NCSA CFP MEMORY AND COMMEMORATION

The Nineteenth Century Studies Association is excited to announce the following:

Call for Papers

38th Annual Conference of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association

February 2-4, 2017

Charleston, South Carolina

MEMORY AND COMMEMORATION

The NCSA program committee invites proposals on any aspect of “memory and commemoration” in the nineteenth century. From photographs and locks of hair to jubilee processions and civic monuments, nineteenth-century men and women sought to commemorate, preserve, and utilize personal and collective memories and histories. How did individuals remember loved ones, or their own histories? How did they celebrate corporate visions of the past, or dispute visions put forward by others? How were interpretations of the past used as tools of revolution, nation-building, imperialism, and other political activities? In what ways did new economies of tourism and consumerism support a culture of commemoration? How, too, have memories of the nineteenth-century past been contested by later generations? Topics might include civic commemorations, jubilees, holidays, public memorials, architectural changes, cemeteries, elegies, death rituals, photography, souvenirs, memoirs and autobiographies, or literary and artistic uses of the past. Papers may also analyze theoretical concepts of memory, invented traditions, and contested spaces, as well as interdisciplinary and alternate interpretations.

Send 250-word abstracts with 1-page CVs to ncsacharleston2017@gmail.com by September 30, 2016. Abstracts should include author’s name, institutional affiliation and paper title in the heading. We welcome panel proposals with three panelists and a moderator or alternative formats with pre-circulated papers and discussion. Please note that submission of a proposal constitutes a commitment to attend if accepted. Presenters will be notified in November 2016. Graduate students whose proposals have been accepted may submit completed papers to apply for a travel grant to help cover transportation and lodging expenses. Scholars who reside outside of North America and whose proposals have been accepted may submit a full paper to be considered for the International Scholar Travel Grant (see NCSA website for additional requirements:http://www.nscaweb.net).

Christina L Reitz, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Music
School of Music 308 E Belk Building
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723
(828) 227-2151

CFP: Special Issue of Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations

Transatlanticism's Influence on British Literary Study

Transatlanticism is often credited with enriching, and sometimes even correcting, the study of American literature. By de-emphasising the nation and its perceived coherence and uncovering crosscurrents from the British Isles, Europe, and Africa, transatlanticism seems the opposite of American exceptionalism. How, though, has transatlanticism enriched or challenged the study of British literature? The journal Symbiosis invites articles of 5,000 to 7,000 words for a special issue on this topic, to appear in April 2017. Articles may, for example, analyse new authors, texts, genres, readings, or movements highlighted by the transatlantic context; study the influence of American writing on British writing; study how an encounter with American peoples gives shape to British literary styles or forms; analyse the cultural transmission of American discourses in the British Isles; disentangle (or entangle) the impact on ideas of Englishness of postcolonialism, Irish and Scottish studies, and transatlanticism; assess strategies for teaching transatlanticism; or discuss how the transatlantic puts pressure on period or genre designations within British literary study (like ‘Romantic’ or ‘Victorian’). Regardless of the focus, articles should articulate the ramifications of transatlanticism for future studies of British literature. Submissions should be double spaced throughout, prepared (initially) to any recognised humanities style sheet, and addressed or sent as email attachments to both the guest editors (contact information listed below) by July 1st 2016. Please contact the guest editors with queries pertaining to the special issue.

Stephanie Palmer, Senior Lecturer of English, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.stephanie.palmer@ntu.ac.uk

Erin Atchison, University of Auckland. erin.j.atchison@gmail.com

CFP: The Afterlives of Eve

The Afterlives of Eve

9-11 September 2016 at Newcastle University and Durham University

Keynotes: Sandra M. Gilbert (UC Davis), Wendy Furman-Adams (Whittier), John Bothwell (Durham)

