to offer access to the Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.  When you register for the conference, you’ll be given the option to sign up for a shuttle to tour either institution, as well as the opportunity to sign up for curator-led Study Sessions while you are there.

Works-in-Progress Seminars
The committee is currently accepting registrations for the Works-in-Progress Seminars where leading scholars discuss their research with participants.

Panel Chairing
And as always, the conference committee is still seeking chairs for panel sessions—if you are interested in serving in this way, please indicate that on the registration form.

A few important dates to keep in mind:
September 15 is the deadline for early registration (Graduate Students: $100 / Faculty: $220).  After September 15 registration fees increase (Graduate Students: $125 / Faculty: $235).

September 24 is the deadline to reserve a room at the Pasadena Westin at the discounted rate.

Special Seminars: NAVSA 2013 (8/23-27/2013)

The Pasadena Conference co-chairs would like to invite any of you who are not already presenting a paper at NAVSA 2013 to sign up for one of the Special Seminars taking place during the conference. In Special Seminars, participants pre-circulate five-page position papers for discussion led by an expert in the topic.  All seminar participants’ names will be listed in the conference program.  Registration is limited to 15 participants per seminar.

There are four Special Seminars:

• “Victorian Media” with Elizabeth Miller (English, UC Davis)
• “Fictionalism in Victorian and Edwardian Culture” with Michael Saler (History, UC Davis)
• “Science and Religion” with George Levine (English, Rutgers University)
• “Uncovering Victorian Bodies” with Paul Deslandes (History, University of Vermont)
• Currently, there are just a few spots left in “Victorian Media” and “Fictionalism in Victorian and Edwardian Culture” (the others are already full).  

If you are interested in participating, please visit the NAVSA 2013 website for more information: http://dornsife.usc.edu/conferences/navsa/seminars/

Or email NAVSA2013@gmail.com to register for a seminar.

NAVSA 2013 Panel Proposal: "'With fog all around them': Obscurity of Form and Suffering in Victorian London" (2/26/2013; 10/23-27/2013)

Panel Proposal:

“With fog all around them”: 

Obscurity of Form and Suffering in Victorian London

NAVSA 2013, Pasadena, CA, October 23-27, 2013

Engaging the NAVSA 2013 conference theme of “Evidence,” this panel looks for proof of what remained invisible within the urban sphere. London, it is often noted, amplified the Victorian awareness of visuality – with its ocular inundation of advertisements, public spectacles, even glass windows and gas-lighting. But as Kate Flint and Lynda Nead have professed in their works on the visual imagination and the image-rich city, respectively, the fascination with visibility prompted a concomitant interest in (and anxiety over) that which remained shadowed and unseen.

This panel intends to accomplish two things. First, it will map the invisible territories of London still underexplored in Victorian criticism, searching out forms of urban suffering that were, for various reasons, out of reach of the gas-lamps' rays and beyond the grasp of sight. Second, it will bring to light how the obscurity of form prompted authors, artists, and commentators to play with formal elements and blur generic borders in their portrayals of urban strife. While keeping this dual intention in mind, papers might consider a wide range of topics linked with invisibility, such as the unconscious, physiology, spectrality, hidden women, mad men, the lower classes, prostitution, criminality, etc.

If your work falls along similar lines, please submit a 500 word abstract along with a one-page c.v. to Adam Watkins at aewatkin@purdue.edu and Laura Eidam at leidam@purdue.edu by February 26, 2013.