Our topic looks not only at religion but at all facets of the nineteenth-century world as religion sees it. The profane differs from the secular in that it connotes not merely a material world, but a merely material one: ordinary language may be secular, but blasphemy is profane. We are interested in looking into nineteenth-century attitudes toward religion, nineteenth-century religious movements, but also the workings of religion in culture and society. Many of the topics suggested below also lend themselves to the question of why this issue was once so important to Victorian Studies, why it went out of fashion, why it is coming back into fashion.
Topics include (but are not limited to):
Religion and Culture: Connections between religious attitudes and beliefs and class and gender. Atheism, agnosticism, the Charles Bradlaugh case. Jews and anti-semitism. Religion and social work: the Salvation Army, temperance and anti-vivisection movements. Material manifestations of religion.
Science and Religion: Darwin, alternative cosmologies, pre-histories, anthropology. Eschatological thought in general.
Religion and other Cultures: Islam and Orientalism. Missionaries, going native. Religion and imperialism. Exposures to non-Western religions, traditions, beliefs. Victorian explorers and religious issues: Richard Burton, Henry Stanley.
The Profane and the Secular: Profanity, blasphemy, sexuality, pornography. Oppositions between the material and the spiritual. Sacred cows and sacred truths. Sacred and profane blood: transfusions and vampires. Demons and exorcism.
Religion, art and literature: The useful, the aesthetic and the religious. Commercial religious literature. Devotional literature. Religious poetry and fiction. Secularism and the clergy in the novel. Sacred music. Religious art. Religious rhetoric. Relics. Gothic revivalism. Religion and the Higher Criticism. Hermeneutic theory. Fin-de-siècle art and religion.
And, of course, you could write about god.
Paper Proposals (no more than two double-spaced pages) by Oct. 15, 2003, to :
Professor Aviva Briefel
English Department, Harvard University
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Email: abriefel@bowdoin.edu; Fax (attn: Aviva Briefel): (617) 496-8737
Please do not send complete papers. Please do not include your name on your proposal: we review proposals anonymously. Please do include your name, institutional and email addresses, and proposal title in the cover letter that accompanies the proposal.
Finished papers should take 15 minutes (20 minutes maximum) so as to provide ample time for discussion following each panel.
Roundtable: In an attempt to allow more participation in the program, and to augment the conference’s interest in teaching, we are continuing the roundtable discussions on pedagogy that we initiated five years ago. This year’s topic is Integrating the Study of Religion into the Teaching of Victorian Literature and Culture. If you would like to make a presentation, please contact Professor Don Ulin, Division of Humanities, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, 300 Campus Drive, Bradford, PA, 16701 (fax: 814-362-5094; email: ulin@pitt.edu), describing briefly (no more than one double-spaced page) the aspects of pedagogy that you would like to share. Keep in mind that being a presenter means creating an atmosphere for stimulating discussion rather than presenting a paper.
The Coral Lansbury Travel Grant ($100.00) and George Ford Travel Grant ($100.00), given in memory of key founding members of NVSA, are awarded annually to the graduate student, adjunct instructor, or independent scholar who must travel the greatest distance to give a paper at our conference. Apply by indicating in the cover letter of your proposal that you wish to be considered . Mention also if you have other sources of funding.
All who wish to join NVSA, and all members who have not yet paid their dues for the 2002-2003 membership year should return the attached tear-off.
And Dr. Hartley Spatt urges all members to send him a note subscribing
to the Victorian Studies Bulletin, a newsletter published quarterly.
Send your check ($7.00 a year or $15.00 for three years, made out to
VSB) to:
Hartley Spatt
SUNY Maritime College
Bronx NY 10465
Finally, as many of you know, our Vice-President for Information Services, Professor Glenn Everett has established a NVSA list (NVSA-L) on email and NVSA Home Page on the World Wide Web (www.nvsa.org). The Web site offers items of interest to NVSA members. NVSA-L is a place to summarize and share conference activities and logistics, and to conduct NVSA business. It’s used mainly around conference time, so don’t worry that it will clutter up your mailboxes. To subscribe, send a message to ListProc@utm.edu. Leave the subject line blank; on the message line write SUB-NVSA-L, your first and last name.
Professor Jonathan Loesberg, President, NVSA
Dept. of Literature
phone: (202)885-2971
American University
email: jloesbe@american.edu
Washington, DC 20016
fax: (202)885-2938
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To: Professor Joan Dagle, Secretary/Treasurer. NVSA
Dept. of English, Rhode Island College
Providence, RI 02908
I wish to renew my dues or become a member of the Northeast Victorian
Studies Association. I have enclosed a check to NVSA for
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