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 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.

Deadline Extended: Violent Women in 19th-Century England (12/15/2012)

Deadline Extended for the CFP on Violent Women in 19th-Century England
New Deadline: 15th December 2011

The number of women who are victims of crime has always been higher than the number of women partaking as offenders. However, women were very often involved with crime- not always petty in nature. Previous research in women and crime in 19^th-century England has focused attention on the lives of women who committed crimes such as infanticide, or the social and economic situations that led to their working in the sex industry, and in doing so have explored the lives and times of women in 19^th-century England. This collection aims to write more women back into the criminal record by focusing on those women who committed violent crimes during this period. This collection asks what narratives were created about these women (and possibly their femininity), what were societal and cultural responses to these women and crimes, and what methodologies are employed by scholars to reveal the stories about women who have, until now, been ignored or overlooked?

Possible topics (but by no means limited to this list):

• Treatment of violent women by the courts early, mid- and late nineteenth century (changes to the punishment of violent offenders, perceptions in the courtroom of violent offenders)
• New methodologies by which we could study violent female criminals in the nineteenth century
• Possible crimes these violent women partook in: women who were part of street gangs; women involved in violent robberies; women who murdered for commission, revenge or jealousy; women who were involved in abductions, blackmail or extortion; women who were serial killers
• Violent women from the working vs middle or upper classes (outside of the traditional Madeline Smith; Constance Kent and Florence Maybrick cases): representations, responses to them
• Narratives from the offenders themselves and how they saw their place in English society, the significance of their crime, how they saw themselves as women etc.
• Newspaper narrative creation about violent female offenders
• Social changes that women’s crimes were in answer to

Entries to this collection will be in the range of 7,000-9,000 words due in early June 2012.

Currently am in talks with Routledge series editors about publication of this collection

Please send abstracts (250 words) and short bio by 15th December 2011 to vicnagy AT gmail.com OR vicky.nagy@monash.edu