victorian

Chair and Organizer: Dewey W. Hall (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona)

The Parthenon Sculptures have long been a source of disparagement and fascination, especially since their arrival in London as early as 1803. Prior to that year, Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, procured a collection now housed in the British Museum as the Elgin Marbles, intensifying a transformation in which materiality of the marbles has been infused with seemingly vital force through an after-life of aesthetic representation. Whether through drawings, paintings, or poetry, the Elgin Marbles as objects have animated their subjects—pensive in gaze—to motivate, in effect, proliferation through aesthetic production.

The William Dean Howells Society will host two panels at the upcoming American Literature Association Conference in Boston, May 23-26, 2019. 

1. William Dean Howells and the Affective Turn 

We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers, panels of three papers affiliated with an organisation or a group of scholars and non-traditional papers/panels, on topics which can include, but are not limited to:

Call for Papers
Steampunk/NeoVictorian Lit
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
40th Annual Conference, February 20-23, 2019
Hyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Montesquieu's assertion that the fall of the Roman Empire could be attributed to a decline in morality and deviation from Classical ideals redefined the term “décadence.” From a neutral term for “decline,” decadence transformed into a laden pejorative signifying perversity and decay, as well as a warning against the dangers of excess and the pursuit of pleasure. Perceived as a disruptive force, dangerous to social order and bourgeois normativity, the threat of decadence is still invoked in modern political rhetoric to stoke anxieties over shifts in traditional values and social mores, as well as the looming threat of an irretrievable loss of geopolitical power.