Sunday, September 29, 2013

CFP: Joint NAVSA/ACCUTE Panel 2014 “Victorian Uses and Abuses of History” (11/15/2013; 5/24-27/2014)


Joint NAVSA/ACCUTE Panel 2014
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
May 24 – 27, 2014
Deadline: November 15, 2013

“Victorian Uses and Abuses of History”
What were the uses of history in the Victorian period? The period saw the publication of numerous historical novels following the success of Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley.” Many novelists, including Charles Dickens, Charles Reade, William Makepiece Thackery, Charles Kingsley, George Eliot and Robert Louis Stevenson all addressed history in their novels. The French Revolution figured largely as a historical warning against revolution in the minds of many Victorian sages, while the Fall of Rome could be used to warn against overweening pride in the Empire. History could figure as nightmare in Gothic novels. Inspired by Ruskin and Morris, many looked back to the Medieval period as a source of values and an alternative to industrialized Britain. This call for papers invites proposals for individual or collaborative papers on the theme of "Victorian Uses and Abuses of History.”  

Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:
  • The Victorian Historical Novel
  • Victorian Medievalism
  • “The Renaissance" according to Victorians
  • Victorian Historians and Historiography
  • Historical Time vs. Geological Time
  • Past and Present Contrasts
  • "Neo" Architecture and Literature of the Victorian Period
  • Historical Self-Consciousness
  • History and Aesthetics
  • Historical Utopias and Dystopias
Send 250 word proposals or completed papers for 15-20-minute talks to Martin Danahay .   Deadline: November 15, 2013