British Women Writers Conference 2022
May 19-21, 2022 | Baylor University

The organizers of the 2022 BWWC invite papers and panel proposals interpreting the theme of “Borders” in 18th- and 19th-century British women’s writing. In response to the 2021 BWWC “Reorientations,” panels and papers on topics related to race and ethnicity are especially welcome.

The 18th and 19th centuries were exciting and disorienting periods in British history as the borders of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, geography, economics, and aesthetics were drawn and redrawn on the cultural map. This flux manifested itself in physical and ideological “border crossings” between the rural and urban, the religious and the secular, the domestic and the professional, the private and the public, the metropole and the periphery, and so on. The theme of “Borders” invites contributors to articulate and speculate on crossing, redrawing, transgressing, retreating from, and reinforcing such dividing lines.

Borders may be broadly interpreted to include scholarship concerning borders within and between scholarly disciplines, borders within form and genre, political and geographical borders, socio-economic boundaries and borders, and borders between individuals or identities, particularly those of diverse racial or ethnic identities.

Abstracts are due January 14, 2022, and may be submitted through the website at https://sites.baylor.edu/bwwc2022/submissions/

Papers and panels may interpret various topics, including:

Political Demarcations
Refugees
Parliamentary Debates
National Borders
Acts of “Union”
Ports of Entry and Treaty Ports
Borders as Boundaries

Identity: Race, Ethnicity, Religion
Slavery and Abolition
Oriental Tales and Orientalism
Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Identities

Global Migrations: Elective and Forced
The Unbordered
Frontiers; Exploration v. Colonization
Travel Writing
Oceanic Writing
Transatlantic Crossings
Slave Narratives

Border Transgressions
Limits and Limitations
Trespassing
Restraints/Constraints
Apparitions and Spiritualism
Borderline Behavior

Land Borders
Enclosure/Demarcation/Preservation
Coastal Boundaries/Ocean/Seaside
City/Suburb/Estate/Country
Gardens and Gardening Practices

Disciplinary Borders
Form/Forms (Poetic, Generic, Ritual, Material)
Expanding/Erasing the Borders of the Field
Borders Created by the Canon
Undisciplining the Academy

Social Borders
Bodies: Marked, Viewed, Contained, Controlled, Liberated
Collective Bodies and the Census
Medical Access, Physical/Mental Wellbeing
Human/Nonhuman
Self/Other
Spheres of Power/Influence (domestic, industrial, etc.)
Socio-economic Divisions
Religious Influence and Engagement

Aesthetic Borders
Art/science
Architecture, Follies and Artificial Ruins
Verbal/Visual/Audio media
Historical and/or Temporal Collapse
Genre transgressions
Fictional Borders