CONSUMING [the] VICTORIANS
Victorians Institute Conference
Asheville, NC
November 9-10, 2018

https://victoriansinstitute2018.wordpress.com/

The Centre for Textual Studies at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, is running a three-day international conference to  showcase and explore the latest methods for analyzing literary and historical texts using computers. A particular focus will be the ways in which literary and historical scholarship will turn increasingly algorithmic in the future as we invent wholly new kinds of questions to ask of our texts because we have wholly new ways to investigate them. The conference will bring together, and put into fruitful dialogue, scholars using traditional literary and historical methods and those exploring and inventing new computational methods, to their mutual benefit.

In his introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey argues that “The Lord of the Rings has established itself as a lasting classic, without the help and against the active hostility of the professionals of taste; and has furthermore largely created the expectations and established the conventions of a new and flourishing genre.” The impact Tolkien has made on not only high fantasy, but also on the importance of language and mythology studies is undeniable. The influences of World War I, modern industrialization, and more are evident in his works as socio-political commentary, despite his personal dislike of allegory. Tolkien studies reflects a thriving culture in and outside the university.

CFP

Boundaries  can literally  be defined as  limits, limiting  factors,  borders  or barriers. The  term connotes the idea of restriction in both a physical  and ideological  sense. In social and cultural discourses, the idea of boundaries can be understood  as a metaphysical notion  to describe various ideas which are the foundations of all forms of discrimination and prejudice  based on issues such as patriarchy,  race, ethnicity,  class, sexuality, religious affiliation and other forms of classification. Examples  of such  conceptions  of boundaries  in  colonial,  postcolonial,  poststructuralist  and postmodern discourses include  the practices of stereotyping or othering.