From Genesis to mitochondrial Eve, the idea of a single common foremother has occupied a crucial space in the Western cultural imaginary. Eve, whether as bringer of sin, as life-giver, as burden, curse or saviour, functions as a commentary on maternity, sexuality, creativity and power.  This cross-period and interdisciplinary conference will be an opportunity to explore the impact of her varied representations through the centuries and across different genres and media. How has this archetypal figure been revised and revisited by conservative and radical thought? What personal, polemical and/or creative uses have been made of the figure of Eve? What persists and what changes in her depictions across time and geographical space?  How have women and men negotiated their shared and different relationships to Eve? How has Eve been appropriated, neglected or rejected as a foremother? How does she speak to fantasies of masculine or feminine self-sufficiency? What cultural, political, literary and/or theological spaces does she occupy now? Topics might include, but need not be limited to:

• Origins of/Sources for Eve                            
• Other Eves               
• The absence of Eve        
• Representations and Transformations of Eve                                                                     
• Eve as Over-reacher

We welcome papers from all disciplines in arts, humanities and sciences and covering any historical period. We also welcome panel proposals including PGR panel proposals. Titles and abstracts of no more than 250 words per speaker should be sent to Ruth Connolly (ruth.connolly@ncl.ac.uk) and Mandy Green (mandy.green@durham.ac.uk) by 12 March 2016. Panel proposals should also include a title for the panel's programme. Speakers will be notified by March 21^st.

We gratefully acknowledge support from MEMS at Newcastle (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/mems/), Newcastle University's Academic Conference Fund and also from IMEMS at Durham University (https://www.dur.ac.uk/imems/research/).                                                                                                              (A limited number of PGR bursaries may be available. Please indicate when sending your abstract whether you would like to be considered for a bursary.)

   

Use of Religion Conference

You are invited to attend "The Uses of 'Religion' in 19th-Century Studies" Conference at Baylor University, which will be held in the Armstrong Browning Library from March 16-19, 2016. A list of panels, speakers, and presentations is below.

The conference features an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars who will participate in a variety of panels to examine how the category "religion" was constructed and deployed in nineteenth-century literature and culture, and to reflect self-critically on how scholarship invokes that category now. The conference will feature presentations by literary scholars, historians, art historians, and scholars of religion and theology that will extend our understanding of the uses of "religion" as a category and inform future academic conversation.

"The Uses of 'Religion' in 19th-Century Studies" Conference, including a special conference concert on Friday, is free to all who wish to attend. Registration is only required for those who are not on the program and plan to eat meals on Thursday and/or Friday (March 17 and/or March 18). The registration fees are $90 for meals on both days and $50 for meals on one day. Conference registration is now open and can be accessed from the conference website atbrowninglibrary.org/ablrel2016.

If you plan to stay overnight in Waco during the conference, a block of rooms has been set aside at the Holiday Inn Express and Suites, which is just a few minutes from campus by car, for $109 per night. To register a room, please use the special link provided on the conference website (browninglibrary.or/ablrel2016) or call (254) 732-1038 and indicate that you would like a room in the Uses of Religion Block. To ensure you obtain a space, please make your reservation before February 16, 2016.

We look forward to seeing you here at Baylor in March 2016. For more information about "The Uses of 'Religion' in 19th-Century Studies" Conference, please visit browninglibrary.org/ablrel2016, email ablconferences@baylor.edu, or call Christi Klempnauer at (254) 710-4968.

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Panels, Speakers, and Presentations

The following presentations were selected out of a highly competitive field of proposals:

1. Concepts of Religion(s)

• "'We are not the only people who have a Bible.' The Impact of Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East Series on the Conceptualization of 'Religion'" -- Prof. Arie Molendijk, University of Groningen, Netherlands
• "Religion and Empire: Loisy’s Use of 'Religion' Prior to his Correspondence with Cumont" -- Dr. Jeffrey L. Morrow, Seton Hall University
• "Conjunctive Religion, or, How Keshub Chunder Sen Rewrote the Grammar of Modern Theology" -- Dr. J. Barton Scott, University of Toronto, Canada

