Victorian Expansions 2025

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.

The Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, in collaboration with the Department of History of Art, the Centre for Modern Studies, and the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at York, is pleased to announce its 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.

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Schedule for the day

10am to 10.30am

Registration and welcome

• Coffee will be provided

10.30am to 12 noon

Panel 1: Victorian Legacies: Expanding the Field

Chair: Matthew Campbell (University of York)

• Alex Bubb (University of Roehampton): “Untapped Potential: How Victorianists Can Advance Translation Studies”
• Katherine Fry (King’s College London): “Black Heritage and Legacies of Victorian Song: Mapping the Musical Career of Amanda Ira Aldridge (1866-1956)”
• Pritika Pradhan (University of York): “Details and ‘life itself’: The Afterlife of Victorian Details in Modernist Images and Impressions”

12 noon to 12.15pm

Coffee break

12.15pm to 1.15 pm

“Imperial Homes”: Creative Reading and Q&A with Professor Malachi McIntosh

1.15pm to 2.15pm

Lunch

2.15pm to 3.45pm

Panel 2: Imperial Dissolutions, Archival Excavations

Chair: Olivia Carpenter (University of York)

• Ushashi Dasgupta (University of Oxford): “Dickens, Bankim, and the Politics of Speech”
• Yasmin Akhter (Royal Holloway, University of London): “Displacing the imperial archive”
• Olivia Majumdar (University of Cambridge): “The Lives of Others: Eurasian Women in 19th century Florence”

3.45pm to 4pm

Coffee break

4pm to 5.30pm

Panel 3: Legible Images, Radiant Words

Chair: Elizabeth Prettejohn (University of York)

• Marcus Waithe (University of Cambridge): “The Radiant Word: Alphabetical Traces of John Ruskin”
• Jeremy Melius (University of York): "Vivisection and the Visual Arts"
• Nicholas Dunn-McAfee (University of York): “Writing on the Canvas: Form and the Viewer-Reader in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Proserpine (1874)”

6.15pm to 7.45 pm

Keynote Lecture (Public Lecture)

• Professor Tim Barringer (Yale University): “Art/Music—India/Britain, 1886-1914”
• Venue: Bowland Auditorium (BS/005), Berrick Saul Building

Download the full programme

Conference organiser: Dr Pritika Pradhan at pritika.pradhan@york.ac.uk 
Enquiries to be sent to victorian-conference@york.ac.uk. We welcome any queries, and look forward to seeing you at the conference!