Victorian Expansions 2025

Event details

The Victorian era witnessed the emergence of eclectic forms and genres that pushed against geographical and chronological margins – by highlighting engagements across the Empire and the European, Atlantic, and Oceanic continents, and challenging Romantic, Victorian, and Modern/ist periodisations.

Its inherent diversity and expansive chronological scope belie the enduring myth of “splendid isolation”: the era spanned the aftermath of the great eighteenth-century revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars to the First World War, during which British territory came to encompass places as far apart as Canada and India, South Africa and Australia.

Uncovering the contradictions and diversity of Victorian culture enables broadening the field of Victorian Studies, and renovating the scope of what we think of as Victorian, and indeed British, culture and identity.

In collaboration with the Department of History of Art, the Centre for Modern Studies, and the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, we are pleased to announce our inaugural one-day Victorian Studies conference, on the topic of “Victorian Expansions.” Supported by the British Association for Victorian Studies, this conference aims to explore and contribute to the current drive towards diversifying and decolonising Victorian studies, by expanding its established geographical (beyond the British Isles), chronological, and disciplinary boundaries.  

Call for Papers

We invite papers from graduate students and more senior Victorianist scholars that uncover the inherent heterogeneity of Victorian literary, artistic, and musical forms and genres, and push against its geographical, historical, and disciplinary boundaries. We welcome papers on topics that include, but are not be limited to:

• Expanding the geographical reach of the Victorian era beyond the British Isles: the Empire, the European Continent, Transatlantic and Oceanic studies, and beyond;
• Expanding the scope of “home”: uncovering racial, gender, sexual, ethnic and class diversities in the British Isles and abroad;
• Expanding the chronology of the Victorian Studies: uncovering connections and continuities between the Victorian era and the eighteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries;
• Expanding disciplinary boundaries: interdisciplinary and/or undisciplined approaches;
• Expanding the environment: ecocritical and related approaches;
• Expanding and/or beyond the human: posthuman related approaches;

…and any other expansions that you may find relevant to the field.

Please send abstracts (250-words) and CVs to victorian-conference@york.ac.uk by 15 October 2024.

Further details of the venue and the programme are forthcoming. We welcome any queries, and look forward to seeing you at the conference!