2. Religion, the Secular and Reform

• "Karl Marx and the Invention of the Secular" -- Dr. Dominic Erdozain, Visiting Scholar, Emory University
• "'Little Liberty on Earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven' (Robert Ingersoll). Nineteenth-Century Secularists in Britain and America and Implications of Constructing 'Religion' as Anachronistic Repressor" -- Prof. David Nash, Oxford Brookes University, UK
• "God's Insurrection: Politics and Faith in the Revolutionary Sermons of J.R. Stephens" -- Dr. Mike Sanders, University of Manchester, UK

3. Mediums and Practices of Religion

• "From Treasure to Trash, or, the Uses of Nineteenth-Century 'Family Bibles'" -- Dr. Mary Wilson Carpenter, Queen's University, Canada
• "Dye, Ink and Paint: Manufacturing 'Religion' in Victorian Britain" -- Prof. Dominic Janes, Keele University, UK
• "Wilde's Uses of Religion (De Profundis)" -- Dr. Mark Knight, University of Lancaster, UK

4. Reframing Religion and the Body

• "The New Woman of New Faith: Narratives of Doubt and Refashioned Faith in New Woman Novels" -- Dr. Shuhita Bhattacharjee, Presidency University, India
• "Finding the Frame: Religion, Science, and Sexual Dissidence in Late-Victorian Britain" -- Dr. Joy Dixon, University of British Columbia, Canada
• "Embodied Theology: Disability and Illness in Mid-Victorian Christian Periodicals" -- Dr. Kylee-Anne Hingston, University of Victoria, Canada

5. Forms of Conversion and Sanctity

• "Thinking with Saints in Nineteenth-Century Britain" -- Dr. Gareth Atkins, Cambridge University, UK
• "Converting Towards or Away: The Case of George Eliot and Modern Ethics" -- Dr. Ilana Blumberg, Bar Ilan University, Israel
• "Psalms, Sonnets and Conversionary Poetics in Nineteenth-Century England" -- Dr. Cynthia Scheinberg, Mills College

6. Reframing Religion and Literature

• "Hybridous Monsters: Constructing 'Religion' and 'the Novel' in the Early Nineteenth Century" -- Prof. Miriam Burstein, SUNY, College of Brockport
• "Everybody Expects the Spanish Inquisition: Restoring Surprise to Nineteenth-Century British Catholicism" -- Dr. Patrick R. O'Malley, Georgetown University
• "Memories, Dreams and Selections: Airbrushing Nineteenth-Century Religion" -- Prof. Stephen Prickett, Kent University, UK

7. Reading Religion

• "Jewish Women’s Writing as a New Category of Affect" -- Dr. Richa Dwor, Douglas College, Canada
• "Reading Queen Victoria's Religion" -- Dr. Michael Ledger-Lomas, King's College, London, UK
• "The Importance of Being Ezra: Canons and Conversion in The Moonstone" -- Dr. William R. McKelvy, Washington University in St. Louis

8. Faith in Poetry

• "Nineteenth-Century Faith in Poetry--Blake, Rossetti, Hopkins, Tennyson" -- Dr. Michael D. Hurley, Cambridge University, UK
• "Post-secular English Studies and Romantic Cults of Authorship" -- Dr. Charles LaPorte, University of Washington
• "William Blake, the Secularization of Religious Categories, and the History of Imagination" -- Prof. Peter Otto, University of Melbourne, Australia

Graduate Student Travel Award Recipients

• Amy Coté, University of Toronto, Canada
• Charles McCrary, Florida State University
• David Reagles, Drew University
• James Van Wyck, Fordham University
• Mimi Winick, Rutgers University 

Conference Archivist

Dr. Winter Jade Werner, Wheaton College, MA

NCSA reviewers sought

Please consider writing a review for the Nineteenth Century Studies Association’s online

NCS forum. As we've done in the past, we’ve posted a list of possible review titles related to

both our previous and our upcoming NCSA conference themes. If you are interested in

reviewing a title to maintain momentum engaging with the topic of materiality, or if you want to

start thinking about “the new,” check out http://english.selu.edu/ncs/online_reviews.php for

guidelines and the review lists. Contact Jennifer Hayward (jhayward@wooster.edu) with ideas.

