Calls for papers: a weekly roundup

Contested Views: Visual Culture and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 19-20 July 2012

A two-day conference to be hosted by Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

Confirmed Plenary Speakers: Mary Favret, Gillian Russell, Susan Siegfried, Paul White

In July 2012, in advance of commemoration of the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, Tate Britain is to host a two-day conference exploring the impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars on world-wide visual culture, from the outbreak of the pan-European conflict with France in 1792 to the present day. Centred on themed panels, plenary lectures and workshops, this cross-disciplinary conference will promote knowledge and understanding of the range of ways in which the ‘First Total War’ has been mediated in visual cultures, not only in Britain and continental Europe but throughout the world.

The organisers are keen to receive proposals for papers that present new research and/or methodological approaches. In particular they encourage proposals from scholars from different disciplines who wish to work in collaboration with each other. More information, including a list of suggested topics, can be found here.

Please send abstracts of 250 words to Phil Shaw (https://legacy.ncl.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=2f32ec1cec2446f39985491543a56de9&URL=mailto%3aps14%40le.ac.uk) by Friday 16 December 2011.

Citizens of the World Conference: Adapting (in) the Eighteenth Century 22-24 June 2012

Co-sponsored by the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

and The Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and The Division of English at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

In a rapidly globalizing and technophilic world adapting to new developments is a daily undertaking—increasingly, we are aliens in our own lives. How quickly and effectively can we adapt to innovations in technology, historical knowledge, cultural relations, and academic and economic practices? In honor of Oliver Goldsmith’s fictional Chinese traveler, Lien Chi, and in the spirit of cross-cultural collaboration, the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SCSECS) is partnering with the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) and the Division of English at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) to host “Citizens of the World,” an international, interdisciplinary conference dedicated to exploring the many ways in which new experiences stimulate self-reflection and adaptation as creative acts.

Abstracts of 250-500 words should be submitted by 15 January, 2012 to the chairs listed on the full CFP here OR to conference organizers at: https://legacy.ncl.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=2f32ec1cec2446f39985491543a56de9&URL=mailto%3aworldcitizen%40ntu.edu.sg. For general inquiries regarding the conference or Singapore, please also email https://legacy.ncl.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=2f32ec1cec2446f39985491543a56de9&URL=mailto%3aworldcitizen%40ntu.edu.sg.

British Women Writers Conference 2012 special session: "Landmarks in Nineteenth-century Natural history: Texts and Landscapes" 7-10 June 2012

Abstracts are sought for for a special session at the 2012 British Women Writers Conference in Boulder, CO, "Landmarks in Nineteenth-Century Natural History: Texts and Landscapes". Please submit 500-word abstracts to both laurenkl@email.unc.edu and bwwc2012@colorado.edu by January 15, stating your application to this special session.

More information on the 2012 British Women Writers Conference, including the full CFP, can be found here.

Romanticism and Secrets Conference 2 May 2012

 A half-day conference hosted by the Centre for Romantic Studies at the University of Bristol.

Plenary lecture by Dr Seamus Perry (Balliol, Oxford)

 We welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

- Textual secrets

- Secrets of the past (historical, political, biographical)

- Structures of concealment

- Dishonesty, deception and self-deception

- Discoveries and rediscoveries

- Repression and the secret sub-conscious

- Codes, riddles and encryptions

- Unveilings and shadowy realms

- Mystery and myth-making

Proposals (max. 250 words) are welcome from both established scholars and postgraduates, and should be sent by 30 January 2012 to the conference organisers Catherine Redford and Stacey McDowell at: https://legacy.ncl.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=2f32ec1cec2446f39985491543a56de9&URL=mailto%3aromanticismsecrets%40gmail.com.

Calls for papers: a weekly roundup

Extended CFP: Taking Liberties: Sex, Pleasure, Coercion 15-17 June 2012

The deadline for abstracts has been extended until 31 December 2011. Proposals of up to 300 words should be emailed to TakingLiberties@ncl.ac.uk. For further information see here.

