Past, Present, and (Retro)Future

Source: meccanismocomplesso.org
Source: meccanismocomplesso.org

Things are happening in the world of popular (neo-)Victorianism! This week not one, but two calls for papers graced my inbox. The first is for a symposium (a.k.a. a one-day conference) in Amsterdam on historical and neo-historical fiction, and the second is for a symposium in Portsmouth on Victorian materiality and the material object. If you’re interested in alternate history, material culture, steampunk, period drama, retrofuturism, nostalgia, or just the past (or the present) in general, do submit an abstract.

If you’re not in the business of giving conference papers, you can come along and listen for free, or, since I’m likely to attend both of these events, you can follow my experience at the symposium on Twitter, and read my thoughts about the event here, after the fact.

And now the CFPs!

640px-GrimburgwalAmsterdam1. Reading the Present through the Past: from Historical to Neo-Historical Fiction

One-day symposium, 4 March 2016
The Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies
University of Amsterdam

Ever since the turn of the twenty-first century, literary and cultural returns to earlier periods have become increasingly frequent and visible. Novels on past eras dominate the shortlists of literary prizes and the number of historical films and TV series has exploded. The popularity of Hilary Mantel’s books about Henry VIII’s court, the success of TV series like Sherlock and The Americans and of graphic novel series like Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are cases in point. Many of these works, however, seem to relate to the past in ways that are different from earlier historical novels and films.

According to Elodie Rousselot, editor of the recent collection Exoticizing the Past in Neo-Historical Fiction (2014), literary contributions to this trend belong to a new subgenre of contemporary historical fiction, the ‘neo-historical novel’. Even though it is set in the past, ‘neo-historical’ fiction aims to discuss and mediate the concerns and occupations of our current age. In establishing overt connections to the present day, these works display an awareness of their own constructedness and open ways for a critical reflection on exoticizing approaches to the past. For this one-day symposium, we invite contributions that take up the challenge to think about the continuities and specificities of contemporary (neo)historical fiction and explore it as a literary and cultural phenomenon.

Keynote speakers:

Dr Elodie Rousselot (University of Portsmouth)
Prof Dr Elisabeth Wesseling (Maastricht University)

Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:
• the neo-historical imagination as a literary movement and/or broader cultural phenomenon (literature, film, TV, art, adaptations, etc.)
• comparisons between (re)constructions of different historical periods (neo-Victorian, neo-Gothic, neo-Tudor, neo-medieval, neo-Golden Age, neo-WWI/WWII, alternate history, etc.)
• theoretical and conceptual approaches to neo-historical fiction (postmodernism and post-postmodernism, mashup, cultural memory, affect, postcolonialism, posthumanism, utopia/dystopia, etc.)
• connections within and across national and linguistic borders and communities; world literature and cosmopolitan memory

Please submit abstracts of 250 words for 20-minute papers in English, together with a short biography, to Daný van Dam at vandamhd@cardiff.ac.uk by 18 December 2015.

 

28742. All Things Victorian: Exploring Materiality and the Material Object

Call for Papers one-day symposium, 19 March 2016
The Centre for Studies in Literature
University of Portsmouth
Keynote Speaker: Dr Nadine Muller (Liverpool John Moores University)

The rapid industrialisation of the nineteenth century, with its unprecedented increase in the mass-production, proliferation and consumption of machine-made material objects and things, forced a reconsideration of the relationship between the self and the physical world in Victorian culture. Since then, neo-Victorian re-imaginings of the past have recurrently appropriated Victorian materialities as both a means of re-fashioning the past for contemporary consumption and of engaging with the past through haptic communication. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the material object, its invested meaning and the ways in which this has been presented and re-presented in Victorian culture and contemporary neo-Victorian re-imaginings.

We invite delegates to submit abstracts exploring Victorian materiality and the material object in literature, cultural studies, the visual arts, film, television adaptation, fashion and consumer culture. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
•  The representation of Victorian things, objects and artefacts in: Victorian and/or neo-Victorian literature; film, television and drama adaptations; fashion and textiles; Victorian and/or contemporary consumer culture.
• The material object: Victorian clothing, jewellery, furniture, architecture, photographs, mementos, keepsakes, memorials, archives etc.
• Human interactions and engagements with materiality and the material object.
• Theories of material culture: thing theory, object theory, cultural memory theory, trace theory.

Please submit proposals of 250-300 words for papers of no more than 20 minutes along with a 50-70 word bio-note to cslpgconf@port.ac.uk. The deadline for accepting proposals is 31 December 2015 and acceptance will be notified by 15 January 2016.

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