The Victorian Popular Fiction Association 7th Annual Conference: Victorian Authenticity and Artifice
13-15 July, 2015
Institute of English Studies, Senate House, London
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Linda Dryden “Stevenson and H. G. Wells: Monomaniacs, Duality and Evolutionary Science”
Keynote Speaker: Prof. David Glover “Styles of Populism in Victorian and Edwardian Popular Fiction”
Guest Speaker: Prof. Vanessa Toulmin from the National Fairground Archive
Call for Papers
The Victorian Popular Fiction Association conference is recognised as an important event on the annual conference circuit and offers a friendly and invigorating opportunity for established academics and postgraduate students to share their current research. We remain committed to the revival of interest in understudied popular writers which is pivotal to the reputation this conference has established.
The organisers invite a broad, imaginative and interdisciplinary interpretation of the topic and its relation to any aspect of Victorian popular literature and culture which might address literal or metaphorical representations of the theme.
We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers, or for panels of three papers, on topics which can include, but are not limited to:
Authenticity and/or Artifice in relation to:
Publication: Pseudonyms, Anonymous Writing, Imitation, Attribution, Public/Private Personas etc.
Genre Boundaries: Realism, Melodrama, Gothic, Sensation, Detective, Fiction/Non-Fiction, etc.
Textual (Re)Writings: Translation, Adaptation, Plagiarism, Intertextuality, Metatextuality etc.
The Stage and Showmanship: Theatre, Circus, Freak shows, Performance, Theatricality, Costume, Make-up, Setting, Mise-en-scene etc.
Performativity: Sex, Gender, Class, Nationality etc.
Science and its Practitioners: (Pseudo)Science, Adulteration, Séances, Mesmeric displays; Quacks, Fakes, Phonies etc.
Crime and Detection: Going undercover, Fraud, Deception, Theft, Murder, Poison, Amateur and Professional Detectives etc.
Cultural Constructs: Race, Social Purity, Disability, Miscegenation, Degeneration, Eugenics, Nationality etc.
Reconstruction and Reinvention: Neo-Victorianism; Auto/Biography, Self-Representation and Promotion; Historical Fiction; the Victorians and Shakespeare, the Classics, the (new) canon etc.
Popular Fiction as an authentic subject for study/research
Special topic panels: Following last year’s success, we are recreating the special panels which will be hosted by guest experts; therefore we especially welcome papers about the following themes:
Topic 1: The Stage, hosted by Beth Palmer
Topic 2: Fakes and Frauds, hosted by Ruth Heholt
Topic 3: Genre Boundaries, hosted by Jessica Cox
Papers in previous years have also discussed authors such as:
J. M. Barrie, Mrs Beeton, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Rhoda Broughton, Lewis Carroll, Mary Cholmondeley, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, Thomas Hardy, Jerome K. Jerome, Rudyard Kipling, Eliza Lynn Linton, Edith Nesbit, Margaret Oliphant, Olive Schreiner, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, William Makepeace Thackeray, Dinah Craik, Anthony Trollope, Mary Augusta Ward, H.G. Wells, Ellen Wood, Charlotte Yonge
Please send proposals of no more than 300 words and a 50 word biography in Word format to Drs Janine Hatter, Helena Ifill and Jane Jordan at: vpfamembership@gmail.com
Deadline for proposals: Monday 2nd February 2015
WEBSITE: https://victorianpopularfiction.org