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CALL FOR PAPERS:

Victorian Memories: A One Day Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference,
hosted by the University of Central England.

To be held at Birmingham Central Library, Saturday 15 September 2007.

Keynote Speakers: Professor David Amigoni (Keele University) and Professor
Elisabeth Jay (Oxford Brookes University).

Admission: =C2 (which includes morning/afternoon coffee and a buffet lunch).
(Booking forms are available at the conference website:
www.lhds.uce.ac.uk/english/?page=3Dvictorian-memories).

There is the art of memory and there is the memory of art.
Jacques Derrida

This conference invites postgraduate students to address any aspect of
memory in Victorian culture; including, but not limited to, literature, science,
art, history and philosophy. Proposals should be no longer than 300 words.
Deadline for proposals is 16 July 2007. Please send proposals to:
victorianmemories_at_yahoo.co.uk

Papers are expected to be no longer than 20 minutes. Although this is a
Victorian conference, we welcome proposals for papers on
authors/artists/philosophers etc working outside of the United Kingdom (although it is necessary that
papers are delivered in English). See below for further details or visit the
conference website: www.lhds.uce.ac.uk/english/?page=3Dvictorian-memories.

I have a room whereinto no one enters
Save I myself alone:
There sits a blessed memory on a throne,
There my life centres
Christina Rossetti, Memory

I did not forget. Was it my own wrong I remembered?
Mrs Clennam, in Dickens's Little Dorrit

To remember or to forget? In their respective works Dickens and Rossetti can
be seen as participating in a wider discussion, taking place during the
Victorian era, focusing on the role memory plays, both positively and negatively,
in our lives. The Victorians were fascinated by the concept of memory and
repeated attempts were made to discover why and how one remembers and forgets.
But why is the notion of memory so important to the Victorians? And, as if
the concept of memory itself could not be forgotten, why do the Victorians
constantly return to analyse, theorise, and explore its possibilities?

Possible topics may include:

Memories of the literary/artistic past; "forgotten" Victorians; the
posthumous memory/reputation of Victorian figures; Modernist and/or
Postmodern "memories" of the Victorian era

Psychological theories of memory; memory and trauma; repressed memories;
memory and subjectivity; dreams; ghosts

"False" memories; memory and the "invention of tradition";
Amnesia/Forgetting/Forgetfulness

Nostalgia

Memories of the oppressed; working class memories; (post)colonial memories

Memory and narrative; genre; historical novels/events; diaries; confessions;
 (auto)biography; childhood memories; reminiscences and recollections; memoirs

Memorials/monuments/commemorations; mementos/keepsakes/relics

Memory and religion; death/ memory and mourning

Gendering memory

"Memories" of the future/ experiences of deja vu: (In Memoires for Paul
de Man, Jacques Derrida claims: "Memory projects itself toward
the future").

Please send proposals (max 300 words) to: victorianmemories_at_yahoo.co.uk

Alternatively, you may post proposals to the conference organisers, Serena
Trowbridge and Ryan Barnett, at the following address:

"Victorian Memories Conference
English Department
University of Central England
Perry Barr
Birmingham
B42 2SU

Please also send any questions or queries to the above email or postal
addresses.

Deadline for proposals: 16 July 2007.

Conference website: www.lhds.uce.ac.uk/english/?page=3Dvictorian-memories

"Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us"
Miss Prism, in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

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Received on Thu Apr 26 2007 - 18:05:45 EDT