Literature and Tourisms of the Long Nineteenth Century

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                Call for Papers:

Literature and Tourisms of the

 Long Nineteenth Century

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Guest Editor: Meghan Freeman, Manhattanville College

According to the OED, the word tourism enters the English lexicon at the dawn of the nineteenth century, thus institutionalizing the notion that travel is a necessary component of personal development. As crowds of earnest bourgeois travelers displaced the solitary young aristocrat on the Grand Tour a vast body of literature concerned with both mundane and exalted facets of foreign places cropped up to fulfill a new set of needs.  Owing to the diversity of places to which individuals traveled and the many different reasons for doing so, these needs were diverse and multiform.  So, rather than speak of a monolithic tourism culture, it might be better to contemplate the many different tourisms that emerged from and developed over the course of the long nineteenth century (defined here as approximately 1789-1914). For this special issue of LIT we are soliciting essays concerning experiences of and with tourism over the course of the long nineteenth century, as those experiences are documented, codified, and complicated in literatures devoted to travel.

Travel literature, of course, had long worked to kindle the imaginations of homebound readers with stories of people and places elsewhere, but as technological and economic forces made travel easier and more affordable, a new, heterogeneous population of tourists called for, consumed, and produced texts that directed and validated their experience of going abroad. And not only that: works of the eighteenth century and Romantic period took on new meanings for readers as tourists sought forms of authentic cultural experience that the tourism industry seemed to render impossible.  At the same time, new imaginative works – novels, plays, and poems – reflected on tourism as a distinct cultural practice and way of life, which demanded the performance of specific behaviors in such spaces as museums and architectural ruins, spas and sanitariums, theaters and opera houses, Alpine heights and tropical islands. Alongside these critical and meditative literatures on the nature of tourism blossomed specialist literatures designed for travelers with particular interests, including sport and safari, natural wonders and naturalist study, health and medicine, religious pilgrimage and worship, trade and imperial exploration, and many other things besides. Finally, with the growth of these many tourisms came as a well a vast promotional literature – print advertisements, pamphlets, posters, and other ephemeral texts – that tried to convince travelers to pay a visit. This special issue of LIT aims to explore how these various literatures reflected the growth of and helped to shape the diverse cultures of tourism in the long nineteenth century.

LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory publishes critical essays that employ engaging, coherent theoretical perspectives and provide original, close readings of texts. Because LIT addresses a general literate audience, we encourage essays unburdened by excessive theoretical jargon. Submissions must use MLA citation style and should range in length from 5,000-10,000 words inclusive. Please email your essay, along with a 100-200 word abstract to litjourn@yahoo.com.

Deadline for submissions: June 3, 2015.

The Uses of Religion

 Armstrong Browning Library • March 16-19, 2016 • Baylor University

In 2016 the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University is hosting a special conference on “Uses of ‘Religion’ in 19th C. Studies.” Work on the invention and history of the category “religion” by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political philosophers, theologians, and scholars of religious studies has begun to influence scholarship on nineteenth-century literature and culture. Literary scholars of the nineteenth century have thereby increasingly recognized that the modern category of “religion” is a uniquely Western construction generated and reinvented in mutually constitutive dialogue with “the secular” and forms of secularism, and never in neutral ways—being, for example, deeply entangled with the formation of state power, imperial expansion, and discriminatory portrayals of non-Europeans. Within the last five years, scholars such as Michael Warner, Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Philip Gorski have edited important interdisciplinary collections on the religious, the secular and secularism, their historical constructions, and their (troubled) applications to European and global contexts. Comparable interdisciplinary discussions are still needed in nineteenth-century studies, in particular between scholars of nineteenth-century literature and scholars from other disciplines. This conference is designed to address the need. 

The Armstrong Browning Library (ABL) is a world-renowned research center and rare-collections library devoted to the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture, located on the campus of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In keeping with the ABL’s holdings and areas of scholarly focus, proposals on nineteenth-century authors and texts in some way linked to Europe and North America will be given priority, though the committee is open to proposals on all subjects related to the conference theme. Furthermore, although this conference will critically interrogate Western conceptions of “religion,” it does not promote, and indeed aspires to resist, confining attention to “Western” forms of religious belief and practice. The conference will highlight literature, but scholars of every discipline interested in reconsidering uses of “religion” in nineteenth-century studies are strongly encouraged to submit proposals for papers. 