THE BODY AND PSEUDOSCIENCE IN THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE BODY AND PSEUDOSCIENCE IN THE 

LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY

 Interdisciplinary Conference 18 June 2016

Newcastle University

Call for Papers

‘Sciences we now retrospectively regard as heterodox or marginal cannot be considered unambiguously to have held that status at a time when no clear orthodoxy existed that could confer that status upon them’ (Alison Winter, 1997). The nineteenth century witnessed the drive to consolidate discrete scientific disciplines, many of which were concerned with the body. Attempts were made to clarify the boundaries between the ‘scientific’ and the ‘pseudoscientific’, between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. This conference asks what became lost in separating the orthodox from the heterodox. What happened to the systems of knowledge and practice relating to the body that were marginalised as ‘pseudoscience’? Was knowledge and insight into the human condition lost in the process? Or is it immortalised within the literature of ‘pseudoscience’?

This interdisciplinary conference considers how different discourses of the body were imagined and articulated across a range of visual and verbal texts (including journalism, fiction, popular science writing, illustration) in order to evaluate how ‘pseudoscience’ contributed both to understandings of the body and what it is to be human and to the formation of those disciplines now deemed orthodox.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

·      Acting on the body – the body as a site of experimentation and scientific contestation

·      Pseudoscience and the gendered body

·      The entranced body as the conduit for knowledge of the self

·      The ‘scientifically’ prescribed body – an attempt to rationalise the irrational?

·      ‘Pseudoscience’ and the speculative nature of ‘science’

·      Scientific disciplines – a move towards self-authentication and professionalization or a loss of universal truth?

·      Pseudoscience and abnormality

·      The discourse of gender in the séance room

·      Visual interpretations of the ‘pseudoscientific’

·      Victorian periodicals / popular science journals and ‘pseudoscience’ of the body

·      Reading the body – fiction immortalising the pseudoscientific

·      The attraction of the ‘pseudoscientific’ for C19 poets and novelists

·      Visual interpretations of the ‘pseudoscientific’

Please submit a 250 to 300 word abstract, together with a brief biography, by 31 January 2016 to p.beesley@ncl.ac.uk

INCS 2015 Essay Prize

INCS 2015 Essay Prize

• The $500 award recognizes excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship on any nineteenth-century topic.  See below for eligibility rules.
• We encourage members of INCS to nominate an essay written by a current member of INCS or to submit their own work. 
• The winner will be announced at the 2016 conference, sponsored by Appalachian State University in Asheville, NC, from March 10-13, 2016. The winner will be invited to put together a panel for the 2017 INCS conference.

Please send an electronic copy of the nominated essay (PDF preferred) to Professor George Robb (William Paterson University) at incsprize2015@gmail.com no later than January 22, 2016 in the case of an essay that appeared only online, a durable link is acceptable in lieu of a PDF. Specific questions about the 2015 essay contest may be directed to George Robb at  RobbG@wpunj.edu.

Eligibility Rules

• Only current (2015) members of INCS are eligible (membership is for the calendar year).
• Articles that appeared in print in a journal or an edited collection in 2015 are eligible; if the date of publication is not 2014, but the essay appeared in 2015, it is eligible. Essays published in online, peer-reviewed journals are considered to be “in print” and are thus eligible.
• The essay must make a significant contribution to the field of nineteenth-century studies.
• Current INCS Board Members’ essays are not eligible for consideration.
• Former INCS Board Members’ essays are not eligible until five years have passed since their service.
• Those not yet members who wish to have their essays considered are permitted to join INCS for the year of the essay’s nomination up until just before judging commences a week or so into the new year.