CFP: Nineteenth-Century Synergies: Ventures at Home and (Ad)Ventures Abroad

Department of English, Presidency University

22^nd and 23^rd February, 2018

Venue: Presidency University, AJC Bose Auditorium

Deadline for Abstracts is now extended to 23rd Jan 2018

Keynote Speakers :

Joanne Shattock, Emeritus Professor, English, University of Leicester
Title: “Journalism and Literature: Contested Professions”

Linda K. Hughes, Addie Levy Professor of Literature, English, Texas Christian University
Title: “Tennyson, The Princess, and Tennyson’s Global Women Readers”

Rosemarie Morgan, Former Professor of English, Yale University
Title: “Pathways of the Past: Visual Imprinting, Episodic Memory, and Hardy’s 'Wonder of Women' ”

Karen Steele, Professor and Chair of English, Texas Christian University
Title: “Revolution in the Rearview Mirror: Irish Autobiographies of the Revolutionary Years”

The idea of nineteenth-century legacies is perhaps nowhere more impressively and indelibly etched than in the precincts of Presidency, the erstwhile Hindoo/Presidency College and the current Presidency University. Hybrid colonial ‘roots’ and multiple synergic ‘routes’ come alive in the examination of British metropolitan ventures and transcontinental adventures, whether educational, cultural, administrative, social, sexual, or scientific. Grounded in a prestigious department of literature that symbolized the ‘civilizational’ value of culture in that historical moment, we ask today what it meant to both inhabit and impugn this world at home and in the colony. We invite papers that address the nineteenth-century lives and colonial afterlives of cultural narratives centred on issues of gender, class, religion, education, sexualities, sciences, and moralities. The several panels in our two-day international conference will cover the broad spectrum of nineteenth-century cultural narratives around the ‘margins and centre.’

Topics for papers may include but need not be limited to:

• Race, Nation, Empire, and Myth-Making
• Class and Social Revolutions
• Gender and Sexualities
• ‘New Woman’ Literature
• Masculinities and Empire
• ‘Fallen Women’ in Literature
• Hybridities and Fin-de-Siècle Identities
• Victorian Gothic
• Suffrage and Modern Politics
• Science and its Others
• Religion and Alternative Spiritualities
• Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Afterlives
• Teaching and Learning Victorian Literature in the Empire.
• Victorianism and Postcolonialism: Parallels and Departures.
• Nineteenth-Century Travel literature.
• Nineteenth-Century Irish and/or Scottish Response and Resistance/Intervention
• The Other Empires
• Nineteenth-Century Caste
• Nineteenth-Century Popular culture and Advertisements
• Nineteenth-Century Health and Medicine
• Victorian Performing and Creative Arts.
• Victorian Docile and Aberrant bodies
• Nineteenth-Century Periodicals
• Nineteenth-Century Crime
• Nineteenth-Century Leisure and Sports
• Nineteenth-Century Trade, Commerce and Economy.
• Nineteenth-Century Cityscapes and Nature
• Victorian Childhoods
• Eminent and/or Other Victorians
• Nineteenth-Century Desires and Deviance
• Nineteenth-Century Technology and Industry
• Nineteenth-Century Historiography
• Nineteenth-Century Food, Entertainment
• Victorian Scandal

The university will not charge registration fees.

All participants other than the speakers will need to make their own arrangements for lunch. There are several canteens/eateries both on and off campus.

Certificates will be provided to all registered participants.

Please email a 300-word abstract along with a 100-word bio (in .doc or .pdf format) as attachment to pcsvlconference@gmail.com by 21^st January, 2017.

Conference Coordinators

Shanta Dutta ( shanta.eng@presiuniv.ac.in)

Purna Banerjee ( purna.eng@presiuniv.ac.in)

Shuhita Bhattacharjee ( shuhita.eng@presiuniv.ac.in )

Register