The Body and the Page in Victorian Culture: An International Conference
26-28 July 2018
University of Victoria, Canada
Jointly sponsored by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) and the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada (VSAWC)
Keynote Speaker: Professor Sally Shuttleworth, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford
The conference will also feature a lecture by the winner of the 2017 Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize for the best book on Victorian periodicals.
This interdisciplinary and international conference will focus on the relationship between bodies and texts in Victorian culture. The organisers invite proposals for individual papers or themed panels that examine this relationship under the following main themes:
the bodies constructed by the page: topics include racialized, gendered, and/or classed bodies; animal bodies; children’s bodies; religious bodies; queer bodies; modern bodies; hybrid bodies; medicalized bodies; non-normative bodies; dying bodies; grotesque bodies; national bodies; industrialized bodies; automatic bodies; unconscious bodies
the bodies that made the page: topics include the labour of illustrators, authors, compositors, binders, engravers, editors, booksellers, and newspaper salespeople, sandwich-board people, delivery people
the digital scholars who remediate the pages of Victorian texts today: topics include specific online Victorian projects or remediated Victorian texts; methodological challenges; collaborative and pedagogical opportunities; digital Victorian texts in the classroom.
As the conference is partly sponsored by RSVP, they especially welcome paper or panel proposals that consider the three main conference themes in relation to Victorian newspapers, journals, magazines, scientific periodicals, and the journals of professional associations.
The conference will take place at the University of Victoria Library. In addition to regular sessions on Victorian periodicals and on Victorian literature and culture more broadly, the conference will feature Special Collections Sessions. At least one panel per session will take place in the library’s Special Collections Classroom, which features a data projector and document camera as well as tables for examination of archival materials. For these panels, the organisers invite papers that make use of Victorian materials (texts or MS) held in Special Collections: http://www.uvic.ca/library/locations/home/spcoll/. Please refer in your proposal to the call number of the texts in question so that they can make these materials available during these sessions.
The conference will also feature the following workshops. Proposals are required only for the publication workshop.
Please send the following information to bodyandpage2018@gmail.com by October 10, 2017:
For both paper and panel proposals, please indicate if you wish to be included in a Special Collections session.
Pease note that to be eligible to present, delegates must be a member of RSVP, VSAWC, or both.
The conference committee has some funding available for travel bursaries for students and independent scholars. Please indicate in your cover email if you wish to be considered for these bursaries.