Proposals might address, but are not limited to, the following broad topics:

The causes and consequences—literary, socio-economic, theological, political—of the dominantly epistemological view of religion in nineteenth-century Western societies

Constructions of the secular and forms of secularism vis-à-vis religion through literary texts, and how disciplines other than literary studies might approach this subject

Constructions of the category “literature” vis-à-vis religion and forms of secularism through literary texts, and how disciplines other than literary studies might approach this subject

Renderings of religion and religious experience in nineteenth-century poetry and poetics—in discussions of poetics and prosody; in the practice of verse; in the construction of the category “poetry”; or in related debates about the “poetics” of worship, devotion, and church architecture

Formation of religion and religious experience through the interaction of nineteenth-century music, visual art, literature, and other arts, both secular and sacred

The degree to which the categories of religion and religions are specific to the history of Western Christianity, and the(mis)representations that result when nineteenth-century Western writers apply them to geographically diverse beliefs, rituals,and practices

Relationships among imperialism, orientalism, constructions of race, the comparative study of religion, and representation of religion in nineteenth-century literature 

Representations of religion in scholarship on nineteenth-century literature and culture, and how this scholarship is itself historically conditioned and in need of critique

How religion is defined and experienced as a result of the rapid growth of print culture, mass media, mass communications, and new communications technologies

How constructions of religion and narratives of secularization are entangled with portrayals of class and class tensions, particularly as these are mediated through literature

Gendered constructions of religion, religious experience, the secular, and secularism in nineteenth-century literature and culture

Deployments of religion as a category in representations of science and scientific authority in nineteenth-century literary texts 

The Armstrong Browning Library serves as a library of record of research materials relating to Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We acquire, preserve, and provide access for effective use of these materials and our other collections, and promote opportunities for the study, appreciation, and understanding of the Brownings and the wider field of 19th-century literature and culture. Visit us online at browninglibrary.org.

Proposals should be for paper presentations of 20-25 minutes. Fifteen will be selected for the conference. Two of these fifteen spaces will be reserved for PhD candidates or those who have received their PhD within the last three years. All fifteen invited participants will receive generous travel funding (up to $1,250 for participants outside of North America; up to $750 for participants within North America but outside the U.S.; up to $400 for participants within the U.S.); coverage of all conference meals; and fully funded lodging in apartments near the Armstrong Browning Library (ABL). 

Participants will present their papers at the ABL in sessions open to the public, and all speakers will be expected to attend every session. The ABL will also coordinate sessions with rare materials specialized to participants’ interests. The long-term hope is to revise papers from this conference for an edited collection on “The Uses of ‘Religion’ in Nineteenth-Century Studies.”

A 300-500 word proposal, and a one-page CV with primary publications and research achievements, should be emailed to ablconferences@baylor.edu. 

Deadline for Proposals: 5:00 p.m. Friday, September 18, 2015 

Further details will be available on the ABL’s website in due course. Any queries should be sent to the lead organizer, Joshua King, at ablconferences@baylor.edu.

INCS 2014 Essay Prize

Guidelines and Eligibility

Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) invites nominations and submissions for its annual essay prize. The $500 award recognizes excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship on any nineteenth-century topic.

Articles that appeared in print in a journal or an edited collection in 2014 are eligible; if the date of publication is not 2014, but the essay appeared in 2014, it is eligible. Essays published in online, peer-reviewed journals are considered to be “in print” and are thus eligible.

We encourage INCS members to nominate essays written by other INCS members or to submit their own work. To be eligible for the prize, authors must be current members of INCS. Potential contestants may join INCS for the purpose of competing. Current and recent INCS board members are not eligible for this contest.

The winning essay will be announced at the 2015 INCS conference, sponsored by Georgia Tech University in Atlanta, from April 16-19, 2015. The winner will be invited to assemble a panel for the 2016 INCS conference.

Please send an electronic copy of the nominated essay (PDF preferred) to Professor Lynn Voskuil, University of Houston, at incsprize2014@gmail.com no later than January 20, 2015; in the case of an essay that appeared only online, a durable link is acceptable in lieu of a PDF. For more details about the essay competition, the conference, or the organization, we invite you to visit the INCS website: http://www3.nd.edu/~incshp/. Specific questions about the 2014 essay contest may be directed to Lynn Voskuil at lvoskuil@uh.edu.

British Women Writers 2015 Conference

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, June 25th -27th, 2015. The conference theme is “Relations” in British women's writing of the long 18th- to 19th-centuries. The submission deadline is January 5th, 2015. The CFP can be accessed at https://britishwomenwriters2015.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/.