Perspective and Interior Spaces in Narrative before 1850  3-6 January 2013

This guaranteed ISSN panel for the 2013 Boston MLA Convention analyzes how interior spaces (rooms, houses, halls, prisons, offices, covered markets, etc.) are presented in narrative. It particularly examines (a) perspectivism in the description of interior spaces before 1850. Were these spaces presented perspectivally (or not) before the dominance of internal focalization? If a character's perceptions do not govern representation of the space he or she enters or moves in, what does? According to Franz Stanzel, eighteenth-century novels typically present interiors aperspectivally, mentioning a space and a few objects in it, but omitting any information of how these objects are arranged within the space. Is this true of earlier narratives, including verse romances? Perspectival rendering of space makes it possible for the reader to visualize objects in the building in relation to one another, even to map the room and its contents. The panel will contribute to the discussion of the recent spatial turn in literary studies, connect with theories about the poetics of space, and contextualize concepts of perspective with reference to literature, psychology, and the visual arts.

300 word abstracts of papers on narrative texts written between the Middle Ages and 1850 are sought, discussing what type of perspective, if at all, they use and what techniques they employ to evoke interiors. Please direct proposals and brief blurb-form vitas  to Monika Fludernik monika.fludernik@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de and Suzanne Keen KeenS@wlu.edu by 1 March 2012. 

Presenters must be members of the MLA.

DJO Conference: Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press 28-31 March 2012

In conjunction with the Victorian Studies Centre at the University of Leicester the School of Humanities is delighted to announce an international Dickens Bicentenary conference on 28-31 March 2012, featuring the launch of the Dickens Journals Online project, and an exhibition of archive materials curated by Antony Burton. Our list of invited speakers currently includes: Laurel Brake, John Drew, Louis James, Hazel Mackenzie, Robert Patten, Joanne Shattock, Michael Slater, John Sutherland, John Tulloch, Cathy Waters, Tony Williams, and Ben Winyard.

Household Words and All the Year Round are key mid-century weekly journals, showcasing the work of over 350 contributors as well as that of their illustrious founder and ‘Conductor.’ Critical analysis of their contents is an increasingly diverse and dynamic field, soon to be assisted by an open-access scholarly online edition based at the University of Buckingham. To celebrate the Bicentenary of Dickens’s birth, and the public launch of the website, you are warmly invited to an international conference that aims to position Household Words and All the Year Round within the broader context of nineteenth-century periodical culture, through invited papers and contributions from experts in these and a range of rival publications, and website workshops.

Submissions are invited in three main areas relating to the conference theme:

original close readings of one or more articles from Household Words and All the Year Round, or the work of an individual contributor. Many articles in the journals―whether by Dickens, a known contributor, or anonymous―repay close scrutiny, whether approached in stylistic, rhetorical, ideological, or historical terms. Yet the published literature in the field is small, and something that the conference seeks to redress.
appraisals of the contribution made by either or both journals, more generally, to key areas of debate in the mid-Victorian press. Public health, social policy, science and technology, education, gender roles, the urban experience, imperial expansion, emigration and the law, are just some of these. Aesthetic and cultural analysis of the journals, as miscellanies, in terms of the dynamics of genre they present, or in terms of broad thematic or bibliographic concerns that the paper sets out to explore, will also be welcome.
contrastive readings of other contemporary periodical publications―whether weekly, monthly or quarterly―in relation to Household Words and All the Year Round, that will assist us in positioning the latter in relation to the crowded mid-century marketplace. Such publications might include Chambers’s Journal, The Examiner, Punch, Bentley’s Miscellany, the Illustrated London News, The Cornhill Magazine, as well as political and literary reviews, and ‘penny bloods.’

Submissions from graduate students and as yet unpublished scholars will be particularly welcome. 500 word proposals for 20-minute papers should be sent to DJO@buckingham.ac.uk by Friday 30 December 2011.

For information on tickets and accommodation, visit http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/djo