2023 will be the 20th anniversary of the North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, and NAVSA will return to the site of the inaugural conference – Indiana University Bloomington. Our keynote speakers will be Rachel Ablow (Professor of English, SUNY Buffalo), Sukanya Banerjee (Associate Professor of English, UC Berkeley), and Lydia Murdoch (Professor of History, Vassar). We will host most conference events at the Indiana Memorial Union Biddle Hotel and Conference Center, which we have reserved from the morning of November 9 through the evening of November 11, 2023. There is a small chance these dates will change, but we will have the conference dates finalized by March 1, 2023. We advise you to wait until after March 1 to make travel arrangements.
In this moment of transition within the field, the organizers have chosen a theme of “Revision, Return, Reform.” Our field has been under revision in recent years, with calls to attend to the present, to adopt new methods of reading, to undiscipline the Victorians, and to reform our classrooms, our research, and our institutional practices in the interests of greater diversity, equity, and justice. We invite conference participants to reflect on these recent developments within our field, and to consider aspects of revision, return, and reform within the Victorian period.
Papers may include but are not limited to:
- Cultures of reform
- Reform vs. revolution
- Reform Acts
- Religious reform
- Reform and philanthropy
- Reform and repair; repairing damage, literal and metaphorical
- Form and reform
- Reforming the self
- Forming and reforming disciplines during the Victorian period
- Reforming the canon
- Academic and institutional reform
- Conferences and their forms; forms and forums of academic conversation
- Return as repetition, regression, or progress
- Returning to a text; rereading
- Return narratives
- Immigration, migration, and return
- Returning colonial and settler possessions
- Returns to "Victorianism" and "Victorian morality" in contemporary politics
- Evolutionary changes and returns
- The art of revision; textual revisions
- Vision, revision, double vision, and focus
- Revising the Victorians
- C20/C21 revisions of Victorian texts; Neo-Victorianism
- Discipline, undiscipline, and rediscipline
- Reimagining the future of Victorian Studies as a field
With disappointment and dismay, the conference organizers acknowledge the Indiana state law banning almost all abortions which went into effect September 15th, 2022. A judge has halted the enforcement of that law, but we realize that the decision may be overturned. In our conference planning, we will strive to support local businesses who fully support reproductive freedoms. We will also provide conference-goers with the best and latest possible information on accessing reproductive care in the region.
We wish to acknowledge and honor the Indigenous communities native to this region, and recognize that Indiana University Bloomington is built on Indigenous homelands and resources. We recognize the myaamiaki, Lënape, Bodwéwadmik, and saawanwa people as past, present, and future caretakers of this land.
The deadline for proposals for individual papers, panels, and roundtables is March 1, 2023. We will have updates soon, including a link to the submission portal. For further announcements, see here: [link].
Last modified 15 December 2022