cfp.english.upenn.edu

Victorians flocked to coasts and shorelines to seek leisure, employment, escape, beauty, death, and the natural world, amongst other pursuits. For Great Britain, an island nation at the centre of an expanding empire, the relationship between natural edge and national border took on increasingly complex resonances as the nineteenth century progressed. This session seeks to explore the investments made by Victorians in coasts both symbolic and literal, including the various aesthetic, industrial, gendered, classed, patriotic, and religious meanings that inhered in representations of the line between land and sea. The Victorian Studies Association of Ontario invites proposals that explore the coast as boundary, resource, destination, or site of scientific intervention.

Papers may focus on, but need not be limited to: bathing apparatuses and costumes; childhood and the sea-shore; coastal leisure and tourism; emigration and immigration; fisheries; fossil collecting and scientific exploration; geographies of belonging; hulks and wrecks; maritime and naval exercises; ports, piers, and harbours; seaside mining; shipbuilding; shivering sands and troubled waters; treasure islands and shore adventures; the burden of the land-locked.

Following the instructions on the ACCUTE website (under Conference) for joint association sessions, send your 700 word proposal (or 8-10 page double-spaced paper), a 100 word abstract, a 50 word biographical statement, and the submitter information form, to VSAOatACCUTE@gmail.com by November 15th.
Note: You must be a current ACCUTE member or a member of VSAO to submit to this session.